Re:Apple and Samsung Should Fight in the Marketplace, not th...
by bornhuetter on Friday August 24, 2012 @08:04AM
(#4427184)
> Apple paid Xerox handsomely, in pre-IPO Apple stock sold at a discount for a LICENSE to use the technology that Xerox PARC was developing. Full stop.
I've heard this go around a lot recently, and I'm pretty sure it's a complete distortion of the truth (more so even than the original myth).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Jobs allowed Xerox to buy stocks in Apple in exchange for a "look around" Parc. He was shown the GUI and the mouse, and he took these ideas and copied them, and made various changes to them.
The licencing agreement came later, after Xerox found out that Jobs had "stolen" the ideas. Apple argued that ideas can't be patented, only implementations. Then there were court cases (between Apple, MS and Xerox) over who owned what, and what could be protected.
Re:Apple and Samsung Should Fight in the Marketplace, not th...
by jaekwon on Friday August 24, 2012 @06:10AM
(#4426965)
You're right, but Apple would not have paid so handsomely, had Xerox already marketed their innovation.
Apple paid for insider knowledge. Samsung built on public knowledge.
Re:Apple and Samsung Should Fight in the Marketplace, not th...
by richworks on Friday August 24, 2012 @08:03AM
(#4427178)
How is he misrepresenting Steve Jobs's statement? Isn't it what he meant. Of course, he didn't mean to say that he is proud of copying others' ideas but that copying is inevitable. Or am I misinterpreting his statement?
I think it is really tragic that so many people will repeat this obvious and blatant lie, in public no less. Is your ideology that much more important than your integrity?
Apple paid Xerox handsomely, in pre-IPO Apple stock sold at a discount for a LICENSE to use the technology that Xerox PARC was developing. Full stop.
Further, the Xerox systems were very rudimentary. They were a lab, and there's a huge difference between a lab experiment and a product. Xerox didn't have a GUI, for instance. They had the idea of windows but they didn't work like windows, they couldn't overlap. At least %60 of the innovations in the Macintosh were developed by Apple. Xerox showed Apple a direction which was important.
Thus to claim that it was a "ripoff" is to simply tell a lie.
Your misrepresentation of Job's statement is also false, but at this point I've come to believe that you, and the rest of those with your ideology simply don't care about the truth.