Apple using patents to delay adoption of WWW open standards again

  An initiative to standardize the way touch enabled devices interact with web content has had a wrench thrown into the works, at least temporarily, by Apple.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Events Working Group was created last year and tasked with standardizing the way touch devices, from smartphones and tablets to drawing pads and spatial sensors, interact with web applications. One of the specifications they have been working on is called 'Touch Events.'

  As part of the standard development process, the working group sent out multiple requests for patent exclusions. In layman's terms, these are requests for disclosure of any existing or pending patents which might be required to implement a standard.

  Responding to the third of three calls for exclusions this year, Apple provided the group with a list of four patents, one of which has already been approved, two which are pending approval, and a fourth which is in the early stage of application, which they say are related to the Touch Events specification.

  A developer for the Opera browser who blogs under the name Haavard is crying foul on Apple's move, and says they are simply trying to impede the creation of the Touch Events spec. He points to similar occurences in 2009 and 2010, when Apple made exclusion claims with respect to the W3C Widgets specification.

  Of the three patents listed in those claims, two were found to be nonessential, while the third was deemed both nonessential and invalid due to prior art.

  When a patent exclusion claim is made to a W3C working group, the organization must appoint a team to examine the patents in question to determine whether they are, in fact, necessary to the spec in its current state. This means delaying finalization until the determination is reached.

  Perhaps the key technology which Apple has used as a cornerstone for their multitude of patent lawsuits against handset and tablet makers around the world are is the touch screen. Simply put, Apple wants to use patents to restrict other companies' touch implementations.

  Of course that's despite the fact their touch screen technology isn't necessarily as revolutionary or original as their patents suggest. In some cases they cover technology which was in production by other companies before the Apple patent application was even filed.

Apple tries to reboot it's lost lawsuits

  In keeping with its strategy for world domination in consumer electronics, Apple has inconspicuously transferred a dozen patents that it previously "owned" to a non-existent corporate entity called Cliff Island LLC.

 Tech crunch have done a little digging and it appears that Cliff Island is a shell company, sharing a physical address with Altitude Capital, the main investor behind patent trolling company Digitude Innovations (ironic name, n'est pas?).

  Cliff Island then "transferred" those same patents to Digitude who have now filed a suit with the ITC (International Trade Commission) in the US against basically all the smartphone and tablet makers selling in America (RIM, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, and Nokia (note that Apple is not on this list). How mysterious.

  Digitude was founded in 2010 and raised $50 million from Altitude Capital Partners, with aims to “acquire, aggregate, and license key technology areas within the consumer electronics and related technology fields in a patent consortium” — in other words, it buys up patents and then sues other companies until they settle and agree to pay licensing fees, because it’s generally less expensive than actually going to court.

  So what we're seeing here is Apple suing its competitors out of the market, yet again, for patent law suites it already lost, but this time by proxy. And it's interesting that the patent transfers have taken place under some sneaky back-room sleight of hand. For new readers this might seem unethical even for Apple - what we know, is only the tip of the ice berg, unfortunately.

iOS fragmentation - Is it worse than Android's?

How do we define fragmentation?

This is what fragmentation (frgmn-tshn) actually means:
The scattering of parts of a computer file across different regions of a disk. Fragmentation occurs when the operating system breaks up the file and stores it in locations left vacant by previously deleted files. The more fragmented the file, the slower it is to retrieve, since each piece of the file must be identified and located on the disk.

Below we will try to explain the FUD term propagated by Steve Jobs and spread by Apple fans that also have a very vague idea of it's meaning.

• the inability to update the OS because of the manufacturer?
• the user's choice not to update?
• the coexistence of multiple app stores?
• exclusive apps?
• different hardware configurations?

So let's start with updates

    If we are to consider updates as the sole factor in fragmentation, we would certainly be wrong. Both Android and iOS can run the same Apps. Forcing partial updates like iOS 4 on iPhone 3G and 3GS has lowered the device performance considerably while still not bringing the same features iPhone 4 had. Apple might have reduced fragmentation in statistics, but it has decreased user experience by making 3G and 3GS laggy devices.

So how are iPhone updates doing in 2011?
According to statistics, not too well. So far iOS 5 is only on 38% of all iPhones:

"According to Chitika Insights, one month after release, the new OS is on 38 percent of iPhones, 30 percent of iPads and 12 percent of iPod Touch.

iOS5 distribution in 2011

 The firm uses mobile ad network impressions to analyze traffic."

In comparison, Android's latest major distribution for Phones 2.x.x is spread across 95% of the devices, and the latest subversion, Gingerbread or 2.3.x is spread across 38.2% of the devices.

We should also mention that Android has a market share or 52.5% while Apple has a market of ~15%. Given the fact that there are 443 unique Android devices released and only 7 iPhones, I'd say Apple's closed eco-system idea is doing a lot worse in the real world than it did on paper.

‘Other designs are possible’

    Apple and Samsung are at odds over patents. In numerous courts, in numerous states, in numerous countries on numerous continents, the pair continue to file complaint after complaint. Apple says Samsung builds copycat devices that steal design elements from its iPad tablet and iPhone smartphone. Samsung says Apple’s mobile devices violate multiple Samsung patents covering communications standards. And round and round we go.

    In the most recent development of note, a German judge on Friday upheld a ruling that will block Samsung’s local unit from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Germany. In her decision, Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hoffman stated, “The court is of the opinion that Apple’s minimalistic design isn’t the only technical solution to make a tablet computer, other designs are possible.” Other designs are possible. The judge continued, “For the informed customer there remains the predominant overall impression that the device looks [like the iPad].”

Well that’s just a tough break for Samsung.

Apple continues to contribute to world wide pollution, causes discord within Greenpeace

   In a report released on Wednesday, five Chinese non-governmental organisations said the US technology company was using suppliers with public records of environmental violations and taking “advantage of the loopholes in developing countries’ environmental management systems”.

The accusations escalate a standoff between Apple and Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a co-author of the report, which is threatening to damage Apple’s image. The groups have sought to persuade 29 big electronics brands over the past year to work with them on containing pollution in their supply chain, but singled out Apple as unresponsive.

      Hours before the report was even published, Mr Ma was invited to start a dialogue on his allegations. Mr Ma said Apple told him some of the factories on his list were not the US company’s suppliers but gave him no details.

iPhone manufacturer reports $218 million full-year net loss

    Foxconn, the mega-manufacturer behind all Apple products (more than 1/3 of Foxconn is dedicated to Apple products), posted a $218.3 million net loss for 2010. While the company had previously predicted lower earnings amid suicide-related wage increases and welfare costs, the reported figure is still worse than analysts' estimation of around $202 million, which also far outweighs the prior year's $38.6 million profit. Foxconn puts the blame on higher consolidated income tax and increased competition, as well as "cost streamlining actions" -- a reference to the ongoing relocation and expansion plans, which are also the outcome of the Chinese suicides -- that took longer than expected and led to increased spending along with higher manufacturing overhead. As for 2011, Foxconn said it'll "take decisive actions to conclude our capacity relocation, optimize our cost structure and return to profitability." Of course, further losses could accelerate plans to increase prices, which could ultimately put everyone in a lose-lose situation if Foxconn can't compete. 

     Foxconn plans to develop a robotized product line and mechanize the workforce to slowly replace the slave-like labor in hope to compete with giants like Nokia, Samsung or HTC.

    Of course Apple hasn't done anything regarding worker well-fare, nor have the manufacturing costs increased. Have you ever wondered how come Apple icon products aren't made in good ol' America?

Via: Foxconn International Holdings (PDF)

The Apple/iOS user tracking & privacy breaking roundup

    You’ve probably heard by now about the detailed log your iOS device keeps of your movements, but it's about time a roundup o the whole story was made. Now there’s a tool to prevent that plus some more clarity on the issue, which like all freedom on Apple products, requires jailbreaking.

    Apple's location services pinpoint your location using GPS, Cell-ID and Wi-Fi hotspots. Early devices used Google and Skyhook databases to do that, but since iOS 3.2 Apple has been building up their own database - you become their Guinea Pig (read: lab rat).

     A file kept unencrypted on your iProduct holds a record of all your movements from about an year ago and that file is copied to any computer you’ve synced it to and any backups you might have made.

As usual with Apple software, there's no security between anyone and your private data (called consolidated.db), either by copying it from a computer that contains a copy of the file or simply stealing the device itself, can easily extract a log of your whereabouts over the last year.(red more about Steve Jobs's opinion and Android below)

Apple mocks open source community, pulls VLC from the AppStore

     Looks like VLC's role as champion of open-source legal rights is no more. Rather than lawyer up, Apple's taken the easy way out, and simply removing the VLC media player from the App Store. Rémi Denis-Courmont, the VideoLAN developer who originally sued to have it removed, reports that an Apple attorney informed him that the company had complied with his takedown request, and pulled the app accordingly which likely puts the kibosh on other potential VLC ports as well. If you think about it, the open-source community may have just planted the first brick in a walled garden of its own. 

     If you wonder why it was so important to have VLC removed, it's easy. As the much hated iDon't list says Apple locks all apps with DRM protection, free or not, open source or not. Thus with Apple's mockery over the open-source community, goes the only decent video player in the App Store. Yet again iPhone users are left with a poor choice of video formats or painful conversion of their videos to the extremely poor choice of codecs available on the iPhone.

Apple Sued For Sending User Data To Advertisers

   Apple has been sued this week over "allegedly transmitting user information to advertising networks without the consent of owners" of its iOS devices.

   Jonathan Lalo, of Los Angeles, says Apple and a group of mobile app developers sold his personal data (age, sex, location) to ad networks:

"[Lalo] did not expect, receive notice of, or consent to Defendants' tracking of his iPhone app use and did not want Defendants to engage in such activity."

   The user agreement policies state that apps are not allowed to transmit data without a user's consent. The suit comes at a time when the WSJ has broken news that many mobile applications transmit personal data to third party advertisers without user content.
    About time for somebody to gather evidence and file a case as the risks have been there ever since the first iPhone and as apple never took a any action to cover the holes, it became obvious they didn't take any action for their own interest: iOS 4 - as insecure as ever, Apple personal information free give-away, October is the iOS security flaw month at the iPhone Fever!
    Unfortunately solvng the issue requires rewriting of a major part of the iOS kernel that unlike Symbian or Linux (Android, MeeGo) doesn't have any embedded security features like firewalls (hint: iptables).

One of the most high-profile apps named is Pandora, the popular Internet radio app.

Via: WSJ

Steven "Grinch" Jobs wants his share from starving children's meals

    In August, PayPal added a donation feature that allowed users to make charitable contributions from within the services's iPhone app. In late October, Apple made them pull the plug with no warning and little explanation.

    Anuj Nayar, on behalf of PayPal, would only say, "I can confirm that we added the donations feature to our iPhone app in version 2.5 in mid August. We removed the feature in version 3.0 of our PayPal Mobile iPhone app. This was done at Apple's request."

    A little background: to implement its donation feature, PayPal partnered with MissionFish, whose mandate is to help non-profits raise funds through online donations. In PayPal's case, users of the app would be given an option to donate to either a featured charity or one of nearly 18,000 organizations in the MissionFish database. Choose the non-profit, choose the amount, hit submit, and you were done. Because PayPal already has a payment method on file for the user, it was essentially a two-click operation. And in the few months that the feature was operational, it had raised more than $10,000 at an average donation amount of $12.

Apple: Screw GNU/GPL, we just don't care about your Copyright License!

      After four long years of wait the AppsStore is starting to get more than joke programs called "apps". One of the first real software programs available on the AppStore is the VLC media player (VLC and MPlayer were available for Nokia's Maemo/MeeGo platform a few weeks after the launch!).
      Even though there are no decent any codec/any format players on the Appstore and the iPhone has a very limited multimedia support to say the least, the developer wants to yank it, because Apple's "violating GNU public license under which VLC is released by applying DRM to it".

     VLC's lead developer, Rémi Denis-Courmont, said that "it is to be expected that Apple will cease distribution soon," due to the "intransigently tight control Apple maintains over its mobile applications platform."

     Basically, Apple's used of DRM when it distributes the app, where it must be downloaded separately for each individual iOS device (rather than being able to be copied from device to device), doesn't sit happy with the VLC developers, who support the GNU General Public License, or GPL for short—which describes itself as "a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works."

It's slightly bizarre, considering the app is free, but you've got to give Denis-Courmont respect for sticking to his guns. He told iLounge that:

Steve Jobs: philantrope or hypocrite?

     It seems that the iPhone contractor, Foxconn cannot keep itself out of the news and for all of the wrong reasons. After several highly-publicized suicides by Foxconn workers, a new leaked report shows that not much has actually changed at Foxconn. The Beijing-based Global Times reported on a study conducted by 60 teachers and students from 20 Universities in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

     Fourteen investigators were able to enter the company and experience life inside Foxconn for themselves. According to the report, at least 16.4 percent of Foxconn employees have been subject to "some kind of corporal violence," like that seen in a recently released video of employees being assaulted by Foxconn security.

     More than 38 percent claimed that their privacy has been invaded and 54.6 percent felt indignant toward management. Foxconn had announced a 30 percent pay rise for its employees following a number of suicides, but the report states that raises only amounted to 9.1 percent and that workers were also deprived of, "many of their welfare terms like subsidies, bonuses and so on."

Did you know why you own an iPhone?

     Reality distortion field (RDF) is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Inc. in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Mac project. Later the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of his keynote (or Stevenote) by observers and devoted users of Apple computers and products.

     In essence, RDF is the idea that Steve Jobs is able to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bluster, exaggeration, marketing and persistence. RDF is said to distort an audience's sense of proportion or scale. Small advances are applauded as breakthroughs. Interesting developments become turning points, or huge leaps forward. Impossible-seeming schedules, requirements or specifications are acceded to. Snap judgments about technical merits of approaches are sometimes reversed without acknowledgment. Those who use the term RDF contend that it is not an example of outright deception but more a case of warping the powers of judgment. The term "audience" may refer to an individual whose attitudes Steve is intending to affect.

      Often the term is used as a derogatory remark to criticize Apple's products and its more enthusiastic fans.

The term has extended in industry to other managers and leaders, who try to convince their employees to become passionately committed to projects, sometimes without regard to the overall product or to competitive forces in the marketplace. It also has been used with regard to hype for products that are not necessarily connected with any one person.

There is no spoon

     Fake Steve Jobs on the iPhone 4 and reception: Probably the biggest thing I've taught the team at Apple is that people never know what they're supposed to think about anything. This is true in Hollywood, in the book business, in the art world, in politics. And especially in technology. So we put out a new phone and everyone is sitting there wondering what they should think about it. What I realized many years ago - and honestly, it still amazes me - is that most people are so unsure of themselves that they will think whatever we tell them to think. So we tell people that this new phone is not just an incremental upgrade, but rather is the biggest breakthrough since the original iPhone in 2007. We say it's incredible, amazing, awesome, mind-blowing, overwhelming, magical, revolutionary. We use these words over and over. It's all patently ridiculous, of course. But people believe it.

We demo FaceTime, and we say that nobody in the world has ever seen anything like this before. Jonny and I act stunned and gob-smacked, as if we ourselves still can't believe that we've just invented video chat.

Again, this is utterly untrue, a total and absolute lie. But people accept it. They hoot and cheer for us.

      The other strategy we use is "clouding". Right now, for example, we've sent out the following messages about iPhone 4 and the antenna issues:

iPhone contractor Wintek sued over poisoning

       According to Stratfor Global Intelligence, 44 workers from a factory in Suzhou, China plan to sue the iPhone contractor Wintek after they were exposed to poison while cleaning iPhone screens with the chemical "n-hexane."

      The firm says 62 workers have been hospitalized in the last 9 months due to n-hexane poisoning. The poisoning is so serious that it can "cause nerve damage and sometimes paralysis."

      Stratfor goes on to say that a factory manager at the plant made the workers use the chemical because it dries faster than standard alcohol, and also leaves less streaks. That manager has since been fired.

      The issue first went public in January when 2000 protesters began smashing car windows and factory windows over a dispute relating to year-end bonuses.

       Stratfor adds:

Apple: now deleting iPhone 4 bug/issue threads, your thoughts to follow

     If you were looking for a message thread on Apple's support forums pointing to Consumer Reports' article 'not recommending' the iPhone 4, it's not there any more. Apple's support forum moderators deleted the thread. Bing cached it.

    If it happened once, maybe you'd say it was a glitch. But what if it happened twice? Three times? Four times, five, six?

    I'm not prone to hysterics or a subscriber to conspiracy theories, but it's fairly hard to imagine any good way to interpret this. Every post that I saw listed in a Google search of Apple's discussion boards lead to the same result: "Error: you do not have permission to view the requested forum or category."

Apple vs. human rights - How unaware are you?

                                             
Eight suicide attempts seen at iPhone manufacturer in Q1 2010

 

     Already 8 new suicide attempts among the iPhone manufacturers at Foxconn in Cina in 2010. Six attempts have been successful. Its most publicized such death came in 2009 when a worker, Sun Danyong, 25, jumped off his dormitory roof after losing one device out of a set of iPhone prototypes

     Sure losing one iPhone prototype might not strike you as a big deal... well China is one big place where Apple goons can enforce company policy on  employees without being mediatized - or so they thought.

      According to the reports, Sun was given 16 prototypes by his superior. A few days later, Sun could account only 15 of them and reported about the missing iPhone to his higher-ups on July 13th. It is alleged that some Apple security employees searched Danyong’s apartment illegally, detained and even physically abused Sun.

     Going back on this old story(2009) makes no sense since a lot has been written about the first uncovered iPhone suicide and instead of repeating all this I’d rather like to refer you to Perspective on the iPhone Suicide, written by Jason Chen (the guy in who's house Apple just broke in to - great coincidence) on Gizmodo. 

      However if you live in the US, where the press has every company under a spyglass 24/7 and your work place does not resemble to a concentration camp, you can afford to play drama queen:  

Gray Powell's father: 'He was devastated'.

      So yes, it's ok to lose the million dollar prototype while you're getting drunk as long as you are a fat f*ck with an US citizenship. Take care Gary, people get run over by cars, mugged and shot in dark alleys for a fistful of bucks every day and get "devastated" for good; we wouldn't want for something bad to come to you, if you get our drift.

      But as Apple never forgets, and the same Jason Chen had "the luck" of recovering the lost iPhone for no less than 5000 US dollars, returning it was useless as Apple declared the prototype stolen. The San Mateo police reached the front door of Gizmodo's editor and blasted through it with an illegal search warrant, as part of the investigation, and took three MacBooks, one iPad, one iPhone, three external USB drives, Motorola A855, IBM ThinkPad, two Dell desktop PCs, HP MediaSmart server, two digital cameras, three USB sticks and more.

      According to Gawker Media the search warrant is invalid, because the Californian law protects the journalist's source. But we guess Apple probably used a tiny little trick called bribery to go above the law and find the guy who found the prototype and get even with Gizmodo since unlike Engadget.com and GSMArena(more like AppleArena), they are one of the few technology sites that wasn't "bought" by Apple... yet.

     But wait! This doesn't just end here!

How much of a hypocrite is Steve Jobs? [about Flash and censorship]

      Steve Jobs has posted a defence to his position on Flash and not surprisingly it’s full of errors and misrepresentations.

Let’s look at the points he makes:

First, there's open

      He asses that “Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc.”
      Sure, Adobe’s Flash products are only available from Adobe. That’s what makes them Adobe’s.
      But there are many open source IDE’s, compilers, RTMP servers and players available.

      Also he claims that “By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.”
      Flash is a complex system made up from many parts, but the most important part is the swf format. That is an open format, and you can write both a compiler and a player without needing a license.
So if the swf is open what is Jobs referring to when he says “100% proprietary”?
It cannot be the RTMP and AMF formats since they are open. And the whole SDK with compiler and Flex framework is open.

     The one thing that is not fully open is Adobes own implementation of a Flash Player. Since Apple is one of the licensors behind H.264 one would think that Jobs would be aware of why Adobe cannot release it publicly. It contains proprietary codecs and hence cannot be made open by Adobe.
But if Jobs is concerned with proprietary products, maybe he should work for making H.264 open to help Adobe open the Flash Player as well?

And let’s not forget that the canvas is Apple’s proprietary technology.

App Store censorship: where to draw the line?

    Apple sells a plethora of music and movies via the iTunes Store, replete with sexual or violent content and foul language, while CEO Steve jobs has no problem pointing fingers at Android:

"There’s a porn store for Android… you can download it, your kids can download it. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to"

    Of course sex, violence and abusive language is "ok" to be presented in a more stimulating fashion such as video or audio, but a book that could have such a content is absolutely outrageous!

"We’ve reviewed Eucalyptus — classic books, to go. and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains inappropriate sexual content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:
                   “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

     Apparently, not even publishing a cartoon with political jokes is acceptable. Why should it make any difference if the content comes in the form of a song, a movie, or an iPhone app?

Well it seems to be making a lot of difference in the communist iTunes Store since there already are websites crawling with silly games and even apps that will allow you to access files and folders or send files via bluetooth, all forbidden by Apple.

    But they will gladly make an exception for you if you are famous, since the thing Apple thrives on most, is advertising. In other words, Apple has no problem in breaking the rules they enforce upon anyone else if it suits them.

If you want to get past Apple's unpredictable App Store censors, it's simple: Just go win a Pulitzer Prize, and/or inspire an online revolution.

    That seems to be the message being sent by Cupertino this week in a very public iPhone app rejection fiasco. Word broke on Thursday that Apple had rejected a cartoon app created by Mark Fiore, a cartoonist who recently made history by becoming the first online-only journalist to win a Pulitzer. Fiore received the award for animations he'd published at the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle.

    Fiore's iPhone app, however, was reportedly shot down by Apple because it "ridicule[d] public figures" -- you know, as most satirical political cartoons tend to do. But the story didn't end there: The general silliness of a ban on political satire, coupled with Fiore's high-profile honor for that same genre of work, led to a public outcry over Apple's actions and that public outcry has seemingly now led to Apple rethinking its ban.

Apple is afraid of competition

     Apparently "Android" is a four-letter word in Cupertino. The flash card app Flash of Genius was a finalist in Google's Android Developer Challenge, and the developers thought that was worth mentioning in the description of the iPhone version of their app. Apple didn't agree, and sent the developers an email asking them to remove the Android line from their app description, under threat of an "interruption" in Flash of Genius' availability on the app store.

      I like Apple, but does anyone else think this seems a bit like a movie gangster cliché? It's just shy of showing up in a dark pinstripe suit, carrying a baseball bat and saying "It would be a shame if anything happened to your ... availability in the app store." There's no official ban on mentioning Android, as far as we know, so the email said that the description "contains inappropriate or irrelevant information." Apple mentioned the Android award specifically, though, without referring to Flash of Genius' other boasts about mentions in books and newspapers.

     What's the deal, Apple? Is this a one-time fluke that deserves an apology, or are we going to see all Android mentions consistently removed in the future? For Flash of Genius' part, they're contacting Apple to find out if there's any acceptable way to mention their award without getting their app booted from the store.