Interoperability, choice and competition is good.
Anything is good when you are not the one to have to pay for it.
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iPad Accessory Integration Becomes the EU's Next Regulatory Feud With Apple
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Anything is good when you are not the one to have to pay for it.
I paid for the pencil I'm using.
And I have no reason to doubt that its manufacturer paid their supplier when sourcing components.
If you want to live in a world where every manufacturer of a computing accessory (or software) has to pay commissions, royalties and fees to work with another primary/base product feel free to purchase first-party accessories.
But I won't accept companies going out of their to shut out competition by purposely making their products incompatible and locked down for no other reason just to cash in on them, charge inflated prices and deter or lock out competition.
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So are you endorsing pirating and stealing and not respecting intellectual properties? The ideal world you want to live in is any random guy could take your idea, use the technology you invented without permission, and out-price you because they don't have to do the R&D themselves and makes your business go bankrupt? Is this the idea what you are proud of?
The GOOJODOQ pencil you are using is doing exactly that. The protocol they are using is the exact one Apple licensed to Logitech to use on the crayon, and that pencil is not licensed by ethier Apple nor Logitech otherwise they will say that.
Competition is good, compete by stealing technology of others is not. And from all your previous posts, you are keep endorsing intellectual properties stealing which I think is not Okay.
And did the company you purchased that stylus from also pay for the R&D that went into designing said product, or are they (going by the name) just some Chinese OEM who copied the design from the original company who came up with said product, or (just as likely) simply licensed it from a white-label OEM (who similarly copied it from the OG) and then passed it off has his own original creation to resell online?
It doesn't even have to be Apple. I recall reading an article many years back about a guy who put up a kickstarter about a phone case with a built-in extension grip, and his idea had already been copied by the Chinese even before it was over. Before he knew it, his idea had already been put into production and sold online for way cheaper than what he was original charging.
If your idea of competition and choice just means seeing the business landscape being littered with hundreds of clones of the same product, with the only differentiator being who can undercut whom more, then yeah, I see your point. I paid over $100 for my Apple Pencil, and when I misplaced mine and had to buy a replacement, my heart ached at the thought of having to pay that much money a second time.
Give me the option between paying $179 for an Apple Pencil (in my local currency) vs paying $20 for a cheaper alternative on Amazon or Ebay, and of course I would want to save that extra $150 if the latter worked just as well. It would also be an extremely myopic move.
A lot of time and effort went into making the Apple Pencil possible as a product, first by Jony Ive and his team, then the hardware and software engineers who made it possible, and it is this tight integration between hardware and software that allows Apple products to retain their unique selling point and stand out amongst a sea of cheap clones.
Huawei can mimic the look of the Macbook, but they cannot replicate macOS. Xiaomi can copy the design of the iPhone, but they cannot clone iOS. The cheap Apple Pencil likely works (I assume), but I daresay the writing experience won't be as nice as the original. It is this differentiation in software that allows Apple to charge supernormal profits and pump it back into further refining their products, because it's not something the competition can readily copy (unlike plain hardware like a smartphone case). The reason why a product like the Apple Watch Ultra can even exist in the first place is because there isn't a sea of me-too Apple Watch clones depressing the price that Apple can charge for it, unlike Android Wear. It's why we even get nice things from Apple, because Apple knows there is good money to be made from making nice things to sell at a handsome profit to customers.
Which is why I do back to my response to you - it's easy to spout motherhood statements about "Interoperability, choice and competition being good" when you are not the company in question whose employees spent countless hours and countless nights conceptualising said product or crafting said protocol, and then being told that they have to just give it away for free simply because someone else wants to save a few bucks buying a cheap replica online. Lower prices is nice, when you are not the company whose work just got stolen by other companies (or socialised by the government). Choice...they are all probably from the same factory in China anyways.
This new world order that you speak of. I renounce it.
Not at all.
I support fair use and interoperability.
APIs or computer protocols aren't copyrightable.
Making a product interoperable with another is not illegal - it is fair use.
"Reverse engineering is generally legal" (at least in the United States of America).
...and it does not need to be (licensed by them).
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And I don’t. Fair use is socialism.
No it isn’t.
There’s a little thing called the DCMA.
Did Apple?
Active digital pens were a thing long before Apple released their own.
Apple did not come up with the concept of an active digital pen.
Neither do they have a monopoly on white digital pens.
My pencil is clearly distinguishable from Apple's - it's not a clone.
Digital active pens have been a thing before Apple's.
👉 Apple clearly copied and adopted the concept from someone else.
They could create an OS that's compatible with Mac apps though. Just as companies have been creating apps that will allow running apps made for Microsoft Windows on other operating systems (e.g. WINE).
It works just as well for me.
Actually better than Apple's own first-gen Pencil, since I prefer the lighter weight and weight distribution.
It doesn't support pressure sensitivity though.
And that is how it should be:
👉 Making nice things, making better things should be competitively rewarded. With premium pricing, if the market bears them.
Twisting the world so that only "we" or one company can make nice things and shut out the competition should not be rewarded.
...unless, of course, they genuinely come up with something new that is patentable. The Apple pencil (likely) isn't. Neither are connection protocols or APIs.
Whether you do or don't, it is not "new". Companies have been able to make "compatible" products for decades. Not only in the U.S., but in Europe as well. Whether the primary/base product manufacturer agrees or not.
👉 If anyone is advocating for a "new world order", is is YOU!
A world order where anyone that makes nice things does their utmost to lock consumers in - and customers out. And get's away with it.
Where anyone is prohibited from - or generously "Apple-taxed" - for making products or services that work with something else or someone else's product or service.
In short: A world where everything is monopolised.
And those monopolists extract rent from everyone else.
And I reject that world.
Whatever. The term socialism seems nothing more than a loosely used derogatory term that you've picked from the talking heads on your (likely) American TV.
Off-topic. A pen working with a digital tablet is not "accessing copyrighted work" (also, you really should read about the lawful DMCA exemptions on computer programs for interoperability purposes).
Here we are again at disputing well-known or researchable legal facts - without any source, argument or reasoning.
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API or protocol is not copyrightable, but the implementation is. What you demand is to let apple provide their implementation. This is not fair use. Restricted OS API is also a very common practice. Microsoft Windows also have a lot of internal use APIs and you have to even sign NDA to use such API. I don't think having internal APIs can be illegal, I cannot even imagine that because I am a software engineer, and having internal use API is very, very common because you cannot guarantee API/ABI stability for a lot of APIs and you have to make them internal use only because everyone needs to change the usage very often. We don't break the ones made for public that often because we have to spend our time to make it backwards compatible.
Yes, but if your implementation derived from the reverse engineering has any kind of patent infringement then it is sue-able. Such lawsuit happened multiple times in the history. Including WINE you mentioned.
It is totally legal for you to do your reverse engineering and make a clean roomed new implementation for that protocol. A lot of Apple protocols have being implemented by 3rd party already. The pencil case you are mentioned is not about the idea of a digital pencil, it is the implementation of such pencil. And yes, the Apple pencil implementation including the pressure sensitivity is already patented at least in the U.S. Search for patent number US 9,329,703 B2.
The iPad already works with 3rd party pencils. They just can only do that good without using Apple's patent, and if they have to pay the license their pricing will no longer be as competitive. The thing is that simple.
Third-party manufacturers may not just copy Apple's code (and there's no indication they did in this case).
But the "method or operation" in the physical world - what these pens rely on - isn't copyrightable.
Neither is interfacing with a software program or API.
No. You have to sign NDA if you want Microsoft to support you on doing it.
Interacting or observing an API on your computer is legal and you don't require permission.
Then just told the third party accessory vendors to do this maybe? Just observe what the Apple Pencil does and make one works exactly like that if all of those are legal, and Apple does not need to do anything now.
I’m for voting with your $$$. This is not about health, finances etc. there absolutely should be guardrails on items that affect your health. Crafting very narrow regulations impacting minimal companies mostly American tech is on par with socialism. Just call it what it is.
The exemptions you speak of balance copyright holders with non infringing uses. There are no exemptions that allow for profit companies to reverse engineer and sell the same thing.
The heart of this is the dma is lousy legislation for all the reasons mentioned previously.
I am not saying your stylus copied Apple, but that it likely copied the design and concept from another company who was the originator of that particular design to begin with. You are boasting about how cheap your stylus was, and that's probably why. The very first company to come up with the stylus of said design invested the time and money, then everybody else just copied the design and replicated it without needing to spend a single cent of their own on R&D. Good for them, maybe for you (who gets to save some money), not so much for the parent company whose work got plagiarised.
That's what you are basically advocating. That design isn't worth a cent and the price of an item should only boil down to the raw material costs that went into it.
That's why I also understand why Apple is doing what it does. The only way their products don't get copied by the competition, is if they differentiate it with proprietary software and APIs that aren't available anywhere else. Otherwise, you get the same problem that Android and Windows OEMs face where nobody's really making any profit because it's all one massive race to the bottom.
That's the one unique selling point of the Apple Pencil which allows it to be sold at a profit. Take that away (by insisting that it too be made available to every other OEM out there), and we come back to the same problem all over again.
The socialist european government is very busy making sure we crash hard. So they can get their Great Reset.
Sadly we can not vote them out of power.
So they will continue the attack on all private business
Sadly we can not vote them out of power.
So they will continue the attack on all private business
Please clarify: Who got plagiarised by whom?
Pressure-sensitive, tilt-sensing pens for computing have been a thing since the (at least late) 1990s - almost 20 years before Apple released their pencil. Active, battery-powered pens have been a thing since at least the Compaq Concerto in 2001. Other manufacturers - e.g. Microsoft - are selling battery-powered pens too, that sense tilt and pressure.
So who invented the stuff - and Apple pay license fees to them?
That's not a profit - that's good for consumers.
So is competitive pressure on makers of software or hardware charging premium pricing (as Apple clearly does), that continually drives them to make better, more sophisticated products to differentiate themselves from the competition.
What you're advocating is companies charging rent by locking without innovating, by locking out competition to make themselves the only ones that can make certain products, provide certain services.
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They don't.
When Apple has to provide interoperability, that just opens the door for other, privately-owned companies.
It is a crazy idea that when a product implemented a functionality it has to be made interoperable with all other products doing similar things. People wanting this has no idea on how complicated the engineering behind the scene is and how many extra problems have to be solved. I, as a software engineer, is open to the idea that make our software interoperable with someone else, but you need to compensate me for the time my team and I spent on that. I cannot always do volunteering work. No, it is not as simple as "make this API public and the 3rd party can use it".
And since you bring up other examples, let me show you how Microsoft works on this.
Microsoft did not implement the stylus technology themselves, instead, they are licensed from wacom to use their technology on the Surface product, and you guess what? Even though the Surface is using the Wacom technology, none of the Wacom pencils are compatible with the Surface, and I think that is fine. The software and hardware integration is a very complicated topic and even Wacom cannot ensure the pens are interoperable between their own product lines. Do you want to let your beloved government require Microsoft and Wacom also make their tablets to be compatible with 3rd party and enforce interoperability? Hint: Wacom has an even higher market share for graphing tablets.
It's not when you have a company that has a dominant market in the market.
Easy: Sell your software. Or hardware with it.
If you're enjoying the network benefits of having a dominant and/or gatekeeping market position though, prepare to be subject to regulation - to stop you from abusing your position.
They are interoperable. And Wacom doesn't block developers from writing third-party drivers that make their tablets interoperable with modern operating systems. They're in the business of selling tablets - not going out of their way to make things incompatible and lock out customers or developers.
👉 I can use my 15-year old Wacom with a third-party driver on modern operating systems - instead of discarding it.
Again: interoperability is good for me as a consumer, and it's good for the environment that I can continue to use.
Whereas compatibility is an unholy mess with Apple's offerings.
They don't even support use my five-year or so Apple pencil on my new iPad.
I can hear you guys celebrating that: "But... but... but... how is Apple gonna recuperate all their costly R&D and design, when they can't force customers to make an expensive replacement purchase?"
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PS (1): ...unless, and I found out about this only literally now, the old 1st gen Apple Pencil unofficially works on new iPads. Including hovering.
Apple's just hiding it from you.
While touting the environmental strides they've supposedly made on their new Mac minis.
PS (2): You know what's also funny? My third-party Goojodoq pencil is available on Amazon.com (shipped by Amazon and Prime-eligible) in the US and even has its own advanced settings app available from Apple's App Store.
Seems like some guys on this forum are more mad at it than Apple themselves.
Apple's just hiding it from you.
While touting the environmental strides they've supposedly made on their new Mac minis.
PS (2): You know what's also funny? My third-party Goojodoq pencil is available on Amazon.com (shipped by Amazon and Prime-eligible) in the US and even has its own advanced settings app available from Apple's App Store.
Seems like some guys on this forum are more mad at it than Apple themselves.
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Easy. iPads in the EU will no longer support any pencils. Problem solved.
If I'm a CEO of a company and my product has dominant position in the EU and the regulation will cost my company too much, I will just remove the regulated feature in the EU region. Because: 1. the EU local companies are crap and cannot compete with us 2. all our opponents outside EU will face the same regulation and they have to either raise the price or do the same. The end result: all EU citizens get worse product or more expensive product, harms all customers, which is the direct opposite of what such regulation intended to do.
You don't believe me? The companies are already doing what I said. There is no iPhone mirroring in EU. OLED TVs nerfed HDR capabilities in EU. Tons of AI feature from different companies are unavailable in EU. You can keep be proud of supporting regulations that give you inferior products than the rest of the world. Using regulations to manipulate free market will have not intended consequences and you cannot say they all the consequences are good to customers.
Have fun with your 15 year old tablet, I'm going to enjoy my new and shiny technologies that is not available in the EU.
Wait... you're a CEO of company that is subject to DMA requirements?
No problem. The market will take care of it - one way or another.
Either someone else will offer the functionality (whether from inside or outside the EU), customers/consumers won't care too much about. Or your company will reconsider after a while.
But you were just saying that you were against Apple licensing their technology. Which would seem to be a tidy solution here. Make it so that Apple still gets first dibs on any new features they do release (for example, pressure sensitivity on the Apple Pencil would be available to third parties only a year after it is released for their own styluses, were it a brand new feature), and third party OEMs have the option of paying a small fee to be able to access and incorporate it into their own products.
Perhaps it is indeed time for Apple to rethink their commitment to the EU and the DMA (and see if they can work with the Trump administration in the future to further apply pressure in this regard). That’s the problem with capitulating. It’s never going to stop, and come a certain point, you realise your energies and resources are just better spent elsewhere.
Apple sells iPads for money. These iPads work with pencils.
They can also license iPadOS to other tablet manufacturers if they desire to.
There doesn't need to be a whole string of licensing fees for pencils or pencil technology. Again: Making a product work with another product isn't illegal and doesn't require a license.
Just as your and my internet service providers don't need to "license" or charge Apple commissions for delivering paid content and OS updates through their "pipe".
That's bad for consumers and innovation.
Innovation should rightfully be compensated in competitive markets. But when a company controls a market, there need to be safeguards for healthy competition.
👉 Apple is free to make a better, more precise pencil (or whatever accessory) and sell it at a premium compared to the competition.
They just aren't free to say "Let's use our market power and control of a substantial share of the market for tablet/phone operating systems to lock competitors out and make our accessory the only one working our base product". Not anymore.
Then again, they like to make money above everything else.
And they have a history of complying with local regulation.
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