Ah, I sense sarcasm. I suppose without explanation, my comment is too harsh, and I come off as an Apple hater.
Quite the opposite, I love my MacBook Pro and iPad, and I think Apple's products are great. But that is exactly why I am so disappointed to hear that they are now exhibiting the same behavior as Lodsys, which we have come to hate.
In the spirit of transforming the landscape and creating revolutionary devices, attacking HTC and Android is a great disappointment to me. I am very regretful that our generation's best and brightest people and corporations are caught up in these legal and corporate squabbles. Their energy could be better spent on innovation or solving real problems.
Fair points. You did come off as a hater, but not now that you've explained what you were thinking.
I'm very sympathetic to then negative effects of NPEs and of patents in general inhibiting smaller players.
On the other hand, I think there's a genuine case to be made that knockoff products undermine the value of expensive and risky R&D projects that have led to very real and significant innovations.
Consider the iPad - even after it was announced, commentators and executives in the industry were dismissing it. Only once it started selling in volume did the competitors suddenly jump into action.
The implication is that the rest of the industry simply didn't have the imagination or risk-tolerance to do the R&D. I would like to see more incentives for other players in the industry to do the kind of innovating that Apple has done - not less.
Sure you can argue that minor spec tweaks and UI variants are 'innovation', and I'd agree that this kind of competition is actually keeping Apple on its toes. There's certainly a place for a leader and followers both to provide value.
But a balance has to be struck. If it really is ok for any product to just be cloned as closely as possible, I think there will be less R&D done, not more.
Quite the opposite, I love my MacBook Pro and iPad, and I think Apple's products are great. But that is exactly why I am so disappointed to hear that they are now exhibiting the same behavior as Lodsys, which we have come to hate.
In the spirit of transforming the landscape and creating revolutionary devices, attacking HTC and Android is a great disappointment to me. I am very regretful that our generation's best and brightest people and corporations are caught up in these legal and corporate squabbles. Their energy could be better spent on innovation or solving real problems.