From Steve Jobs' Biography: "I'm going to destroy Android"

[gatearray]

Google took Apple's work, modified Android to mimic it, then gave it away for free to commodity Asian handset makers to bludgeon Apple with. Yeah, Steve had every right to be pissed.

Thanks Google. You're a real American dream.

Well said, you're absolutely right.

And to all the Android faithful out there, forget about respecting a brilliant American original like Steve Jobs— just keep pouting and kneel before your chosen masters, the worm Eric Schmidt, the fraud Andy Rubin, and whatever the **** Samsung's chairman's name is.

 

[something3153]

how long before google/android copy Siri? I think they already started working on it.

What are you going to count as a "copy" of Siri? Because Siri wasn't the first voice recognition program by a long shot. It may be the most advanced at the moment (I honestly don't know, or care), but that doesn't mean Apple owns voice recognition now, or voice recognition on phones, or advanced voice recognition, or anything else past their implementation. At all. And future voice recognition isn't just a ripoff of Siri, no matter how much you claim it is.

 

[shikari89]

Ahaha Steve was so awesome. Maybe this dream will come true someday.

 

[unlinked]

"Android" is a generic term originating from the Greek term for "man-like", and was popularised nearly 200 years ago in fiction.

George Lucas owns the trademark to Droid, which Motorola pays royalties to use.

I love how this gets down voted. I guess facts and fanboys don't mix.

 

[something3153]

Google took Apple's work, modified Android to mimic it, then gave it away for free to commodity Asian handset makers to bludgeon Apple with. Yeah, Steve had every right to be pissed.

Thanks Google. You're a real American dream.

As opposed to those American-built iPhones?

 

[guch20]

And? Do you think the first company to use a color screen on a phone owns the concept? Or a phone that also plays music? Or anything else? No. Take your misaimed self-righteous indignation and sit back down. And don't throw "willfully ignorant" around so freely. It might just come back to bite you.

Wow. So you asked me to give you specifics, and when I do, you hide in a corner and say "Well, the creator of the color-screen phone doesn't own the concept."

What a pathetic argument. I'm talking about the design of a phone operating system from the bottom up and how it was completely different from anything that came before it (which is just a simple matter of fact) and you're throwing around crap like "color screens"?

I only discuss things with people who have actual points to make.

Have fun out there in la-la land, dracula.

 

[WeegieMac]

...Apple stole from Xerox...

Wrong.

Xerox had patents, but they had no idea how to use them. Jobs had the vision to see the mouse as GUI as the future of home computing, and Xerox received a substantial amount of Apple shares in return for some of Xerox patents.

Android came about through, basically, a mole sitting on the Apple board hoovering up ideas from a product, not just a patent with no roadmap.

Apple, well Jobs, seen a patent at Xerox which no-one at the company had any plans for, and Jobs moved to secure those patents to utilise them. Xerox had no plans to make an OS based on a mouse & GUI, they had no idea what they were sitting on was the future of computing, yet Jobs had the idea and vision that the mouse & GUI was the way forward.

 

[estockme]

edit-looking back at the thread i see some points...

Let's see...

Why don't we start with...

The whole damn OS???

square icons? side scrolling to compensate for the telephone-shaped screen? the fact there is a telephone attached to it?

android started as a linux community project and google bought it. the fundamental differences so far as i can see were widgets, the app drawer and the notification dropdown--these are the things that everyday users would notice. Google encouraged adoption by making it free. there are myriad differences in performance compared to even the best devices... sorry, but i just don't see it.

 

[mikeru]

how long before google/android copy Siri? I think they already started working on it.

It's called Voice Actions, and it's been available since before Apple bought Siri.
Neverhteless they probably suck.

 

[jmpnop]

Sure, Google might have borrowed some of Apple's idea, but the overall result was a net gain for all of us.

Competition is good. It breeds more innovation. When your competitor includes a new feature that people love, you're spurred to add it too. Look at the new iOS 5 notification panel. That's basically borrowed near-wholesale from Android!

If Android did not exist, we'd probably still be stuck with those horribly useless modal notification dialogs.

Apple has done wonderful things for the mobile device industry, but so has Google. If competition didn't exist, we'd probably be at least a couple years behind. What motive does a company have to improve their products when they have nearly 100% of the market?

For example, take a look at Microsoft in the early 00s and the way Windows XP stagnated.

It is not called competition when Google copies iOS and on top of it make it open-source. Even though I don't like Microsoft, I appreciate them for making an original product that is on par with iOS. Thats the reason why Steve is pissed only with Android and not webOS or Windows Phone 7.

 

[LagunaSol]

What I'd like to see is Apple roll out its own search service that becomes the default on iOS devices. Instant 50%+ share of the all-important mobile search market (yes, Fandroids, we're counting the iPad and iPod Touch here). Heck, if Microsoft can create Bing, anyone can do it.

It's odd that Google keeps raiding Apple's refrigerator but Apple hasn't kicked Google out of the house.

 

[Jerome Morrow]

What are you going to count as a "copy" of Siri? Because Siri wasn't the first voice recognition program by a long shot. It may be the most advanced at the moment (I honestly don't know, or care), but that doesn't mean Apple owns voice recognition now, or voice recognition on phones, or advanced voice recognition, or anything else past their implementation. At all. And future voice recognition isn't just a ripoff of Siri, no matter how much you claim it is.

Obviously not, but it's not the first time when Apple brings some old/already known tech and shows how it really should work suddenly you hear shouting from behind the tree line that it's not new and Apple doesn't own anything and so on and so on.

 

[Danny Mac]

Something tells me this goes all the way back to him feeling Bill Gates stole his OS idea and created Windows. Steve was probably tired of people ripping off his game changing ideas for massive profits.

 

[zorinlynx]

And there it is, right on schedule.

Hey, nothing wrong with ripping off someone else's work because competition is good, right?



Yes, competition is indeed good (it goes without saying - though everyone seems to want to say it a lot). What is not good is relying on your competition to create your competitive products for you.

(I voted your post up, because disagreeing with someone is a bad reason to vote someone down. BOO to whoever voted you down)

ALL companies do this. This is just the way business is done. Good ideas are good ideas, and one shouldn't have a monopoly on them.

Look at iCloud, for instance. This is an area where Google is the pioneer. Android phones were syncing transparently with Google services for a long time while the iPhone had to still manually sync with the user's PC to keep contacts, calendar entries and the like on both devices.

Then iCloud came along and now Apple users have a native solution to do what Android users have been doing for years.

It goes both ways. Both companies benefit, and us users benefit even more, as we can choose the best device that meets our needs. I'm an Apple user myself, but have many Android-using friends. We're all happy with our toys. And judging from the billions Apple AND Google are making, they should be happy too.

 

[guch20]

square icons? side scrolling to compensate for the telephone-shaped screen? the fact there is a telephone attached to it?

android started as a linux community project and google bought it. the fundamental differences so far as i can see were widgets, the app drawer and the notification dropdown--these are the things that everyday users would notice. Google encouraged adoption by making it free. there are myriad differences in performance compared to even the best devices... sorry, but i just don't see it.

Some folks will never see it, even when it's put right in their face.

It's been covered in detail in so many different places (this thread included), and I really don't want to get into it with someone such as yourself who honestly seems to believe this has anything to do with freaking square icons.

I don't argue with people who insist on putting up straw men.

 

[zorinlynx]

It is not called competition when Google copies iOS and on top of it make it open-source. Even though I don't like Microsoft, I appreciate them for making an original product that is on par with iOS. Thats the reason why Steve is pissed only with Android and not webOS or Windows Phone 7.

Umm, Android has very little in common with iOS. There's some UI mechanics that are similar, such as flick to scroll and pinch to zoom, but the overall OS is massively different.

Windows phone 7 "stole" no less from Apple than Google did.

 

[swingerofbirch]

Apple didn't invent multitouch; Apple bought multi-touch patents, but actually said in its marketing it had invented multi-touch. Remember all those cool Fingerworks demos before the iPhone ever came out? Those were from Fingerworks, which Apple bought. When the first Android phones came out multi-touch was disabled at the kernel level, likely to avoid upsetting Apple, which owned the patents. When Steve Jobs said he didn't want Google's money, he wanted them to stop stealing ideas, he was saying he wasn't going to license to Google technology that Apple had bought. Apple bought intellectual property and didn't want to license it to retain a competitive advantage. Apple bought Fingerworks around the same time Google bought Android. Google's aim was to get search on every phone, Apple's was to create a new type of phone/tablet.

Legally, you could say Google stole Apple's ideas, but that's working on the premise that you can "own" an idea that isn't actually your idea. I would say it's true to an extent, but that the reality is more complicated. I would also say that the more inside stories come out about Apple and Steve Jobs, the more you see a culture of poor mental health. I'll probably be attacked for that, but it's probably a requirement to be extremely successful in a way that the world remembers you. By definition mental illness is defined in terms of deviations from normalcy, and you would need to be somewhat anomalous to be as driven, callous, and materially successful as Steve Jobs. So I don't see it as an attack--more a different way of saying what people have already said about him. He was lucky—those traits can easily destroy a person's happiness.

 

[LagunaSol]

As opposed to those American-built iPhones?

Apple is an American company, FYI. Samsung, HTC, LG, etc...not so much.

Apple is generating American profits, while Google fuels the Korean economy so it can pimp its users for advertising. Nice work Serge and Larry.

 

[mikeru]

It is not called competition when Google copies iOS and on top of it make it open-source. Even though I don't like Microsoft, I appreciate them for making an original product that is on par with iOS. Thats the reason why Steve is pissed only with Android and not webOS or Windows Phone 7.

...open source hatred?

 

[something3153]

Wow. So you asked me to give you specifics, and when I do, you hide in a corner and say "Well, the creator of the color-screen phone doesn't own the concept."

What a pathetic argument. I'm talking about the design of a phone operating system from the bottom up and how it was completely different from anything that came before it (which is just a simple matter of fact) and you're throwing around crap like "color screens"?

I only discuss things with people who have actual points to make.

Have fun out there in la-la land, dracula.

Yup, I asked for specifics that were stolen. You gave me a technology that Apple used, and other companies used, because they bought from the same suppliers. I suppose this means Apple copied HP and Dell when they switched to Intel CPUs, since they were the last to jump on that wagon. You utterly failed to actually demonstrate anything that was stolen from iOS. At all. They used a particular type of screen. What makes a capacitive touchscreen different from a color screen? They're both technologies. Some company used them first. That doesn't mean that company owns the idea.

You do not have a point, or a case. I know this is hard to accept. Find me a unique idea - not someone else's technology, not an extension of the desktop, but a completely new idea - that's in iOS that is in Android, and you might have a case. I haven't heard one yet, from anyone.

And uh, dracula? Where'd that come from?

 

[ectlu93]

I will be reading this book on my iPad faster than a kid getting his hands on the latest Harry Potter installment.

 

[badapple18]

Notifacation

Funny how nobody has mentioned how apple stole the Android notification drop down menu which was from day one better than the iPhones notification "system" if you could call it that

 

[dscuber9000]

Android before iPhone:

Yeah, I'd say the iPhone influenced them.

 

[KPOM]

Something tells me this goes all the way back to him feeling Bill Gates stole his OS idea and created Windows. Steve was probably tired of people ripping off his game changing ideas for massive profits.

Exactly. IIRC, it was one of John Sculley's moves to give Microsoft a carte blanche license in exchange for writing the first versions of Word and Excel. If he saw Google taking advantage of their board representation to copy one of Apple's signature products (at least as far as he was concerned) I could see him being that passionate about it.

 

[kenypowa]

The 4S has nothing to do with beating Android.

iOS5 merely copied Android's notification system.