It might sound like a strange question to ask. Most eulogies of Steve Jobs have described him alternatively as a technologist, innovator, or inventor. I’ve seen several recent (and ostensibly charitable) comparisons to Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. His brilliance is without question. But I tend to think of him as more of a Vanderbilt or Carnegie than a Tesla.
The brand loyalty enjoyed by Apple is a remarkable feat of advertising, product positioning, and design. The breadth and depth of such loyalty rivals that of a major religion. Owners of Apple products (or those who aspire to be) surely number in the billions. The lining up of Apple’s adherents at each successive product launch invites cultish comparisons, which this recent string of Samsung ads has cleverly exploited.
But Apple fans’ loyalty often coexists with an ignorance of the firm’s vicious IP protectionism, which goes above and beyond defensive self-interest.
Example: Users of HTC phones will soon be unable, due to this recent patent ruling, to add a calendar entry by tapping on mention of a corresponding date and time in the device’s email reader. Or to tap on a phone number to initiate a phone call, even if such a feature is laughably obvious. And if those features sound insignificant enough to shrug off, consider what other basic functions and wholesale feature sets Apple would be eager to claim as its own, or prevent other firms from implementing. Apple’s position is dangerous and harmful to the tech community at large.
It’s true that many of Apple’s peers also claim extensive patent protection (some more novel than others); this is largely due to an ineffective and outdated patent system which undoubtedly will require organized and informed legislative action to remedy. Patent defensibility probably played a role in one of the biggest tech acquisitions of 2011. But the position taken by Apple is inordinately abusive of such a system, and is contrary to the conditions that enabled its founding.
The attitudes that were emblematic of Silicon Valley at that time are essential to the tech community at large and a healthy democratic society, which depends on mobile, social, and networked technology to enable its next generation of innovators.
