You Know You've Spotted A Spoilt Brat When..

According to this article, Apple is having a taste of the receiving end of the punches they've been throwing around. Have a good read of the article along with the reader comments at the bottom of the article before you continue with the rest of this blog entry or I might sound like I'm speaking gibberish.

Ok, if you don't have the time to, I'll just give a nutshell summary of the subject matter: Apple, who all along has been sue-happy and trying to get their competitors' products banned through patent litigations, is now whining about some of their own iDevices getting banned.

Before I continue, I better make my stand clear here:

1. I have nothing against iUsers except for the snobs who think the iDevices they hold in their hands make them all high & mighty and superior human beings. It's already 2013 and 2007 is history, so it looks like arrogance needs to get a move along and catch up with the times. My best friend is actually an iFan and both of us can get along just fine despite our differences in opinions. He happens to have a healthy dose of humility about him and an open mind, you see.


2. I have nothing against iDevices even though I no longer use them because they can no longer catch up with my mobile needs requirements and that's just me. Still, iDevices function well for folks who prefer things simpler and there's nothing wrong with that - if we ignore Apple maps, that is.


3. The only issue I have with Apple is Apple as a company and their attitude towards the industry, which is explained in the next point:


4. If Apple feels that their intellectual property rights have been violated and they should seek the law to remedy the situation, they have the right to do so. However, when you try to patent industry standards like rectangles with rounded corners, which happens to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard, you reek of petty attempts at monopoly to the discerning consumer.

Guess who will be at the ultimate receiving end of the punches and suffer the most when the industry gets monopolised by a single entity? You and me - the consumers. When there is no longer any competition, whoever monopolises could rest on the laurels, innovation and progress could then slow down or gasp, ground to a halt and consumers would be under the mercy of willy-nilly price hikes on a whim. HitIer squashed everyone opposed to him and he had his fun and his days in the sun while folks got shoved into concentration camps, didn't that sonofabitch?

I hope we can all come to the same conclusion here regarding how the mobile industry would be like if only Apple could manufacture and produce rectangular smartphones with rounded corners, heh. If you don't find such a scenario absurd, then I suppose you should find this blog post absurd by this point and you should stop reading further. I think you can still get tour packages to North Korea.

If you are agreeable with me (I'm cool if you don't, just penning down my thoughts and opinion here), let's continue. So what's my take regarding the situation reported in the linked Cnet article? I'll just keep it short and to the point:

1. It's nice seeing the roles reversed here. 'Irreparable harm', huh? Apple likes throwing punches but it seems they can't take one. That's how spoilt brats are.


2. When you draw first blood and start going thermonuclear but you can't handle your own bruises, you deserve getting kicked right in the bloody mouth.

Note that I wasn't trying to advocate violence with that 'getting kicked right in the bloody mouth' remark there. That's just a figure of speech. If it makes you uncomfortable, my apologies. You can always substitute it with:

You deserve getting a huge chunk bitten off your rotten apple, Apple.

What an appropriate logo Apple has.

At the end of our debates, my best friend and me always remind each other that it's just a bloody phone, it's just a bloody tablet and it's just a bloody computer at the end of the day and llfe goes on. Yeah, that's true. But still, as discerning consumers, we have to be aware of the kind of company we are feeding with our hard-earned dough.

Remember when Apple screwed their users over when they took away Google Maps from iOS and the YouTube app from the iPad? Tantrums at the expense of the user experience of your customers, tsk. No love lost there on Apple's part when it seemed like such actions indicated there wasn't any love to begin with. We need to get real and face the fact that Apple doesn't like Google, since Apple is fighting a proxy cold war with Android when it comes to Google. Remember the Vietnam War during the Cold War era? Samsung is like Apple's Vietnam - while the bigger enemy is hidden behind the iCurtain. We all know how Nam turned out.

I haven't even started on how people are saying that the lockscreen of iOS 7 is looking like the lockscreen of Android as well as the uncomfortable way Apple's Notification system resembles Android's since.. I forgot, was it 2007? But I won't dive into these because these are things that benefit iUsers and we all need to progress.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with Apple going all Picasso by 'borrowing' ideas to improve their own platform per se, but if you sue your competitors and then make an about-face and do the very same thing you are accusing your competitors of doing, you won't be able to avoid discerning consumers from questioning if you are being hypocritical.

So much for going thermonuclear.


-De Lion Speaks