I am SO sick of Apple (and Microsoft) hating fanbois who snark that these companies (and others) just steal the good ideas of others then profit on those. 1. Ideas are not property. You cant steal ideas. 2. Ideas are frankly cheap, and repeat themselves over and over. I once submitted an original Star Trek screenplay to Paramount and despite it being quite original, two of its major thematic elements showed up in episodes that season (and the timing meant I couldnt have know those scripts, and they hadnt yet seen my story.) This also happens in tech and software. 3. A successful product is 10% (or less) idea and 90% (or more) **product development** (more formally called marketing.) People who just snipe that elements of the iPhone already existed and Steve Jobs just stole them and succeeded because Apple is big, have NO FRACKING CONCEPTION whatsoever what it actually takes to make a successful PRODUCT. The iPhone (as an example) was an integrated product, the result of innumerable integrations of hardware, software, manufacturing, shipping, support, contracts with phone companies, sales campaigns, roadmap vision, etc. etc. etc. The raw idea a tablet-like phone you can operate with your finger is like 0.001% of the totality of the product. 4. When IBM was shopping for an OS for its new PC, the dominant OS at the time was CP/M -- but Gary Kindall rebuffed IBM, and Bill Gates swooped in by buying up a CP/M clone called 86-DOS and modifying it to suit IBMs purposes. Bill Gates succeeded not by innovating but by being a superb businessman, who realizes that 99% of success is showing up with a working product. Gates stole nothing--he simply delivered the product needed to do the job when no one else stepped up. Ive seen people claim that Mac OS likewise has just stolen everything from BSD and/or Linux. Unbelievable! I now use Mac for almost everything, both at work and personally. Anyone who is even the slightest bit objective, who struggles with managing a Linux system and keeping all their half-baked buggy software running over time will know that Apple copied and stole nothing. The value in the Mac (hardware and software) is the fact that Apple engineers did all the hard work of making a PRODUCT that is actually useful to me, not just some bits of software alleged to be exactly equivalent to things Apple provides. (This same type of argument also applies to why I consider Apple computers so much more valuable than an allegedly equal system that can be built for much less -- once again, if youve been a victim of HPs craptastic laptops, or spent hours diving down blackholes of Windows or Linux driver issues, etc. etc. you know that comparing raw computing specs is NOT the same as comparing products.) Anyway, end of rant... Back to regular programming... ;)
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 22:34:30 +0000