Scam artists con Apple into killing app that tells you when the bus is due in San Francisco

John sez, "NextBus Information Systems, (confusingly distinct from NextBus, Inc.) claims ownership of SF MUNI's arrival time data. The company persuaded Apple's App store to remove iPhone applications that told San Francisco users when their bus was coming. Muni spokesperson Judson True says the data is free to reuse and remix, but no word on when the application will reappear."

Yup, it's true, it's hard for Apple to adequately assess the conflicting claims about proprietary rights on the iTunes Store. Say, I've got an idea: what if they stopped playing mad pope emporer of your telephone and let you install any code you wanted on your property?

As for the sleazebags who shake down programmers by claiming to own the rights to Muni arrival times, someone needs to give them the "Hey, dipshits, facts aren't copyrightable," speech and a smack upside their collective heads.

Does A Private Company Own Your Muni Arrival Times? (Thanks, John!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Actually, I’m a shill for Apple.
Anonymous

@Libelle, collections of facts are not copyrightable either. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service

@BillyShears, iCommute pays $1 per download to NextBus Information Systems (not NextBus).
SKR

the warm glow of apple scorn warms my heart
failix

“I am no shill, I am merely someone who understands the economics of technology. “

Maybe you’re not a shill, but you’re definitely brainwashed. But hey, I don’t blame you, one thing apple certainly does very well, is marketing.

@Aturley “Did you just call me a dipshit and *smack* me?”

So… what are you going to do about it? :)
Lukezor

I think it’s great what Apple is doing with the app store. If it wasn’t for companies like this, no one would ever even hear the word “antitrust”
Anonymous

#25 came the closest to identifying the falsity in this story, Nextbus supplies arrival estimates based on GPS devices that are on the buses, not facts!!! It only becomes a fact if and when the bus arrives at the estimated time, and anyone who has every used NextBus knows that the arrival times are not facts. This entire argument is moot.
Frank W

Is Rosenkrantz astroturf?
libelle

@anonymous: I stand corrected. I actually was thinking of that case, but I remembered the outcome incorrectly. Thanks for setting me straight.

@Rosenkrantz: I’m not debating that the iPhone does things better than PalmOS did. But I think if Palm had had the advertising chops that Apple does, the stability would not have been as much an issue. They had the market sewn up, didn’t want to spend on improvements or R&D, and eventually all the good people left the company in frustration.

But I think if they had funded and inspired those people, or even just built better networked and multimedia apps to fend off Windows Mobile, they’d be in a much better position today.

Now, you could (quite reasonably) argue that this is an artifact of the same issue, which is that the PalmOS doesn’t have protected memory, multitasking, abstracted display API, etc. It was a product of its time, and some bad decisions were made for good reasons. No question: they should have had the vision to change them.

The iPhone may have been made by mixing the blood of Jesus and the tears of Mary, but it still crashes. Sure, they have protected memory spaces and other things you’d expect in a modern OS, and that were painfully lacking in the old PalmOS, but there are still kernel bugs and crashes. I’ve seen ‘em.
rosenkrantz

Ahhh you kids :-) In 10-15 years you’ll figure it out and be on my side of the fence. I am no shill, I am merely someone who understands the economics of technology.
failix

@Aturley: “thank you for demonstrating to everyone that you aren’t really here for a reasoned discussion of the issue.”

That’s assuming that a reasoned discussion of the issue is really possible. I don’t think so. Most apple users are way too emotional about their favorite company. If it was all about reason and rationality, I don’t think we would be even talking about it.

“When, in your mind, would something no longer be a fact? I think there’s an interesting philosophical point here, and I would be the first to admit that there is some ambiguity.”

Yes. Honestly I’m not sure. Discoveries, ideas, creativity… All facts? If you want to make it complicated, maybe they are an alignment of facts. But let’s keep it simple. I mean, arrival times?!
Gilgongo

Rosenkrantz badly needs to read http://futureoftheinternet.org/
ratcity

That’s a low blow Antinous– attacking the motives of someone who disagrees with you without providing any evidence.

I’ve used a clie (palm compatible) and several windows mobile phones over the years and the iphone is by far better (IMHO). It has far better apps, again in my opinion, and objectively it is a far better commercial opportunity for application developers.

Here’s a simple advantage of the appstore that is non-obvious to people without platform software development experience. It allows Apple to evaluate API usage by applications and maintain a corpus of ALL applications along with their popularity. This provides a substantial advantage in terms of advancing the API while maintaing backwards compatibility.

Let me pre-emptively suggest that a further extension to the two-tier system Doctorow suggests where unapproved apps can break is not in Apple’s interest. It’s simply too difficult to message. Google and Palm will need to devote engineering resources to maintaing compatibility with popular apps from the wild (assuming they ever get any).

I can’t say if that’s why they do it or how important of a consideration it is but we can all figure out what the disadvantages of the appstore are (to Apple): nearly none.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  ratcity,
  
  Read my user name. Ratting out astroturfers is my job. First-time commenter with multiple comments that sound like press releases?
  
  “what I see is a quality product working exactly as intended for millions of users.”
  
  “The developer market for the iphone is literally forcing into existence new business markets and concepts over night. Its tremendous.”
  
  Who writes like that?
Anonymous

Apple wants to make money, and they do ‘bad’ things to make sure they make money. They won’t make you OS/2 & Linux fans all weepy by open sourcing the whole thing. They would rather… make money.

Personally, the iPhone is the only phone I’ve ever loved. I hate consumer technology and the yearly tech lesson that comes with it. I want easy. At work I learn new tech every effing day and I’m tired of trying to keep up with teenagers need for a cooler phone. I want easy. I want simple and I don’t care if Apple pisses off the 3rd party app community to do it.

Face it. You aren’t their market. I am.

I agreed to their crap terms of service and they gave me exactly the product and limited freedoms I agreed to pay for.

And frankly, Apple pisses me off. I made software for them ONCE.. never again. Gave us effing drivers the week before we went gold. But the iPhone makes me happy and I take it everywhere. My wife just bought an iMac and I hate its fluffy OS.. but.. love the iPhone, crap restrictions and all.

And, I agree that adding value to public data complicates copyright, at least according to my training, but only a judge can technically decide.
Gelfin

It seems to be a tricky area copyright-wise, but honestly I think it should have been MUNI’s responsibility to negotiate a deal that didn’t allow this sort of thing. It isn’t even possible for competition on the interface to access NextBus data to impact NextBus financially, because that isn’t where their money comes from. San Francisco is the subscriber, and San Francisco residents and visitors are already paying the licensing fee for that data. They ought to have a public API.

NextBus should also be aware I might not be complaining if their own web services were more than an inch deep. If I want to get to the Outer Sunset from the Haight, am I better off taking the 6, 43 or 71, or walking over Cole and catching the N-Judah directly? By the time I can find that out on a laptop, much less a phone, I’ve already missed buses, and the first lookup I did is already out of date. What if I’d like an alert next time a bus is three minutes away from my local stop so I don’t have to rudely keep checking my phone for the last fifteen minutes of whatever I’d otherwise be doing? The service screams for some data mining to turn it into genuinely useful intelligence, but NextBus doesn’t care to do it and won’t let anybody else.

Like so many Bay Area transit initiatives, NextBus seems to be a really great idea executed by lazy rapacious idiots.
rosenkrantz

@ #37 Read it, and its very true. Sadly I spend every day extending the internet for the use of corporate america and the energy industry. Has anyone seen my soul laying around btw? Hey I’m not saying “I agree” with everything Apple does, I’m explaining the logic behind their motives.

Which is… (ahem):

1. Create shareholder value thru product sales (the sole reason for apple’s existence).
2. Create product sales thru positive consumer experiences.
3. Create positive consumer experiences by offering a product that appeals to the masses. Not just the techies.

Opening up the iphone to developers outside the App store does not serve any of the above rules. Loosening up the reigns of the app store does not serve any of the above 3 rules.

That’s it, thats the bottom line. The secret to the apple universe. Everything they do is motivated by this. Its corporate greed, profit, etc.. They just do it with better flair.
Krisjohn

@1 I tossed all sorts of hacky stuff on my TRGpro over the years that I had it and never once had bricking or data loss problems.

I’m interested in an iPod touch, or maybe even an iPhone in a couple of years when my current contract ends, and iTunes is a good way of shopping for apps, but I’m not going to spend that much money on a gadget (again) that the manufacturer is so intent on crippling.
rosenkrantz

A technology marketing professional writes like that. But I don’t work for Apple or anyone connected with Apple.
ratcity

Well, I used “message” as a verb and I’m not a shill. Just someone who picks up bad habits very easily.
rosenkrantz

@43 “… but I’m not going to spend that much money on a gadget (again) that the manufacturer is so intent on crippling”

Damn straight and you should stick with your guns. The iphone (for now) isn’t that kind of product. I seriously doubt it will ever be that kind of product. When Jobs said he would never again let Apple make a PDA i think he meant it.
Anonymous

Is it true that NextBus IS paid for the transponders on the buses? If so this explains why they lost money and are desperately trying to squeeze revenue from any source. That must have cost a fortune.

For what it’s worth, I also doubt there’s any magic in their predictions. TriMet (in Portland) and MyBus (in Seattle) have completely free real-time tracking which OneBusAway made into predictions.

@40: I feel you. This stuff could be a lot better!
Anonymous

Amen. I want my Routesy back.
rosenkrantz

“Say, I’ve got an idea: what if they stopped playing mad pope emporer of your telephone and let you install any code you wanted on your property?”

We had that Cory, it was the old Palm OS and 30% of the “code” you loaded on your Palm bricked it or fried your data by poor programming. Apple is clearly trying to prevent the iphone from becoming a “sort of works most of the time” device by putting something called Quality Assurance between the user and the thousands of developers out there churning out apps.

As for the issue of copyrights and fairplay, (shrugs) its an evolving marketing that’s really never existing before. Can you really say something like the iphone and the app store have ever existed before, what a year ago?

People are really quick to slam Apple for the occasional App blunder but what I see is a quality product working exactly as intended for millions of users. Frankly, I want someone to “police” the apps before they come to me. I don’t want crap thats gonna brick my phone.
Brett Burton

Wow. Apple keeps scoring points. I think they left out a few lines of code when they programmed the robot simulacrum that replaced Jobbs.
Anonymous

Actually, Cory – NO.

This may be the ONLY way Apphole will recognize how stupid their censorshit/DMCA enforcement policies are.
Anonymous

The real underlying problem here, which everyone seems to be ignoring, is that being Mad Pope Emperor gets you a REALLY bitchin’ hat, and Steve Jobs is unwilling to give up his.
Cory Doctorow

@1 And what do you make of the fact that Apple is trying to make it illegal for other iPhone owners who choose to install third party code to do so?

And what is there to stop Apple from offering an App store full of its guaranteed apps, while allowing third parties to offer try-at-your-own-risk phones?
jwb

That’s a ridiculous assertion Rosenkrantz and quite frankly it would only be mouthed by the uncritical sycophants who hang on every of Steve Jobs’ words as if they were gospel truth. You can load whatever code you want onto your own BlackBerry, and reports of bricking and fried data are notably nonexistent.

Apple wants to run the iTunes store because they like to be gatekeepers in position to make money off the marketplace. There is no technical reason to do it that way.
pjcamp

“Say, I’ve got an idea: what if they stopped playing mad pope emporer of your telephone and let you install any code you wanted on your property?”

Because Apple doesn’t view it as your property. Duh.
Cory Doctorow

For that matter, I owned about 20 PalmOS devices, starting with the 128, and must have installed a good 1000 apps over the years, without ever once “bricking” it.
monopole

Say, I’ve got an idea: what if they stopped playing mad pope emporer of your telephone and let you install any code you wanted on your property?

The problem in that assertion in the case of the iPhone and the Kindle is the phrase “your property”.

Cause as Make Magazine says: “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it”
dculberson

‘Can you really say something like the iphone and the app store have ever existed before, what a year ago?’

Nope, can’t say that. Similar devices and application catalogs have existed for years.
Anonymous

I agree that the info/app should be freely available (on principle), but as someone who uses NextBus daily, I’d like to say that it’s really not that tough to bookmark/use their website.

Do we really need an app for every site? Where’s my BoingBoing-branded “Wonderful Things” app?
rosenkrantz

@7 There has never been a device with the installed user base of the iphone and the massive amount of app loading by a non techie crowd before. Previous devices were niche only and had a sort of “you break it you bought it” policy. those devices don’t make it to the cover of Time magazine or sell in the 10′s of millions. The developer market for the iphone is literally forcing into existence new business markets and concepts over night. Its tremendous.

Guys its not “us” the iphone was made for – don’ you see? Its made for my mother-in-law and my daughter’s teacher & my clients who don’t know how to dump their browser cache to save their life and the millions of non techies out there. The audience for this is not the DIY crowd, its an consumer appliance now.

@4 I knew someone would label me a “uncritical sycophant” – grins – but you’re completely wrong. I’m a businessman first and a techie second. Used to be the other way around when i was younger. What Apple is doing makes perfect business sense. By providing a “sheltered” product that appeals to the consumer masses, they open up their market to hundreds of millions of consumers rather than a scant group of technophiles who would gleefully spend Friday night installing tons of code on their new device and cackle fiendishly when it fried.

@Cory: Really Cory?1000 aps and never a crash or a brick? I had every Palm from the Pilot to the last model and I can send ya some apps from legit developers that will corrupt your contacts db in a heartbeat. I think people are perceiving the iphone as something that it is not.
bolamig

I used palm products for more than a decade, but I switched to the ipod touch because palm was always corrupting my data. Despite the fact that I never loaded any apps onto it. Palm just didn’t put in the money needed for good QA.

If the muni data is available over the internets, it’s available over the internets. Trying to prevent people from downloading data exposed on the internet is about as reasonable as trying to prevent people from linking to your webpage.
libelle

“Hey, dipshits, facts aren’t copyrightable,”

Ah, but collections of facts are. Fergzample phone books, databases, maps, etc. From the article, I’m not sure whether or not there is a legitimate claim on the data. It definitely looks pretty suspect to me, but we don’t have all of the information.

I’m not saying that the copyright-ability of collections is right, but it does make it the law. Apple either is in the position of enforcing the law (with their restrictions on what gets published) or isn’t (if they’re trying for the equivalent of “common carrier” status in the App Store).

To go off on a rambling tangent … This particular case seems more akin to something that was used against me — a skeezy company using copyright law just to be profiteers and a*holes. I wrote a game for Palm OS, which got shut down because I said “if you liked Tetris*” in my ad copy. This is, of course, well within my rights under Lanham act / nominative use. The skeezy company that owned the rights to the Tetris* name issued takedown demands to the software distribution sites. They complied for fear of lawsuit, and ruined my business.

The lawyers I consulted informed me that I wasn’t earning enough money with my product to make it worth pursuing. So I’m just left with a lot of bitterness.

*Tetris is a registered trademark to which I have no non-nominative rights, and it belongs to its respective owners.
Anonymous

For the umpteenth time Mac apologists…..

Apple hates you.

You want them to stop?

Do not buy the next couple of “shiny new” Apple products, and maybe theey will start to care.

As long as you remain sheeple, it will not stop.

Seriously, at this point your years of outrage just make you look silly.
Frank W

This is a good thing, actually. The more fuckups like this, the more Apple’s totalitarian experiment with the iPhone aggravates users, the more negative feedback, and the better the chance they come to their senses and open up the platform.
jimsing59

Apple needs to grow a pair. Microsoft wouldn’t have been scammed. Microsoft, God love them, is a trip.
rosenkrantz

@12 Giggles. Do you really think that a few thousands techies whining to Apple is going to make them change anything? The iphone is used by millions of non techies pal. That’s the customer base they care about. The businessman who buys the iphone every summer & gives the old one to his kid. I don’t want my iphone to be an experimental toy for developers to fart around on.
libelle

Cory didn’t say “never a crash” — he said “never a brick.” As a 15-year Palm user/developer, I could say I’ve never been bricked by a bad app. I’ve definitely had my share of crashes — many coming from bugs in PalmOS itself.

But I’ve used well over 1000 apps, and never bricked a device.
Antinous / Moderator

You can’t seriously expect Apple to contact Muni. Muni headquarters is a whole 43.1 miles from Apple headquarters. And that’s by car. Imagine how long a phone call would have taken.
erzatsen

is this about apple having to grace everything and sycophantic fanboy love, or about getting bus info on your gizmo?
quit your QQ. suck it up and work around it.
point your iphone safari at nextmuni.com, pick your busline, direction and usual stop and bookmark it with a button onto a homepage.
i have a page of buttons/bookmarks that link me the arrival times of the busses i frequent at the stops i frequent. sure, i need to access it through the safari interface, but i still get the data as accurately as they post it, copyright scammers notwithstanding.
1st gen iphone, btw. edge network is slow, but the page data is small. i always have the info before the bus arrives.
aturley

@Failix: Ignore you from here on out, and thank you for demonstrating to everyone that you aren’t really here for a reasoned discussion of the issue.
chip

@rosenkrantz – Your arguments are absurd. Apple is more then welcome to maintain it’s walled garden for the technologically inept, but to actively prevent those with the knowledge to legally install whatever they want is world-class douchery on their part.

People have been installing untested third party software on their PCs for over thirty years. It is asinine to think that all of a sudden they’re not capable. What if, in the name of quality control, Apple suddenly decided you couldn’t install anything on your iMac unless they approved it? You’d throw a fit.

If Apple was solely concerned with people’s “safety”, they could still allow unfiltered, third-party programs with a popup warning message on install, just like you get on Macs and PCs. Unfortunately, safety is not nearly as important to Apple as control. Don’t think for one second that their motives are anything different.
aturley

So many things going on here Cory, let’s look at them all . . .

“Yup, it’s true, it’s hard for Apple to adequately assess the conflicting claims about proprietary rights on the iTunes Store.”

So far so good.

“Say, I’ve got an idea: what if they stopped playing mad pope emporer of your telephone and let you install any code you wanted on your property?”

Sounds like a great idea. Well maybe. It’s their business to run, and they appear to be quite happy with what they’re doing, and making a healthy profit. But if you have a better idea for a way to run a business, perhaps you should try your hand at it. If you’re right, I’m sure people will beat a path to your door.

“As for the sleazebags who shake down programmers by claiming to own the rights to Muni arrival times . . .”

They appear to have a contract that states that they have the right to distribute the MUNI arrival times as generated by this particular system.

“. . . someone needs to give them the ‘Hey, dipshits, facts aren’t copyrightable,’ speech and a smack upside their collective heads.”

Calling arrival times “facts” is playing a little lose with terminology. The NextBus system takes the locations of buses (I’ll grant you that those are facts) and uses the information to estimate their arrival times at stations down the line. At that point value has been added, and I think one could make a reasonable argument that copyrightable information has been created.

Steven Peterson, the man who created Routesy, seems to be trying to take the approach that taxpayer money was used to create the program, so the taxpayer should own the generated data. I’m not sure this stance is supported by the law, but it is worth pursuing. Judson True of MUNI seems to support this idea, but he does not seem to have provided any legal documentation to back him up.

As much as I might want to be able to use Routesy, it looks like Apple has done the only thing they can, given the position they have taken as gatekeeper for iPhone applications. So far the only legal contract anyone has provided has been the one by NBIS, and it seems to say that they have an exclusive right to distribute this information.
Anonymous

Factual data made publicly available is never copyrightable.

If it were ‘art’ (creative content) OR factual data you reasonably attempted to keep private, totally different story.
BillyShears

This is pretty sleazy, but there’s also an alternative; Routsey isn’t the only app in the store that provides this functionality. I’ve been using iCommuteSF for a couple of weeks now and think it’s pretty neat.

And they claim to have an official agreement with NextBus, so the chances of NBIS knocking on their door is kind of slim.
Anonymous

I’m glad I didn’t buy a smartphone that treats me a like a little baby and won’t let me install *GASP* 3rd party applications on my phone. If these applications are such a threat, why doesn’t Apple force you to use the App Store for everything on their notebooks/desktop computers?
rosenkrantz

@16 “I’ve definitely had my share of crashes — many coming from bugs in PalmOS itself.”

Bricks aside, that’s my point. The average consumer isn’t going to have patience for an app or device that crashes a lot. That’s why the Palm went the way of the Dino & never was more than a niche device. Really the only way to assure a relative “crash and bug free” experience for the consumer is to keep your hands on the control of what apps get onto the device.

Again its the difference between a tech toy with limited appeal and an outright consumer device that sells to bunches of millions of everyday folks.
Mia MacHatton

Sounds like a typical Muni snafu actually. The 311 service here in SF actually bills Muni an exorbitant amount for providing next bus information to people who aren’t lucky enough to own smartphones and thus have to call in.
failix

@Rosenkrantz: “The audience for this is not the DIY crowd, its an consumer appliance now.”

This whole “user-friendliness” approach is nothing more than apple’s poor excuse to treat their customers like idiots. As if you couldn’t have user-friendliness, reliability, security, stability, without a closed, restrictive, unproductive business model.

@Aturley: “I think one could make a reasonable argument that copyrightable information has been created.”

In my opinion, informations are nothing more than facts. They should never be copyrighted. Therefore:

-Hey, dipshits, facts aren’t copyrightable!

*Smack*
PFlint

And after all this:
OS 3 to include cut/copy/paste. Awesome.

Meanwhile:
HTC Hero to run Flash 9. (Free games? Videos at non-YouTube sites?)

Apple sez: no fun for you at our expense. Apple, what else aren’t you telling us?
libelle

Rosenkrantz: “That’s why the Palm went the way of the Dino & never was more than a niche device.”

Uh, they still managed to sell tens of millions of devices. If that’s “niche” then I want my commercial ventures to be niche.

Palm Inc is still out there and struggling. Their new product, the Pre, is selling briskly. That’s better than most dinosaurs are doing today*. Yes, they could have owned the handheld / smart phone industry all along, and blew it.

I really think it was more hubris, complacency, and bad marketing than it was the crashes.

But then, there’s also the reality distortion field. I know people who will reboot their iPhones, and deny that there’s any problem, even though “my icons got scrambled and I couldn’t place calls.” Gee, sounds like me and my Treo :)

(* unless you’re of the “pigeons are dinosaurs” camp, in which case I take it all back. Or if you really meant “the Dino” i.e., 246 GT, instead of dinosaurs, in which case I’m really confused.)
Anonymous

it’s not the facts of the arrival times that nextbus provides, but real-time arrival information based on GPS devices that are on the buses..
Anonymous

Wow, Rosenkrantz, you have *exactly* three! Which makes the Directive 4 comparison that much easier:

4: Make sure you get a protection-racket type kickback from every product even tangentially related to yours, and accordingly be open to the bigger bribe involved.

This is the same reason they reject apps that ‘conflict’ (provide more features, bypass extra fees) with their own. I know it’s rational behaviour for the sociopathic corporate ‘person’, but it’s not in anyone else’s best interest.
Steve Stair

It’s like you’re arguing over the qualities of one breed of horse while I race past in my motorcar.

Stop renting your phone from Apple, and own an Android.
jfrancis

If they do stop being ‘mad pope emperor of your telephone’ can I have the title? I would have cards made. Really nice letterpress ones.
rosenkrantz

@23 “As if you couldn’t have user-friendliness, reliability, security, stability, without a closed, restrictive, unproductive business model.?

Unproductive? You’re calling 1 billions apps downloaded unproductive? Grins. I think apple shareholders would giggle at you while they light their stogies with their crisp 100 $ bills.

@24 ” Yes, they {palm} could have owned the handheld / smart phone industry all along, and blew it.”

Exactly my point, Palm did not offer a stable, effective, attractive product to consumers, other than the techie crowd. Why didn’t consumers find it attractive? It was hard to use (for the non techie) and it required too much legwork to load and manage apps and data. Sure, “we” liked it – it was a tech toy. But the average consumer didn’t want to learn how to download .prc files and unzip them and put them in the palm installer and then install them. And heck what’s this error and ack now the app crashed.

THAT experience is what Apple is trying to prevent. They want the average consumer to be able to buy apps over the wire and go “Cool – I just bought a golf game!!.” They don’t care about opening up the iphone and letting people load their own apps, that results in “potential” negative customer experiences ala the Palm. That’s the point of the “controlled” app store – to regulate your experience with the iphone. These are real concepts people. Good experience = Apple iphone = $$$. Bad experience = the defunct Palm PDA line.

Frankly I doubt the Pre will save them. I foresee Palm being sold to an international tech concern within 2 years who is looking to jump start into the smartphone market. Palm will at that point be a brand and a phone OS only. You said it right, they had the lead and they totally blew it.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  rosenkrantz,
  
  Convince me that you’re not a shill for Apple.
aturley

@Failix: “In my opinion, informations are nothing more than facts. They should never be copyrighted. Therefore: [remainder excised]”

Did you just call me a dipshit and *smack* me? I’m going to assume you didn’t mean it that way, but correct me if I’m wrong.

Do you believe that there is anything that could be copyrighted? If so, what? When, in your mind, would something no longer be a fact? I think there’s an interesting philosophical point here, and I would be the first to admit that there is some ambiguity. I’m curious where you stand on this.