“It’s the suing phase, when the tough guys lose their cool,” Wolff writes. “We’ve been here before.”
Wolff writes, “At the peak of its creative powers, Apple sued Microsoft, claiming that Windows was a Mac rip-off, which it was. The suit became Apple’s raison d’etre, tied up the company’s psychic energy and hopes and dreams for years, and sorely inhibited its creative powers. And then it lost.”
Wolff writes, “It’s a Steve thing. Not just a temper tantrum. But an operatic one. It’s Steve Jobs’ signature: pride and paranoia.”
MacDailyNews Take: Really dramatic, Mike. Too bad Steve wasn’t there. Steve Jobs didn’t ink a poorly-written contract that gave away the company’s crown jewels to Microsoft in perpetuity, the unprepared sugared water salesbozo did. Otherwise, it’s a really great story so far. (smirk)
Wolff continues: Behind it, too, is the motivation of all great competitors—they really don’t want to compete, they want the market for themselves. Now it’s Google, rather than Microsoft, copying him. It’s Google’s phone he’s out to get. He’s pissed off: Google controls the Internet and all he controls is his rotten phone.
A lawsuit is, quite literally, a form of protectionism—of wanting the law to give you an advantage that the market isn’t giving you. So, curiously, I would read Apple’s gambit as a sign of frustration with the iPhone. In spite of the sense we all have that it’s taken over the world, Apple’s margins are apparently not large enough to sustain a competitive onslaught. If they were, Apple would not have bothered suing, which has its own huge costs—in resources, image, time, and in the doubts it sows among investors.
Murdoch, too, prefers muscle to the market. Mostly, he doesn’t sue; he just bullies. The Murdoch strategy is to be as frightening as possible. He’s a jaw boner. A growler. A fist pounder. He wants to suggest that he is a little less rational than everybody else, a little more primal, a little more extreme. In this, he is a better businessman than Steve. Murdoch doesn’t really believe he can positively impact his business with an epic and defining lawsuit. (Also, his lawyers have not, traditionally, been the best.)
And yet, maybe this has changed.
He seems truly upset. He’s the wounded party. Google is indexing his articles! Phumpher phumper. He’s become the moral party, too—a conceit that, believe me, he has never been prone to before. If Murdoch ever had any charm it was his lack of righteousness. But now he’s a believer—a believer with hurt feelings. If he sues Google, it will be for the worst possible reason for a suit: because he feels helpless.
Both of these guys need some therapy.
MacDailyNews Take: Full article here? Nope, not this time. Because Michael doesn’t understand and/or place any value on intellectual property, we’ve excerpted his entire article, so you don’t even need the referring link. As you read Michael’s “work” while our advertisers pay us, not Michael, for your eyeballs, consider our point made. Of course, in order to fully drive home our point, we’d have to claim, Google style, to have written the entire piece ourselves. Alas, Wolff will have to retain credit since we don’t want you to think that we’re completely batshit insane.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Davecc” for the heads up.]
Funny Take, MDN!
Thanks for not forcing us to ensure hits for that tard.
Hit Whore or just stupid?
May have been the worst article I never read.
Brilliant, MDN.
Dear MDN. You still haven’t passed the batshit insane test. Neither have I.
So Michael, if someone broke into your house and stole your TV, would you let bygones be bygones, just try to compete with the thief, or would your feelings be hurt?
Pure genius, MDN!
@ The Other Steve
Copying is not stealing. It’s making a copy. The original is not taken away, so your analogy is fatally flawed.
Try again.
Yeah, let’s leave out that AAPL gets sued on ~weekly basis for some bullshit.
Now, Apple files a suit, and everyone thinks AAPL is the bad guy?
Fuggoff. Morons.
MIke seems to confuse competitive with stealing someone’s IP. Without IP protection, there’s no need to put billions of dollars into development when company x can just duplicate your product. :dontknow:
I do have to wonder how Wolff’s editors missed his egregious error of pretending Steve was at Apple during the Apple vs. Microsoft lawsuit.
(Unless, of course, they let it pass, figuring that the story was too good to let little things like facts or reality get in its way…)
Just a whore!
Funny how the dark, dimmly lit light of the intellect and glossy red of form fitting attire is used along some dimmly lit street or corner of words can ever achieve the visual of some Apple tattoed burly west Hollywood guy with him bent over holdin a google superphone!!
A tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
When small hacks don’t have an argument, they invariably resort to insults and to projecting their small accomplishments onto their betters.
That Wolff displays his ignorance and puerility in so blatant a fashion is par for the small dinked mediocrity worshippers.
Unless you defend your patents there in no point in taking them out in the first place. To defend them you go to court. Is that so difficult to understand?
I propose a new word: Turdalism, defined as “journalism” that’s full of crap. See above-quoted article for a fine example.
–Ron Robertson
“they really don’t want to compete, they want the market for themselves.”
What an assload. It’s because they DID compete, and won, that they are even in the position they are today. it’s amazing how quickly people forget Apple was on the brink of extinction just 10 years ago.
They worked for it and deserve what they get. How many more markets are they going to have to revolutionize before people give them a shred of respect?
Wolff’s magic dictionary defines asking competitors to obey the law as frustration, protectionism, and unwillingness to compete. His magic history book has Jobs throwing tantrums at Apple while he was no longer there and fully engaged at NeXT.
@ Radius: Nice Macbeth reference 😀
and lol, what an attention whore this guy is.
Very nicely done, MacDailyNews.
Newser rhymes with loser.
Just saying…
I now move to revoke the earlier lauding of the Best.MDN.Take.Ever award on a different piece, and grant it to this one.
BEST.
TAKE.
EVAR.
——RM
@ Gabriel
Unless you’re talking about stealing credit for something.
Making a copy of my TV doesn’t hurt me.
Making a copy of my pictures, then claiming them as yours, does.