Apple Settles with Mac OS X Leaker

[Beeblebrox]

It was OK for them to do it back then because they "were cool" and they were the downtrodden non establishment guys sticking it to the evil big businesses.

I totally agree, although in Woz's defense, he opposes Apple's legal actions here.

Like I said, I understand Jobs's convenient switch in morality now that he's the one with something to lose, but that philosophy, while understandable, is hardly worth the lengths to which Apple sycophants go to apologize for and defend him and his mega-billion dollar corporation.

 

[~loserman~]

I totally agree, although in Woz's defense, he opposes Apple's legal actions here.

Like I said, I understand Jobs's convenient switch in morality now that he's the one with something to lose, but that philosophy, while understandable, is hardly worth the lengths to which Apple sycophants go to apologize for and defend him and his mega-billion dollar corporation.

It's funny to me. Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
I find it typical of the 60's generation, their morals, ideals and politics always switch when it's their wallet that is impacted.

 

[PlaceofDis]

just have to remember that when you are on the outside it is easy to point the finger and say hey you are an evil large company that is greedy and you shouldnt be doing this

but when its your own intellectual materials i think many of us would take the same recourse, we just arent a huge company

 

[Beeblebrox]

just have to remember that when you are on the outside it is easy to point the finger and say hey you are an evil large company that is greedy and you shouldnt be doing this

And Steve Jobs would know, since he was doing just that when he was stealing long distance in the early 1970's, and again when he was criticizing IBM in the late 70's and early 80's.

I don't, however, think Apple is evil. They are greedy, sure, but so is every large corporation; that is the nature of what they do. Whether it's M$, Apple, IBM, they're all about the bottom line. Apple is no better or worse than the others, although they do have a vastly more clever salesman as a CEO.

What I find fascinating in all this is not Apple's behavior (hypocritical though it may be on Jobs's part) but rather the behavior of people defending this mega-billion dollar corporation no matter what they do.

 

[PlaceofDis]

What I find fascinating in all this is not Apple's behavior (hypocritical though it may be on Jobs's part) but rather the behavior of people defending this mega-billion dollar corporation no matter what they do.

dont get me wrong, i am not surely defending apple on this, i am just offering up another point of view here, sure they are a corporation that cares about their bottom line, its what they do as you say

but sometimes people dont stop to think, and apple is guilty of this as any other business or individual

 

[ziwi]

Apple was good about the 'settle' part, but I makes one wonder why they didn't 'prosecute to the fullest extent of the law' - this is their new operating system.

 

[Porco]

Maybe the "undisclosed sum" was set at the value of Jobs' annual salary 🙂

(First post BTW! Long-time lurker. Hello everyone.)

 

[swissmann]

I am one of those people who stays legal and buys all (most) of my software. It gets so expensive. I wonder if piracy was zero (never happen) if the developers would reduce the price or just fatten their wallets? Again I put out a request to MacPolls to do a poll on value of pirated software users have on their computer now.

 

[itsa]

yeah it is a tad old... But all the latest front page headlines are old....hmm.

Apple is not giving much to go on guys.... It's been way to quite.
I hope that means something big is coming.

 

[Eniregnat]

The effort is likely so that they can control who has access to code and so that they can trace it’s route of theft, should it occur. I am not talking about theft of OSX, but rater theft of the processes. With billions of lines of code, slipping in somebody else’s code is easy to do, but hard to detect. Each perbild and version of Tiger has “watermarks” that help track accidentally appropriated code.

Microsoft attacks people that have "stolen" prebuilds to protect their innovations, and for one other reason. M$ sells it’s os, and believes it looses significantly when it's os is pirated. Apple sells it’s os, but really doesn’t care about theft. Nobody can make significant money by selling pirated copies of OSX, while cracked copies of Windows or copies of Windows with working keys always sell. It isn’t a question of market share, but of protection. Most Mac users want to buy the upgraded os, and if they really need it, can find a copy- though I doubt many do.

 

[Beeblebrox]

I wonder if piracy was zero (never happen) if the developers would reduce the price or just fatten their wallets?

The answer is fatten their wallets. The pricing of software has NOTHING to do with piracy. Nothing. Pricing in terms of both music, movies, and software is based on the most they can charge without decreasing sales (the law of diminishing returns). All the other stuff they claim about R&D, piracy, etc, is complete ********.

 

[gwangung]

I don't exactly know how disseminating pre-builds of Tiger constitutes trade secret infringement when Apple themselves are giving builds away to anyone willing to pony up the money. This is more about money than about trade secrets.

Usually, with this sort of thing, you sign NDAs. That would be where trade secret provisions would turn up.

After all, the formula for Coca Cola is spread far and wide to bottlers and distributors who pony up the money...and that formula is certainly under trade secret protection.

 

[fixyourthinking]

I totally agree, although in Woz's defense, he opposes Apple's legal actions here.

Like I said, I understand Jobs's convenient switch in morality now that he's the one with something to lose, but that philosophy, while understandable, is hardly worth the lengths to which Apple sycophants go to apologize for and defend him and his mega-billion dollar corporation.

Glad you found a new word of the week (sycophant) to use in at least 10 sentences ... I'm not an Apple apologist ...

there is a big difference between fun and no harm antics ... this kid settled ... Apple saw that ... especially after he posted his story.

The Think Secret case is something entirely different ... and does make Apple some corporate behemoth stomping on fans ... as a shareholder I demand nothing less in either case.

 

[Beeblebrox]

GI'm not an Apple apologist ... and does make Apple some corporate behemoth stomping on fans ... as a shareholder I demand nothing less in either case.

Those are two contradictory thoughts. You're basically saying: "I'm not a sycophant... I am a sycophant."

And believe me, that's not a new word. I've been using it to describe Apple apologists for a long time.

 

[Beeblebrox]

Usually, with this sort of thing, you sign NDAs. That would be where trade secret provisions would turn up.

If Apple were only going after leakers of actual code, that would be one thing. But they're going after websites, journalists, leakers, and anyone doing anything not sanctioned by Apple.

Obviously Apple wants to stop the flow of unauthorized information, but as someone else pointed out, there are good ways to do that and bad. A rash of lawsuits blanketing the internet is the bad way. Taking better care of who you do or do not allow access to that information and dealing with them internally is the good way.

I work in the movie business, and we run into this sort of thing all the time. It's a real problem in fact. The worst things studios can do (and have done in the past) is sue fan sites for posting leaked information. The wise thing to do is control that information yourself by giving fans enough to keep them satisfied while going after unauthorized leakers. That's going to become a much more common way of dealing with the internet and fans for movie studios, like they're going with Superman and King Kong.

 

[Mechcozmo]

That guy is lucky Apple didn't prosecute him until he was spent completely. I mean, he did break his NDA pretty much completely. It is one thing to talk about Tiger and tell us about how well its coming along. ("Yes, Spotlight is faster now." "No, Automator doesn't work with 3rd party applications yet." etc.) It is another thing to give us Tiger to see for ourselves. By being able to see what those features are, and also being able to get the benefits of writing code (Widgets, Applications) for Tiger without paying for the added benefits of Tiger is wrong. It breaks the NDA and is also piracy.

Steve Jobs is a lot different now vs. when he was in college. And I bet that he didn't have the final say-- a board of directors did. And while Jobs might have suggested they go easy on this guy (perhaps remembering his phreaking days?) Jobs wasn't the sole decider in this case.

 

[gwangung]

If Apple were only going after leakers of actual code, that would be one thing. But they're going after websites, journalists, leakers, and anyone doing anything not sanctioned by Apple.

You're mixing a wide variety of actions and conflating them as one action.

I'm just pointing out that in this incidence, there's a whole lot of trade secret like stuff involved here, unlike the original assertion.

 

[Beeblebrox]

Steve Jobs is a lot different now vs. when he was in college.

No argument there.

And I bet that he didn't have the final say-- a board of directors did. And while Jobs might have suggested they go easy on this guy (perhaps remembering his phreaking days?) Jobs wasn't the sole decider in this case.

In other words, Jobs gets all the credit for everything good, and no blame for anything bad.

 

[Beeblebrox]

You're mixing a wide variety of actions and conflating them as one action.

I'm saying this one action is part of a trend of actions, many of them litigious and all of them aimed at controlling information about Apple. It's like criticizing M$ for a trend of anti-competitive practices when only one a small portion of what they've done is actually illegal. It's still all part of strategy on Apple's part and it's deservedly criticized.

 

[~loserman~]

Apple was good about the 'settle' part, but I makes one wonder why they didn't 'prosecute to the fullest extent of the law' - this is their new operating system.

Well lets think about it a minute.
No one can benifit from the knowledge of OS X from a trade secret/competetive advantage standpoint becase OS X is for a large part open Source.
Apple will release a very large portion of the code base under APL within 10 days of Tigers release.
There is no competitor of OS X because it is the only OS sold on Macs. It is also given away for free to all machine purchases.
So Apple really cant claim that they are being hurt by the info.
Even if one considers Microsoft as a competitor guess what they are not. Microsoft is one of the largest if not the largest developer of Apps for OS X and they get access to all of the seeds of OS X.

The only thing left for Apple to gripe about is the guys who are breaking their NDAs. So I can easily see why this was settled.

 

[Mechcozmo]

In other words, Jobs gets all the credit for everything good, and no blame for anything bad.

If you want to look at it that way. You can blame Jobs for the Cube or you can blame whoever decided to market that product or designed it without any PCI slots, etc.

 

[StarbucksSam]

I am DYING to know what this "sum" is. It can't be THAT much if these people could afford to pay it....

 

[gwangung]

I'm saying this one action is part of a trend of actions, many of them litigious and all of them aimed at controlling information about Apple. It's like criticizing M$ for a trend of anti-competitive practices when only one a small portion of what they've done is actually illegal. It's still all part of strategy on Apple's part and it's deservedly criticized.

This is deserved criticism only if you believe that it is wrong for Apple to control certain classes of information about itself.

I don't accept that as a valid criticism, particularly when you conflate several categories of information and treat them the same. Nor do I accept the parallel with Microsoft as I do not consider it valid to criticize them for legal behavior.

 

[sacear]

Um, didn't Steve Jobs used to sell a device that let people steal long distance phone calls? Imagine if those companies had done to him what he's now doing to these people. And that was worse since Jobs was actually profiting from his illegal activity. What if someone were to do that to Apple today?

That was not Steve Jobs, that was Steve Wozniak, who made the "blue box" device as an experiment in college, there is no record or proof that he sold them, that seems to be a myth, Woz actually denies ever selling them. Jobs knew about Woz's experiment and convinced him to design and build a computer processor for him to sell. The two Steves never sold that "blue box" as a retail marketed product. Steve Jobs didn't care about the "blue box," he wanted to make a computer to outsell Acorn and Atari.

Here is a quote from Wozniak taken from his website...

We had fun doing that in the dorms. But don't be stupid and try to make a blue box today. It's much easier to make or program, but you're nearly guaranteed to get caught right away in most places. I experimented with it in 1972 but even then I paid for my own calls. I only used the blue box to see how many things I could do.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." -- Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan