Has Apple Gone Bad?

Apple Gone Bad

For Apple lovers everywhere, this has been a sad week. Steve Jobs seems intent on moving over to the dark side, and his devotees may soon have to pay for his folly via the enforced consumption of advertising.

Could this be the most invasive, demeaning, anti-utopian and downright horrible piece of cross-platform software technology that anybody’s ever thought of? If you can come up with something more offensive, please go ahead and comment – we’d really love to hear from you. Thing is, what we’re talking about here is so potentially vile it makes Bill Gates’s operating platforms seem like the apotheosis of intuitive design. Heck, even Nat-inspired fifties architecture had a more positive impact on the human condition than what we’re likely to experience if this latest strategic move by Apple Inc. ever comes to fruition.

Yup, you heard right. We’re talking Apple. You know, Steve Jobs, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone; the Silicon Valley-based makers of the coolest technology gadgets the wired world has yet seen. So get what they’ve done: they have filed a patent application for technology that displays advertising on any device that has a screen of some kind, including laptops, PCs, phones, televisions and game players. And it’s not merely passive advertising that the US patent covers, it’s the morbidly Orwellian “enforcement routine” kind. Which means that you’ll have to give an advert your full attention, even answer a question to prove that you’ve understood and consumed it, before you’re allowed to proceed to your chosen destination.

Of course Apple has just under 35,000 employees, and Steve Jobs – Fortune magazine’s “CEO of the decade” – doesn’t ratify everything that comes out of his company, right? Right, but not entirely. Jobs, like all good chief executives, allows only the little decisions to be made without his signature; the big ones he watches closely. His name, unfortunately, is the first listed amongst the five inventors on the abovementioned patent, an ominous sign that enforcement routine cross-platform advertising on Apple products is actually going to happen.

As an aside, this piece has been written on a MacBook 2.1 with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and one gig of memory. It’s a beautiful machine, has seen me through one book and countless articles in the last three years, and has needed rebooting less than ten times. If Jobs goes through with his plans, though, he’s lost a repeat customer.

By Kevin Bloom

Apple was good?

If anyone has seen The Recruit, that technology kind of reminds me of the technology Colin Farrell's character invented at the beginning. If Apple's technology even has the slightest bit of potential to do what that did, it's pretty invasive (whether used only on Apple product users or not).

Well, I'm not an Apple fanboy so I don't think them 'going bad' would break my heart. But a patent application is really just that. The technology may never see the light of day, though I hope if it came out today it would flop hard enough to give Apple whiplash.

I think people are blowing this way out of proportion. What the actual patent allows them to do is ensure that they are the only ones allowed to execute the marketing strategy they wish to employ. By doing this for "all electronics with a screen" they just ensure this patent will cover not only devices they currently use but ones they may start using at a later date.

I very much doubt that Apple would use this type of marketing for something "evil". I see more applications that will be beneficial to both the company and the user. For example; when you get a new ipod it shows an advertisement for how itunes and the itunes store works, then requires you to set up your itunes store account. This not only helps you better use the device, but also ensures Apple that you know about the services available and saves them money on further marketing or technical assistance for that issue. The patent then stops Microsoft from producing the same sort've thing for their Zune and thus helps Apple look more dominant in that market place.

Apple didn't get as successful as they are by making stupid moves and doing things that their customers will completely hate. Even through the recession they have hit record profits.

Sure right now you might find the potential change a hindrance to your use or a way to shove more things down your throat. But if it's implemented properly and it serves a good purpose it will come to just be one more thing Apple devices do better than others and I imagine that's the way Apple sees this going forward.

I won't copy and paste the content as Halyanne did, so you'll have to actually click to see what El Reg has to say on the subject:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11...ple_ad_patent/

Heh. Reg readers post great comments sometimes... But since there's such a morass of junk, I'll quote the few that are worth noting.

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By Stoneshop Posted Monday 16th November 2009 22:12 GMT

It could be a very clever ploy. Apple cross-licenses this to MS and ChocFac. They all turn it on, and people all over the world get Mightily Pissed. Downloads for Linux distros and the *BSDs go through the roof. Web stats show browser usage for IE, Chrome and Safari dropping to low-single-digit percentages. Then Steve Jobs rips off his mask and reveals himself to be a robot, remotely controlled by Richard Stallman.

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By Chris 68 Posted Monday 16th November 2009 23:38 GMT

At least Apple fans are just as impulsively daft as Microsoft fans when it comes to reading something into a patent, wildly extrapolating all kinds of horrible scenarios, then berating said vendor for their non-existent crime. El Reg could save a bit of time here by simply copying the comments from the "Microsoft sold my desktop" article and pasting them here and doing a find/replace.

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By Neal 5 Posted Tuesday 17th November 2009 01:23 GMT

Oh, only the negative response on show today.

This is a stonking idea, think of all the benefits here.

To keep it short.

A)Nobody likes working anyway.

B)After a while, nobody will be able to work.

That will leave endless free time, to sit at home watching TV, my particular favourite channel at the moment is QVC, soon I'll be able to watch that all day.

Only difficulty being, as I see it, who is going to sponsor me. Perhaps I'll have to get an Apple logo tattooed onto my fore head.

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My view on the subject: Why patent? As I see it, there's two obvious uses for the technology. First, to serve up ads to people who've already paid good money - the "I'm deinstalling Mac OS right now" option of commercial suicide unless people are dumb enough to swallow it. Second, to create a low-cost or zero-dollar-cost range of devices, for which you pay in ad views. Either is completely possible without any sort of patent. In fact, neither is possible to patent, because both already exist. So... why patent?

The purpose of a patent is to stop other people from doing the same thing, or at least to give you some legal recourse when they do. Who does Apple have in its sights with this? Suggestions are going around that they're aiming at Google, or aiming at Microsoft, but there's no proof. I think this is one for the lawyers... we'll see in due course what they're doing with it.

The most disturbing thing about the initial story was that the technology was described as "Orwellian". I think that justifies a pretty big facepalm. A company might make a product that you might not like. Oh no! First comes products with advertisements, next comes a police state, right? Erm... :rolleyes

I think people need to be less hysterical about these things.

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Originally posted by Khaosai

Apple didn't get as successful as they are by making stupid moves and doing things that their customers will completely hate.

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Actually, they have indeed made many stupid moves and done things their customers hated. That's how they almost went out of business a decade ago, and were saved by a huge cash infusion from Microsoft.

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Originally posted by Maelgrim
Apple was good?

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My thoughts exactly, I must have missed that memo