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@mythmon
Created November 3, 2012 19:10
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I don't have a blog, so I'm going to rant here. tl;dr: Apple is being
evil, and reinterpreting court orders to their own benefit.
So for those of you who don't follow tech news, let me tell you
something about Apple. Recently, Apple and Samsung have been in legal
battles over the design of some Samsung tablets. Apple claimed that
Samsung was blatantly copying the iPad's design. There have been several
court cases in serveral countries over this matter, but today I am going
to tell you about on in the UK.
In the UK, Apple lost this debate. Samsung counter attacked, and won.
The judge in this case ordered Apple to publish on it's UK home page
(http://apple.co.uk/) a message stating that Samsung did not copy
Apple's design, since that is the ruling the court gave. The court also
ordered Apple to take ads out in several publications stating the same,
but they aren't the focus of this story.
So Apple "complied". In the bottom of the page, they posted a small
link, to a page devoid of logos, that would be hard to identify as an
Apple page, except the text of it. On this page they quoted the court
ruling, and explained that no, Samsung didn't copy Apple, because Apple
was so much cooler than Samsung. Although they said what they were
required to by the letter of the order, it was still a slap in the face
to Samsung and the judge. Everyone knows that if you piss off a judge,
you're gonna have a bad time.
The judge followed up, and was quoted in Bloomberg as saying "I'm at a
loss that a company such as Apple would do this. That is a plain breach
of the order." Judge Robin Jacob told Apple to change the the wording,
to comply with the intent. The home page now says, "On 25 October 2012,
Apple Inc. published a statement on its UK website in relation to
Samsung's Galaxy tablet computers. That statement was inaccurate and did
not comply with the order of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.
The correct statement is at Samsung/Apple UK judgement.". Apple has
still not, on it's home page, claimed that Samsung did not copy Apple,
and the linked page is still a bare page without logos or
identification. It is no longer a slap in the face, it is just two short
paragraphs quoting the court order, which is a pile of legalese.
Apple claimed to need 14 days to get accomplish this task. The judge
gave them 2 days. Now we know why Apple wanted the extra time: Some
bright eyed reporters noticed that there was something different on
Apples home page besides the new disclaimer. As the size of the browser
window changes, like if you look at the site on a larger monitor, the
main image of the iPad Mini on the page changes sizes too. Ok, that's no
by itself horrible, it makes use of the available space. Someone looked
into the code. The code is explicitly designed to hide the bottom 310
pixels of the page. In other words, Apple is manipulating the home page
to hide the "apology" that they were required by a court of law to post
on their home page. You can check this yourself, go the site I linked
below, and zoom out on the page by holding control or command, and
scrolling. Unless you zoom to 50% of original size, the message is
hidden.
So to sum up, Apple is taking court orders designed to punish Apple and
twisting them to either be beneficial, or not an impact. While you might
disagree with the court's decision to publish Apple is such a public
way, you cannot argue that Apple's dodging of punishment is in anyway
acceptable.
And yet Apple is the most profitable company in the history of modern
business. We give them money hand over fist, and they make absurd profit
margins on every device they sell. I don't know what the future of
computers looks like, but one thing is clear: Apple is at the front of
the charge, and now I know that this is not the company I want leading
us into the future.
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