Steve Jobs: “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/20/steve-jobs-im-going-to-destroy-android-because-its-a-stolen-product-im-willing-to-go-thermonuclear-war-on-this/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+9To5Mac-MacAllDay+%289+to+5+Mac+-+Apple+Intelligence%29

by technoslut • 15 years ago

65 102 15 years ago

9to5mac.com

channelmeter• 15 years ago

"I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this"

exit• 15 years ago

what's his case against google docs?

beej71• 15 years ago

It concerns iWork, I'm nearly certain.

aphexairlines• 15 years ago

"Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs" -- maybe the writer just means he described Android and Docs as crap.

joebadmo• 15 years ago

Steve Jobs: "Picasso had a saying, 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

rsl7• 15 years ago

This is the same as the old saying about teaching someone to fish versus given them a fish.

To steal is to make it your own, to so thoroughly understand it that you can move it forward as if it was always yours. To copy is to simply have it for today without having the understanding it takes to have had the idea in the first place, and so you can't go forward.

joenathan• 15 years ago

Good job, you copied the highest rated youtube comment on the link.

edash• 15 years ago

Related: The Love Affair Between Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso

http://gizmodo.com/5727913/the-love-affair-between-steve-job...

gruseom• 15 years ago

It wasn't Picasso, but T. S. Eliot. And "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" (another Jobs favorite) was said not by Leonardo, but by William Gaddis.

rustyuf• 15 years ago

Almost as if his core operating system doesn't copy FreeBSD.

fpgeek8• 15 years ago

Andy Rubin: "Why don't we have a chat about everything you stole from the Danger Hiptop?"

tptacek• 15 years ago

Some context that may be helpful for nerds whose heads are exploding at the idea that Google "stole" iOS (which is based on FreeBSD, which is inspired by Danger, &c &c): Schmidt was on Apple's board, apparently never disclosed his intent for Google to go head-to-head with Apple on an extremely similar product, and was surely privy to many confidential details about Apple's product plans.

fpgeek8• 15 years ago

Here's the thing: If it was such a big problem, why was Schmidt allowed to join Apple's board in the first place?

Schmidt was elected to Apple's board in August 2006, a year after Google bought Android (and over a year after Apple started work on the iPhone). Unlike Apple, Google's smartphone ambitions weren't secret. Could they seriously expect Schmidt to file everything he learned about Apple's smartphone plans in an unmarked section of his brain that he didn't use when he was at his day job?

Kadrith• 15 years ago

I thought Schmidt also left the room when they discussed the iPhone.

Steko4• 15 years ago

"Google's smartphone ambitions weren't secret."

Techcrunch the day Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board:

"back in August 2006 when he took the seat Google had virtually nothing even remotely competing with Apple’s core products and services. "

http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/03/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-res...

pvg• 15 years ago

Schmidt joined the board in August 2006 with the iPhone being announced and demo'ed in January 2007, including a Google Maps app, which must have been developed in collaboration with Google. It seems likely that collaboration and the negotiations surrounding it started well before Schmidt joined the Apple board - the board seat as some sort of mole-like vector of information seems far-fetched. Both companies clearly had an interest in the mobile market (Google bought Android in 2005), with the carriers being their common adversary.

Maybe there's more in the book but given Jobs's penchant for fact-bending, hyperbole and, what's the polite word again, 'mercurial nature' it's hard to really tell what the source of the falling out is. Maybe Jobs didn't expect Google to go after high-end devices or form the Open Handset Alliance. Maybe Google was unhappy with how closed Apple wanted to keep their platform. Just look at how close the dates of things like Apple's iPhone release, OHA announcement, Google spectrum-bidding, Apple iPhone SDK announcement, etc, are. There was obviously a lot going on and it probably had very little to do with *BSD origins or information available at board meetings.

sjwright4• 15 years ago

> Maybe Google was unhappy with how closed Apple wanted to keep their platform.

If you really believe Google desired openness for reasons more altruistic than strategic, try running your phone with Android compiled entirely from source.

Google releases source for perhaps two thirds of what matters with the consumer experience. Apple releases source for perhaps one third.

fpgeek8• 15 years ago

Jobs: "I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want."

This is a dangerously broken and, for Jobs, hypocritical idea. Where would Apple and the rest of us be today if Audio Highway or Diamond "owned" the idea of an MP3 player? If Microsoft "owned" the idea of a tablet computer? If Ericsson "owned" the idea of a touchscreen smartphone?

This, of course, is what is broken about software patents today. We're handing out ownership stakes in pure ideas within a system intended to protect realized, specific implementations.

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

Or if Motorola owned the idea of a cellular phone.

raganwald• 15 years ago

We're handing out ownership stakes in pure ideas within a system intended to protect realized, specific implementations

I’d say the iPhone contain specific, realized ideas. Thus, I challenge this statement. To me, if you can’t accept Apple patenting the specific, tangible things they do to make the specific, shipping products they sell, you might as well join me over here in saying that all patents are broken.

They’ve solved an awful lot of problems at one infinite loop. I’m sure they have filed plenty of overly broad patents, and plenty where you can toss out half or more of the claims, but like Microsoft, they have pumped billions into R&D that has resulted in actual products with discernible differences from what came before them.

Apple is neither a patent troll nor is it a copycat shop like most of the PC manufacturers. If Apple doesn’t deserve patent protection, nobody does. And yes, I’m perfectly fine with the idea that nobody does.

statictype• 15 years ago

A lot of software patents are bogus but honestly, a lot of what Apple has done with multitouch is genuinely innovative and I can understand why Jobs would be offended that others are copying their ideas.

Hell, we might actually have seen more innovation in the mobile space if competitors weren't so quick to copy what Apple has done.

Having said that, it's also hypocritical to an extent for Steve Jobs to complain about stealing good ideas. I'm sure everyone here has read the folklore.org bit about Bill Gates telling Jobs that they both stole from their neighbor...

OpenAmazing• 15 years ago

Actually, Apple spends significantly less on R&D than both Google and Microsoft. They spend, but not billions like their competitors.

http://www.asymco.com/2010/05/25/apples-rd-efficiency/

tensor2• 15 years ago

If you look into the history of Apple's multi-touch and touch based gestures you'll see that they were not the first to come up with the idea. In fact, they bought much of the technology when they bought a company called FingerWorks.

But even before that, in 1991 Pierre Wellner at Xerox published and demonstrated multi-touch gestures including the pinch.

Despite all this, Apple still managed to get a patent on multitouch gestures and continually claim it as their innovation. They filed the patent in 2007. In my opinion, the patent system is really broken.

[source] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch

wicknicks• 15 years ago

In this case, the article describes Steve Jobs to be angry with a specific 2010 HTC model. I'm not sure which features he is talking about. The article doesn't clarify this.

Also, the behavior of the market always has been to try and "borrow" successful features from other phones. Coders borrow good code. Researchers cite other papers. This is a very common thing. I'm not sure why someone as mature as Jobs would explode on this matter.

And what's up with the photo? Is the article trying to say that they talked about such a serious matter at Starbucks? "C'mon Eric, lets get some coffee and let me tell you how I'm going to sue your company and drop a nuke on it."

mcantelon• 15 years ago

Apple's iPhone owes a lot to Palm's devices. It's funny... Apple is competent enough that you'd think they'd have confidence in their capability of out-executing competitors. Jobs comes off as insecure.

fpgeek8• 15 years ago

One of the patents Apple is using in their lawsuits is "infringed" right here: http://www.google.com

The claimed infringement is Android's "Linkify" functionality. What does "Linkify" do? It scans free-form text for recognizable items (e.g. URLs, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. Apple originally did something similar with the Mac help system and patented it in 1996 and is now suing HTC, etc. over the functionality.

To me, this is an open-and-shut example of Apple attempting to claim ownership of an unrealized idea. What do you think?

Oh, by the way, I almost forgot the best bit. Even if you do think this is patentable, there is an open-and-shut example of prior art. Netscape Navigator 2.0b1, released in 1995, included "Live URL" support within its mail and newsgroup client, which does exactly what you think it does.

Apple claims it has a patent that can prevent Android from doing the same thing today. To me, this is an obvious abuse of the patent system (and I feel similarly about slide-to-unlock, photo gallery scrolling, ...).

I'm not saying Apple has no quality technical patents (the design stuff is a whole different discussion), but I'm very skeptical of the ones they're asserting against Android manufacturers. By and large, they seem to revolve around functionality that, once you've seen it being used, you need no other technical information to reconstruct it. To me, that sounds like the look-and-feel lawsuit all over again, dressed up in patent clothing. In my opinion, if the change of outfit means the suit ends up going the other way, we will all be poorer for it.

And while I don't think a "no patent" system is the best answer, it does sound a lot better than the the current system of flimsy, overbroad patents leading to rampant patent abuse from all players. I'll add that I, personally, don't distinguish much between practicing and non-practicing entities, I care far more about the quality of what you're asserting than about who you are. I'd even argue that there are cases where a practicing entity abusing overbroad, flimsy patents to stifle competition in an area can be worse (for society) than a non-practicing entity merely trying to "tax" the same area.

Bud• 15 years ago

With due respect, I think Jobs was pissed about, and talking about, "realized, specific implementations" and details thereof, and not basic, obvious, system-level ideas.

Android has arguably stolen many such details from iOS. You can debate whether that should be legally actionable or not, but the ideas were copied, nonetheless.

buff-a• 15 years ago

A better example than the music player would be the Mac and Xerox PARC's WIMP. Pretty cut and dry there.

dlokshin2• 15 years ago

Completely agree. Do we need to be reminded of what Android looked like before the iPhone existed?

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/11/androi...

The whole concept of Android shifted once iPhone was introduced. What the Google team had been working on wasn't even close.

Steko4• 15 years ago

Context is important. To me this seems like a quote from Jobs at his angriest after he felt like he had been stabbed in the back by Schmidt.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

The iPhone was stolen from Compaq's iPaq and Microsoft Windows CE/Mobile. Bill Gates should've been the one who was angry.

arron615• 15 years ago

Apple steals good ideas and improves upon them all the time.

Does he have to hold such a grudge? A bit ridiculous and a bit petty.

kondro• 15 years ago

I think it is the lack of "improving on them" part that he had a problem with.

zmmmmm• 15 years ago

Seriously? You are proposing that if Google had just done a better job he would have been ok with it?

arron615• 15 years ago

I find most of the iOS5 additions taking an inspiration to how Android "improved" on the mobile space. So it's ok for Apple to do it then?

Kylekramer2• 15 years ago

Seems more to be about multitouch than Android itself considering the rant was following early 2010 HTC phones, which if my memory serves were among the first American Androids to have multitouch. After all, the G1 and Droid were out for a while before that. And there was a strange period where Android devices were capable of multitouch, but it wasn't enabled in American devices. All signs pointed to a sort of gentlemen's agreement between Google and Apple. I don't really buy into the Eric Schmidt as mole theory, but I can easily see two at one point close partners making a non-binding agreement that over time became untenable for Google.

I can see Jobs getting angry about that, especially since he always seemed very proud and protective ("and boy have we patented it!") of the iPhone's multitouch. It strikes me as more than a tad hypocritical, but the personal betrayal might explain the reaction.

pinwale• 15 years ago

Before the iPhone came out (and it's glass-slab form factor), the Android cellphone prototypes looked a lot like Blackberry clones. However after the iPhone was announced, Google apparently switched to the slab form factor with a twist and produced the G1 with HTC. In 2010, Google started making glass-slab phones with Google branding.

Whether or not that is "stealing" is another debate; however, it wasn't until the original iPhone arrived that the slab form factor became ubiquitous.

joshu• 15 years ago

The HTC Sooner:

http://i566.photobucket.com/albums/ss109/5y24r/exca300/800px...

fpgeek8• 15 years ago

Every time I hear this charged leveled against HTC, of all companies, I want to shake people who have no sense of history. Go look up the O2 XDA, one of the first touch-screen smartphones. If you can't see the evolution of the touch-screen form-factor (and there are plenty of later examples), I don't know what to say.

Apple deserves tons of credit for making that form-factor much more elegant, but the idea that other companies are "stealing" by trying to come up with their own interpretations of that elegance, without acknowledging that Apple did the exact same thing, is just silly.

staunch3• 15 years ago

Eric Schmidt was friends with Steve Jobs, got insider info on Apple's efforts, then started an "open" competitor to the iPhone with Android.

Bill Gates was friends with Steve Jobs, got insider info on Apple's efforts, then started an "open" competitor to the Macintosh with Windows.

Steve Jobs inspires and educates his friends so profoundly that they become his enemies.

arron615• 15 years ago

Android was bought behind Eric Schmidt's back by Larry And Segery. Andy Rubin went and pitched it to them to buy Android.

There is no proof that Eric Schmidt got insider information. Android had been in development for awhile and was only changed to be more of a touch screen after the iphone got released.

staunch3• 15 years ago

1. Android would have ended up nothing like it is today if not for the iPhone. It would have been the best of a bunch of crappy smart phones. Phones like this: http://news.cnet.com/i/ne/p/2008/android_prototype_550x385.j...

2. Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Google at the time. It's obvious that his position on the board of Apple and foreknowledge of the iPhone gave him a huge advantage.

antidaily• 15 years ago

All these quotes coming out are really starting to tarnish my opinion of the man. It's annoying.

guelo• 15 years ago

The much more informative original AP article http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izacIaKf2h...

joejohnson• 15 years ago

Android stole inertial scrolling. The app store. Multitouch user interface. Mobile Safari. The entire blueprint for Apples touch based interface design. They copied everything which MADE an iPhone an iPhone. The notification system, or whatever other "features" the Fandroids claim Apple stole from Android is not what made Android. The things that made Android were the same exact things as the iPhone. Mobile browser, multitouch interface, and apps. All the things that Apple designed.

All you need to do is look at Android in 2006, and Android today. Googles goal with Android back then was to use it on dumb phones and feature phones. To bring Google to every cell phone. That's what they would tell Jobs and Forstall, while behind their backs stealing the iPhone design.

homosaur5• 15 years ago

Multitouch was inevitable and demonstrated long before the iPhone. Mobile browsers existed long before the iPhone. What the iPhone did was have enough juice to run a real browser correctly. They did a good job on mobile Safari, but this is not a mind boggling invention. App Stores? Are you kidding? I had app stores on my smart phones for years. Yeah they sucked, but Apple didn't invent it, they just made it better.

Inertial scrolling, yeah, that's a good call, and the only one you mentioned that's a legitimate invention.

arn• 15 years ago

I'm not so sure multi-touch was inevitable. I mean, as a general concept perhaps. But the trend for phone during the time that the iPhone was released was tiny-keyboards. It was the Blackberry era. It's no accident that 2006 era Android protoypes looked like Blackberrys. Jobs made a point that they were going to do away with that, and go full screen multitouch.

It wasn't obvious and there were a lot of skeptics about giving up a physical keyboard. Typing on a screen just hadn't been done sucessfully.

You say this is obvious now, but what phone did you own in early 2007? I had a Palm Treo.... with a keyboard.

vacri6• 15 years ago

Inertial scrolling existed in Windows XP.

kkowalczyk• 15 years ago

The app store was present in Sidekick. Sidekick was made by Danger Inc. Danger Inc. was a company founded by Andy Rubin who then went on to found Android Inc. which was bought by Google and Andy Rubin now runs the Android show.

So one of the features that, according to your misinformed opinion, originated in iPhone, was actually done before by a company started by a guy who runs Android.

Then again, I doubt Danger Inc. was the first to come up with the idea of integrated application store. It's really a logical evolution of PalmGear, which operated since 1997 and was the biggest application store for Palm OS devices. It was a website but it's not such a great leap to integrate that directly into OS. It couldn't be done in 1997 because PDAs didn't have internet connection but finally the wireless technology caught up and Apple was the second company to do the obvious.

The same goes for multi touch. It has been done in other contexts before - Apple didn't invent the idea. The single touch UI was done years before on Palm devices. I'm not sure if Apple was the first to do multi-touch specifically on a phone but it was, again, an inevitable evolution of existing ideas. It just happened that Apple was designing the first gen of their product from scratch at the time when multi-touch screen technology was mature enough for mass market so they could bake it really well.

Mobile Safari? How is a web browser on a phone Apple's invention? Palm OS had decent browser a decade earlier. Safari is better but only because the hardware available to iPhones is orders of magnitude better than the hardware on those Palm devices.

But the real problem with such arguments is that you completely discount the tens of thousands of ideas that Apple had to "copy" (using your terminology) from earlier phones. Sure, they've added a few things of their own, but so did everyone else. The nature of technology business is that you take the best of what exists today, you add a few unique pieces and release an improvement version. It's myopic to complain that Google copied some ideas but completely ignore the Apple's massive copying of ideas that is iCloud (just to give one example).

grkhetan5• 15 years ago

Having an app store is not enough... Was it popular, on the same order of magnitude as is the iPhone App Store? Inventing is nice, but making it appealing so that everybody wants to use it, finds it useful, thats what makes an impact. But okay I am fine with App Store not being considered a big innovation.

But multi-touch, inertial scrolling, mobile safari (With ability to zoom in and out of text), pinching to zoom, the idea of not wasting any space for keys, changing orientation of screen based on actual orientation, proximity sensor, visual voicemail, no carrier crapware, etc etc etc including the app store -- made the iPhone a major leap in smartphones -- that vaulted the whole industry an order or two of magnitude above where they were at that time -- I feel.

Android took all of this from the iPhone. In fact, Android as a phone is very similar to iPhone -- except for minor usability tweaks, and more flexibility to customize. I definitely think Android is a derivative product of the iPhone.

vacri6• 15 years ago

Inertial scrolling has been in Windows since at least XP. It's the one feature of Windows that I miss in my linux desktop - middle-click to get the inertial scroller, then move your mouse appropriately to flick around as quickly or slowly as you like. It's very far from a new concept or innovation.

The App Store? Perhaps for payment, I don't know. But Debian has had a 'centralised online repository from which you can effortlessly get all the software you want' since 2001 (apt). It's what drew me to Debian in 2007.

Mobile browser? My cheaparse Ericsson non-smartphone from ~2004 had a mobile browser in it. The screen was just too small to be useful, and the uplink too slow. There were even webpages made specifically for mobile phones then, catering to the smaller screen size.

Apple is a talented design company, but they didn't 'invent everything good in tech'.

SkyMarshal• 15 years ago

"In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn’t interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says. “I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.” The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing."

I've overheard quite a few conversations in random Silicon Valley cafes, from startup pitches, to arguments over money, to people detailing their health problems. Given how open people are around here about discussing anything and everything in public, seemingly no filter, that would have been an interesting meeting to have randomly witnessed.

adamjernst• 15 years ago

Someone did. I remember seeing it on Macrumors at the time. They only overheard snippets, after which one of the two said "Let's take this someplace more private".

acak• 15 years ago

Original article with more info:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobs-questioned-authority-all-...

jroseattle• 15 years ago

Funny how "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" turns into "this was stolen".

I would sympathize with Mr. Jobs here if his company wasn't the most valuable in the world, that continues to deliver record-breaking profits and generates enough wealth to make many a small nation jealous.

My point is not that Apple deserves to be ripped off because they're flush, but rather that customers know the difference between great products and obvious imitations. Those same customers are the ones contributing to the incredible wealth creation around Apple.

In short: when you're the heavyweight, don't sweat the knockoffs.

dasil003• 15 years ago

I couldn't agree more. If this report is true it makes me sad that Jobs would take this so personally. The iPhone and iPad were brilliant products that Jobs should have been proud of. They were so far ahead of the competition that it's inevitable that others would copy. It's not like this is the first time Apple has been copied. Everyone at Apple should be proud to have helped create the future, even if it is dominated by knockoffs, it's not like it's hurting Apple's bottom line to their detriment. To the contrary, having Android snapping at its heels has got to be pushing Apple to continue to innovate and do better. I would like to think that's what Jobs' vision would have been, and that taking personal offense at the copycats was just a knee-jerk response that would have mellowed over time.

toddh• 15 years ago

Rome always found a pretext for conquering a new territory. They never destroyed without first find a "reason" that would excuse their violence. Sounds like Jobs follows the Roman example.

kalleboo2• 15 years ago

Imagine if Steve Jobs had destroyed Windows back in the day because it was "a stolen product". Say what you want about Microsoft and Windows (I've been a die-hard Mac fan since birth), but they really drove the global personal computer revolution.

If it wasn't for Microsoft competing with Apple, we would be so far behind where we are today. E.g. Steve Jobs resisted making a computer with a separate monitor so hard, that if he wasn't pushed out of the company, Apple would never have released the Mac II. Now imagine that in a world where Apple also had a monopoly on the GUI.

Competition is good! Copy things and improve upon them, that's how we move forward.

serge2k• 15 years ago

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, "

He did and he lost.

linuxhansl• 15 years ago

Just continue to strive to build the best device...

This idea of stolen design makes no sense. Should patents on dropdowns be allowed, how how buttons, windows, hyperlinks, menus, etc, etc? Or how about cellphones itself?

Should car manufacturers learn from each other? Somebody copied gears, automatic transmission, catalytic converters, airbags, radios, sun roofs, convertibles, etc.

Somebody has an idea, others follow. That's how it should work. That's how we get the best products. That is how we keep competing. It's not that Android stole iOS code or something.

The idea of multitouch does not have much value (in the sense that a lot of money was spent on it, something had a great idea), the value is the implementation.

Steve Jobs: “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

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