I am completely mystified by how these companies get together and work with each other on things like this.
Apple is not the worst of the bunch. You have nothing to qualify that statement other than a hand-waving gesture.
The undisputed #1 king of patent trolls is former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold's company Intellectual Ventures and its various holding companies that sue anyone and everyone with patents that contain no technology but do contain lots of language that's very lawsuit friendly as the claims are sweepingly broad. Recently they tried to sue a large number of small developers that were using "in app purchasing" technology.
Number two is Microsoft who is extorting upwards of $15 per Android phone sold from a number of vendors as part of their "fair licensing" program even though zero Microsoft code is used in those phones.
Number three would be Oracle if only they could get better lawyers and a more agreeable jury.
Apple has been fighting to push back at the tide of design violations put forward by companies like Samsung and others. If you can name even one instance of where Apple has directly sued a small company over a technology patent I would be surprised.
You seem to have absolutely no idea what Microsoft was up to "even back in the day" because it was far worse than anything Apple has ever done. Remember the bait-and-switch with OS/2? The pricing scheme where DOS was $60 and the very same DOS + Windows was $30? Where companies like Dell had to pay a license fee on every machine sold regardless of if it was sold with Windows or not? The way they would switch up Windows to "break" other competing applications like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3?
You seem to have forgotten that it was an arms-length Microsoft deal that enabled SCO to turn zombie and threatening hundreds if not thousands of companies that were simply using Linux, not even developing their own software.
The reason you're completely mystified is because you haven't done any research.
Ah, one of my favorite topics. Why did it take ten years after Intel released the 386 before 32-bit protected mode apps become common? Yea, the MS/IBM JDA was not particularly good, but the alternative MS took was much worse.
What was shocking, as you hint at, was how Microsoft, which had been encouraging OS/2 as their "serious" OS for years, dumped that and somehow managed to convince people that Windows 3.1 was better.
It was like going from a space ship to a party full of clowns. Wasn't it possible to write Windows apps in 16 bit mode then?
Is this some sort of revisionist history? What about these ~20 patents? I'd like to know which ones you consider as design patents.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/02/apple-vs-htc-a-patent-bre...
I am not even going to waste my time listing patents used to sue Motorola and Samsung because I believe you're the one trying to handwave things here.
>The pricing scheme where DOS was $60 and the very same DOS + Windows was $30
God forbid a company set the price of its own products according to competitive pressures. What next? Kindle Fire should be banned?
>The way they would switch up Windows to "break" other competing applications like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3?
Care to elaborate or provide references? Is there really a case of WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 running well on one version of Windows and breaking on the next?
Where are you getting this from? this has never been proven and is built on pure speculation. Without a doubt they're earning some money from patent deals, but 15$ per unit sold? unlikely.
>The pricing scheme where DOS was $60 and the very same DOS + Windows was $30?
What? Microsoft are evil because they sold products cheaper than the rest of the market? Please think about what you just wrote.
>The way they would switch up Windows to "break" other competing applications like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3?
Microsoft "switched up" windows up with a newer objectively better version of there operating system, Why is it there fault that Novell couldn't adapt to already standard technology used in other operating systems? I don't remember Lotus 1-2-3 ever having an issue running on windows, perhaps you could fill me in because I only ran this software for 15 years.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+is+apple+evil
...to get an idea of what I meant by common opinion. That "citation please" thing is a quick and easy way to try and derail anyone's argument who isn't willing to spend real time digging crap up. It's perfectly fine by me if this makes me "lose the argument."
Let's inspect your claim:
"It's a pretty common opinion nowadays that Apple is the worst in the bunch; beating the pants off any unethical stuff Microsoft might be up to -- or was up to even back in the day."
Let's examine your first piece of evidence: they have a closed ecosystem.
Let examine something MS is famous for doing back in the day: destroying Netscape
No one in their right mind would put these in the same league, I don't know why you nonchalantly claim not only that they are but Apple's worse and that this "beats the pants off" MS in the evilness department.
Let's examine another one of your pieces of evidence: the removal of RA's app because it reverse engineered a private API or something.
Let's compare this to something else MS was famous for back in the day: bankrolling SCO's attempt to kill linux.
Well clearly again if we had a scale of evilness with Nathan Myrvold being a 10 and Hitler 100, MS might be a solid 6-8 and Apple maybe a 1-3.
So you can keep defending what you said til the end of time but I'm going to call it total bullshit and be done with it here.
It's the "bandwagon fallacy" where just because an opinion is popular it must be true.