Steve Jobs vowed to 'destroy' Android
BBC News
21 October 2011 Last updated at 09:40 GMT

Steve Jobs said he wanted to destroy Android and would spend all of Apple's money and his dying breath if that is what it took to do so.
The full extent of his animosity towards Google's mobile operating system is revealed in a forthcoming authorised biography.
Mr Jobs told author Walter Isaacson that he viewed Android's similarity to iOS as "grand theft".

Apple is suing several smartphone makers which use the Android software.
According to extracts of Mr Isaacson's book, obtained by the Associated Press, Mr Jobs said: "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
He is also quoted as saying: "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong." At that time, Google's chief executive, now chairman, Eric Schmidt also sat on the board of Apple.

However, relations began to sour when Google unveiled Android in November 2007, 10 months after the iPhone first appeared.
In subsequent years Apple rejected a number of Google programs from its App store, forcing the company to create less-integrated web app versions.
Android has subsequently enjoyed rapid adoption and now accounts for around 48% of global smartphone shipments, compared to 19% for Apple.
But its growth has not gone uncontested. Apple has waged an aggressive proxy-war against Android, suing a number of the hardware manufacturers which have adopted it for their tablets and smartphones.
Motorola was one of the first to be targeted, although it is Samsung that has borne the brunt of Mr Jobs' ire.

The South Korean firm is currently banned from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and Germany because of a combination of patent infringements and "look and feel" similarities. A smartphone ban is also pending in the Netherlands.

Samsung is counter-suing Apple for infringing, it claims, several wireless technology patents which it holds the rights to.
Defence mechanism
Patents blogger Florian Mueller, who has been following the court cases closely, said Apple would be conscious of its past, where other companies exploited some of its early ideas.

"If Apple doesn't want the iPhone and iPad to be marginalized the way it happened to the Macintosh at the hands of the Wintel duopoly, it has to use the full force of its intellectual property to fend off the commoditization threat that Android represents," he told BBC News.

Mr Mueller - who has previously undertaken consulting work commissioned by Microsoft - was also critical of Eric Schmidt's dual role at the time: "The fact that Eric Schmidt stayed on Apple's board while he was preparing an iOS clone was an inexcusable betrayal of Steve Jobs' trust."
Mr Schmidt resigned from the Apple board in August 2009. He was later quoted by Bloomberg as saying: "I was on the board until I couldn't stay on the board anymore."

Source

Hell Castro,

He was an inspirational man, who loved fluffy kittens and saved the world with the iPad 2...
Surely he wouldn't be that nasty ....

And he never surely would have borrowed ideas from XEROX/PARK, either, as he was too upstanding!

Tom

D'ya think that someone might be trying to sell their new book based on some controversial hype? It would be in any CEO's interest to take out the competition; I'm not seeing the scandal here.

A lot of the things coming out the book show Steve Jobs in a bad light...they seem to be highlighting his arrogant side.

Maybe he forget this famous interview



As he said "good artists copy and great artists steal". Apple were less the inventers but a company that could take ideas from other people and wrap them up and sell them well. They refined other people's creations and put them in a "pretty package". The are very good at selling a brand and associated it with a sense of worth.

If this an example of the Steve Jobs that will come out in the book, will it lead people to reassess him ?

Have fun

Martin

Well, I must say you are pretty blind then - there was a major shift in "attitude" in the IT industry lately and it was started by Apple:
- Before, everyone kind of agreed that while a lot of companies had old patents on things ranging from "clickable software button" to pretty much any web thing no matter how banal it would be plain stupid to sue each other for it.
- Now, all major players start to buy huge old packs of patents from the "old tech" companies like Motorola or Lucent with no other reason than to sue each other and try to block products in legal battles. They spend BILLIONS on some patents that will not get them anything else than the chance to throw sticks between the legs of their competitors.

Frankly: I always admired silicon valley for one reasons - the approach to outsmart the competition and always come up with something new. The large four players now have decided to throw this quality overboard and instead behave like old industry giants. If they spent their money on useless patents and legal battles instead of innovation... well, for me this only means that Asia will be taking over the tech lead quicker than expected. I'd put my money on Samsung in the long run.

For those who haven't read this: The most insightfull article I read in months:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/...?partner=gnews

Interesting read indeed. I can hardly wait for these 4 companies to come up with more advanced functions such as automatic CV/diary-generation, personality models etc. based on all the personal data they have harvested from unsuspecting users. That will save people (and companies) considerable time when engaging with individuals for the first time. Who would want to endure the lengthy and unnecessary procedures of "getting to know someone" through conventional communication and social interactions when automatic profiles are available for a few $$ or Facebook credits?

Of course, Xerox/PARC did get compensated for that, and it was done with their knowledge and cooperation, so it does sound more like the idea was bought and paid for rather than "borrowed"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)

Well, but you know: I had touch screen smart phones for years before the iPhone - HTCs running Windows Mobile 3.1 and earlier (real crap) and Sony Ericssons on Symbian. Except of the Visual Voicemail did the iPhone not offer anything new - it simply made the same stuff work that was a pain on my HTC.

And there you go: Did you recognize that Apple only sues Samsung? Why not HTC? Why not SonyEricsson? Cause they damn sure know that SonyEriccson has plenty of patents from Ericsson themselves that they could suddenly start to enforce. Because Ericsson actually DID invent a huge part of how modern phones work. And I am not talking about the way you arrange the button on the screen.

So in short: Apple did not invent the phone. They did not invent the touch screen either. They did not invent the mp3 player. They did not invent the graphical user interface. What they are extremly good at is to make a good user experience out of it - my pre-ipod Samsung mp3 player was crap, so was my "not-so-smart" phone. Their stuff works. But claiming that they invented the world and start using their huge cash stack to sue everyone is very very destructive. I am sure this will back fire sooner or later.

it's a good strategy by apple. they are very profitable, they can easily sue others and eat up the profitability of other phone companies sending them to a loss making position while suffering only a slight margin hit to their own P&L.

Yep. Touch-Screen. I have one in my car-satnav, too.
It's a pain to use.
But what Apple productized was capacitive touchscreen-technology capable of interpreting multiple touches at once ("multi-touch").

And Apple's touchscreen was measured to be more reliable and precise than any of its followers for years.

Patent disputes have been common for years in this industry - but what makes Apple's lawsuits special is that - at least under Steve Jobs - there was no interest to settle. None at all.
He even spelled it out to Eric Schmidt ("I don't want your money. If you offer me 5 billion, I don't want it").

Previous lawsuits were more of the "assured mutual destruction" type, where a cross-licensing of patents was really the goal.
Not Apple. They don't want to license. They will pay for things they use (MP4/H264), buy up the patent-owning companies (Fingerworks, the firm that invented multi-touch) but they will not license some of their technology.

Apple (or Steve Jobs) must have been very certain that they posses some key patents that could make them win in court - or force a very unfavorable out-of-court settlement for the other parties involved.
("And boy have we patented it")

I will give it to Eric Schmidt that he actually enjoyed being on Apple's board, and that because it is really a great honor, didn't want to step down.
But once Google was planning to build Android and the Nexus One, he should have stepped down ASAP. I don't think he would be happy to have Steve Balmer on Google's board, either....
I think that is what upset Steve Jobs the most: the personal betrayal. He was, after all, a mentor to the "Google-brothers" Brin & Page.
Money is relative, losses can be written off - but trust is priceless.
We will see how Google will be able to handle this.

Wow, if this is all the scandal they can dig up on Jobs, I cannot wait until Ellison croaks and there's a big tell-all bio about him. I'll have to stock up on my schadenfreude popcorn stash. Ellison makes Jobs look like an amateur.

So the pull down menu in ios5 is completely unique

http://blogs.computerworld.com/19143...e_dropped_acid

Steve Jobs -- Bill Gates is "unimaginative," "fundamentally odd," and should have dropped acid

Hmmm..I'm not sure I like his book being published without jobs around to defend himself

or they can just try to delay and ban competitor products. don't forget that smartphones are still emerging platforms. ipad owns the tablet market right now and iphone is very strong.

by delaying competitor products, apple can build/maintain a lead in developers/mindshare to lock out competing platforms. if they lock out competitors in the crucial xmas period, then that would be a major win for apple, even if their patents don't stand up in the end.

But that's exactly the point! Up to now, Apple simply made the better products. I for one bought them... and am typing on a Mac right now. What I want them to do is making more of the cool stuff in the future. But if the company is busy developing destructive strategies against Google - they will simply have less output. They will already miss Steve Jobs dictator approach on leading...

And again: I admit that their touch screen technology is cool. But honestly: Any idea how many patents a simple call over a 3G network touches? Apple has none of them - they were made by Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola... wait? Motorola? Didn't Google buy their patents? Uh, oh... and that's where we are heading: Instead of trying to make the best phone out there, the companies will spend their energy in the courtrooms. And that's nothing but a shame.

I don't argue that inventors should get a decent share if another company uses their technology - but using patents to fight off competitors in this way is simply destructive and will be bad for the innovation industry IT is today.

The Apple of past times is no longer the Apple of today.
Back then, they could afford to being copied left and right - they could just charge their primary customer base more.

It does not work this way anymore.
And as you might have noticed, it's not easy coming up with a new, revolutionary product every other year.

Also, there is speculation that the patents Motorola brought to Google are not that "strong".

I agree that the notion of going into a law-suit to actually win it (as opposed to being out for a settlement) is a bit unusual.
But that seems to be what Apple has chosen to do - if it is a wise thing, that remains to be seen. I'm led to believe that Apple has quite a tight case. Steve Jobs was not delusional. He probably anticipated this situation.

But if the other companies are as innovative as they like to make us believe, they will just have to come-up with a different, groundbreaking product. Currently, I don't really see that. They might offer more features, but features don't make a product.
That is what Apple understood and what so few people in that industry seem to be unable to grasp, despite Apple demonstrating it to them every time they launch a new product.

Sorry, but it works exactly this way today - I recently got myself a new phone contract. Going for the iPhone vs. a good Android model would have cost me 400 SGD more upfront and then 20 each month for two years. That's a premium of nearly 600 CHF! For a phone. Not a premium to have a smartphone with a data contract, but a premium from one smartphone to the Apple one.

Yes, I went for an Android. I loved my iPhone before, but not that much. However, from what I can see does Apple have way more than 30% market share here. And the difference is that they will actually make a profit out of every phone (as the article describes).

I used to work at the device marketing department of a Swiss operator. I for one did not expect an iPhone 5, I expected an upgraded 4. It makes sense - not for the users, but for Apple... they could have come up with more today, but they don't need to - people have two year contracts anyway.
So you better keep the new features for the next generation next year and "wow" people into buying a new Apple product once their contract runs out. Easy.

I'd guess so as well. Ever had a Moto? The last one I bought was in 1997. After that were they never really competitive anymore (except of the Razr, which for once was a cool product). Their phones were overall pretty much crap and their networks not much better - that's why the company didn't really perform as well as for example Apple did.


Features are just one aspect, but so is price. If you can make a similar, well working user experience for half the price - then you are actually innovative as well. Innovation can come in many ways - just as Aldi was innovative when they came up with the hard-discounter concept. So not every innovation looks as cool as Apple, but that's what they are famous for, no?

So as I described above that I switched to Android recently, I'll give you an example for innovation that nobody talks about cause Google doesn't have a Steve Jobs:

Google Goggles
http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text

In short: You take a photo with your phone and the app analyzes it. If it finds some bar code, it will decode it for you. If it finds some text, it will search the web for the same - or you can directly translate it into your language, if it finds a logo it recognizes, it will get you to the webpage.

This might sound banal, but I tell you: I live in a country with quite some signs in Chinese - being able to point my phone at them and the phone automatically translates them for me is VERY innovative for me - more so than any siri.

No wonder he got cancer and died young with that attitude

sorry but WTF!!