Eye-Monster

NOTE:  This post is a work in progress.

Apple has made the technology marketplace exciting, inventive, varied, and ultimately, litigious.  They create attractive products which people enjoy using, but their lawsuits drip with irony.

Apple did not invent the first mp3 player, the first smartphone, the first tablet pc, the "i" prefix that they use for their product lines, the name ipad, or even their logo.  In the case of the first patented personal Digital Audio Player, Kane Kramer had plans, prototypes, and investment to launch a device in the mid 80's.  In the case of their logo, they settled out of court with Apple Corps, the company created by the Beatles for their records (Apple Records).  Those of us who grew up with vinyl records will probably remember the granny smith apple record label.  Maybe this is where the bite (byte?) got taken out of the current Apple, Inc. logo.


Apple did refine all of these products and make them appealing to more users, but more people should be aware of the irony (let's call it eye-rony) of a company which invented none of these things clogging the courts and costing taxpayers around the world to hear their infringement claims.  Maybe the lawsuits are meant as form of advertisement and corporate aggrandizement--Like the boast of a hipster claiming that he did something first before it was cool.

In the words of Joseph N. Welch on the 30th day of the McCarthy Hearings, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"  Our nation should be governed as a nation of laws, but our economy should be driven by a marketplace of ideas, not idea litigation.

Steve Jobs undoubtedly had a huge impact on the way people use technology, but perhaps he should be credited most for his salesmanship and his eye for innovative refinement.  It can be argued that he managed to bring millions of people to certain types of technology who might otherwise have stayed away (at least for a few more years).  For that he should be remembered as a great . . .salesman.