FOSS Patents: Two more lawsuits against Lodsys
Great reporting by Florian Müller on the ongoing Lodsys-Patent-Trolling-Case.
This is my favourite part of the post:
OpinionLab is the first company to sue Lodsys not only under patent law but to additionally make demands under rules against unfair competition and tortious interference.
Those additional allegations are tough, and beyond a merely declaratory judgment, OpinionLab seeks injunctive and monetary relief. In other words, they bring claims that pose a significant economic risk to Lodsys.
I’m looking forward to see this patent troll have his ass handed to him.
(via Instapaper)
They just don't get it. Part infinity.
Aaron Holesgrove of Business Week wrote a response to one of John Gruber’s articles, with the title “Why Windows 8 is NOT fundamentally flawed as a response to the iPad”.
I thought about taking his piece apart point by point, but I decided against it. The sheer number of things Mr. Holes grove doesn’t understand about the way the iPad works and what makes it successful is mind-boggling. Yet he thinks he knows what consumers want and it’s clearly not a device like the iPad. Go read his article, I’ve been chuckling and shaking my head all the way through.
(via Instapaper)
Interesting new features in Lion
I’ve been going through the complete feature list for OS X Lion, Apple posted.
Apart from the “big” features that were announced during the Keynote, like Auto Save, Versions, Launchpad and Mission Control, there are a few features I believe will benefit many users:
- FileVault 2: Apple has rewritten this part of the OS, now providing full disk encryption for internal and external drives, with supposedly minor performance drawbacks.
- Finder: Either you like or you dislike the Finder, but contrary to what some people might say, Apple does continue to improve it. Interesting new features include;
- search tokens, a new way to approach filtering in searches
- merging two folders with the same name into one
- the ability to create a folder from files selected
- (big one) non-destructive copying and pasting, which means that if a user copies or pastes a file into a folder that already contains a file with the same name, you’re going to have the option to keep both files; until now, the file inside the folder was simply overwritten.
- iCal: The neatest new feature is the ability to add new events in regular language, although I’m curious how fast they can localise this feature. Other things worth mentioning is a heat map, which shows a measure of the users availability throughout the day and a year view.
- Internet Restore and Utilities: Lion will add a recovery partition to the Mac, which will provide the option restore the system without the need for optical media. Recovery mode also includes Safari, so users can browse
Twitter while waitingsupport sites. - Networking: Lion will provide a low power wake option, wherein a Mac can wake up for backups or file sharing actions without activating USB devices or the monitor. Here’s me hoping this will somehow work for iTunes Home Sharing requests from an iPad or iPhone.
- Text: This might not be interesting for most users, but a character picker, which allows quick entry of accented characters and improved auto correction will undoubtedly come in handy. I‘m also happy about the improved Chinese input method and improved simplified Chinese handwriting recognition.
- Other Features: Resizing windows from any edge will be possible — to which I can only say: Fucking finally! — and scrollbars will now only appear when needed.
It’s definitely worth going through the entire list, as there are a lot of changes and improvements in this next iteration of OS X.
Boom — The Angry Drunk
Darby Lines on Apple’s letter to patent troll Lodsys.
His analysis is spot-on and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens next.
Every 'Mac vs. PC' Ad in chronological order
Adweek has put together a blog post, showing each and every one of Apple’s “Mac vs. PC” ads in chronological order.
via TUAW
Daring Fireball: Wolf!
Debunking FUD one year at a time, without writing more than one word yourself. Impressive.
Why does Apple hate…
The following are real Google results for “Why does Apple hate”. They’re all blog or forum posts.
- Why does Apple hate Flash?
- Why does Apple hate its customers?
- Why does Apple hate the earth?
- Why does Apple hate Brooklyn?
- Why does Apple hate Apple TV?
- Why does Apple hate Canada?
- Why does Apple hate the Middle East?
- Why does Apple hate HDMI?
- Why does Apple hate numbers?
- Why does Apple hate me?
Because you touch yourself at night, that’s why.
Apple Juice dried for your sins.
Over the last few days Jim Dalrymple of The Loop has written a few pieces on the rather strange things RIM’s two co-CEOs said in interviews (articles 1, 2 & 3).
All of the things Mr. Dalrymple wrote were accurate — albeit a bit tongue-in-cheek — yet in the comments of each post there was a rabid RIM supporter — of the trollish kind — feeling the need to bash Apple, the iPad in particular and praise RIM’s soon to be released iPad competitor to high heavens.
What these close to fanatic RIM fans don’t understand is, the iPad desperately needs an actual competitor, because even a company like Apple can become complacent. Nothing spurs innovation like healthy competition.
By all means, I want the PlayBook to be good (and HP’s tablet, too), I want it to be all the things that RIM has been promising customers for months.
Open or closed, what’s better Android or iOS?
Great discussion between Jim Dalrymple and one of his friends.
Be sure to check out the comments, there are some great arguments being made down there.
'Real Racing 2 HD' will get 1080p Video output
This is some seriously interesting stuff:
Real Racing 2 HD by Firemint will get full 1080p video output in the near future. Attach the iPad 2 to your Full HD TV will give you borderless, 30 fps racing fun.
Be sure to check out the video on touchArcade, just follow the link in the title.
Ad-companies angered by mobile Safari's default blocking of third party cookies
From the original article at MediaPost:
All browsers can present challenges for advertisers, but Apple’s focus on consumer privacy limits the viability of third-party cookie-based tracking systems.
[Emphasis by me.]
Another example where Apple regards consumers to be their customers, not cellular carriers, not advertisers, not publishers.
Some can’t handle the truth.
The first working tablet on RIM property
Jim Dalrymple of loopinsight.com visited RIM’s east coast offices, hoping to be able to compare the iPad 2 to the elusive RIM PlayBook.
Podcast recommendation: On Apple and rumours
Joshua Schnell recently spoke to Jim Dalrymple and Stephen Hackett about dealing with rumours about Apple and technology in general, the process of deciding what to post on their blogs and journalistic quality in a business that often relies on pages views and ad revenue.
A very insightful discussion on the insanity that is the Apple/tech sphere that I can wholeheartedly recommend.
———
I’ve completely stopped reading sites like Gizmodo, Apple Insider, MacRumours and the likes, simply because they provide nothing of value anymore; they just spew unsubstantiated bits of information at their readers.
On the other hand I really enjoy reading both macgasm and The Loop, because they provide well filtered and well written content on topics that I’m interested in. Sites like the aforementioned are a refreshing change from the incessant chatter that surrounds Apple.
A few of the other sites that I enjoy for the same reasons are asymco.com, daringfireball.net, arstechnica.com, Macworld, and The Macalope.
Oh and no one should go out of the house without the current episode of Angry Mac Bastards on their iPhone/iPod, because they cut through the bullshit like a hot bat’leth through butter.
