FIrst of all, non sequitur. My question was what makes Apple different from every other patent holder? You didn't answer that question.

Second of all, what makes Apple a "once-creative company" that "wants to be a twisted old"?

Is there a problem with Apple's business model? If so, please enlighten me, because for a company to be #1 in market cap, they must be doing something right?

Has Apple stopped creating new products? The iPad came out in 2010, so I'd say the answer is no.

Does Apple have a great, modern technology stack? Among other things, considering that they maintain their own open source C-compiler tools, and they have by far the best consumer desktop operating system, I'd say the answer is yes.

So how is Apple declining? Because you feel their attempts to assert software patents supposedly mask an insecurity about their ability to innovate? Please.

Or they could, you know, innovate, like Microsoft did with the Surface and RIM did with Blackberry 10.

Samsung is a blatant copying machine.

Blame the broken software patent system. Remember, Samsung, Motorola Mobility, Microsoft, etc, are also suing prolifically with mobile patent suits.

Apple (like the other companies mentioned above), is only acting in the interests of their shareholders. That's their legal obligation as a publicly traded corporation.

Fix the software patent laws (or eliminate them altogether) and the problem goes away.

Shouldn't have fed the trolls.

Ad hominem and non sequitur.

"A really shiny Best Buy?" You're kidding, right?

This is a company that makes consumer electronics and computers. It built and maintains two operating systems, including its own browsers, email clients, etc. It contributes to a number of open source projects, and maintains its own C compiler toolchain (which it also open sourced), an IDE. It also maintains a relationship with a certified team of developers, and maintains an ecosystem of online content, including music, movies, books, etc.

Oh yeah, and it also has retail stores, which have by far the best consumer experience of any electronics store.

I can't believe this got modded up +5.

Why would Apple alienate their professional customers, including developers? They're the ones who, along with graphic artists, movie editors, radiologists, etc, who pay top dollar for the most expensive Macs?

If developers can't install Apps like Eclipse, Mac Ports, various command-line tools, etc, then they'll switch platforms. Apple can't afford to lose those sales.

Besides, many game developers don't distribute on the Mac App Store, including EA and Blizzard (and Steam still runs separate from the App Store), not to mention Microsoft and Adobe. Just how can Apple afford to lose Office and Photoshop, among other high profile non-App Store apps?

It doesn't matter if there are more devices running Android because Apple is more profitable than any of them.

Also, Apple sells more iPhones than each of the Android licensees.

Comparing an operating system (Android) to a company (Apple) is really disingenuous.

All those Java developers who brought their MacBook Pros to JavaOne, between 1/4 and 1/3 of them depending on who you talk to, probably disagree with you.

Doesn't matter. The submitter stated it as a fact. The article doesn't make much of a case for it either.

I won't say that OS X has a perfect security record, but Windows historical has an abominable security record. Things are much better now, but I still read about vulnerabilities in Windows 7 and IE, and Microsoft still patches very frequently after 0-day exploits come out.

Besides, the techrepublic link you posted still says that OS X's security architecture is much stronger than Windows and only really makes a case for saying that Apple's secrecy and slow patching are the problem, in addition to applications like Safari. Granted, Safari is distributed with OS X, but saying that the OS itself is insecure is very different from saying that individual applications are to blame.

Still, it's really an incredible claim to say that any OS can be more insecure than Windows. The reason Windows will always have security problems is the legacy baggage, including old APIs and developer expectations of users having administrator rights out of the box. A complete rewrite of Windows and elimination of any expectations of backward compatibility will be needed to address the fundamental security flaws in Windows' architecture.

"For as much as Mac OS X has a reputation for being safer than Windows, security researchers won't hesitate to point out that the opposite is, in fact, true."

Have any quotes or links to back that up, Mr. Submitter?

And I've yet to ready a coherent reply to that question.

I don't know what Oracle's going to do with Netbeans but it's too early to say based on dropping Ruby on Rails support (not, AFAIK, the Ruby language). If Oracle doesn't want to keep every feature under the sun (no pun intended) in Netbeans, then I can't say that's a bad decision on their part. If they start charging for Netbeans and/or intentionally crippling the free version, that will be when it's time to cry foul. I don't count dropping a discretionary feature as RoR support as "crippling".

There's conflicting information out there:

They say it's just RoR:

  http://netbeans.org/community/news/show/1507.html

They say it's the Ruby language too:

http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/01/ruby-dropped-in-netbeans-7

Who's right?

He may figure that the Oracle lawsuit won't go so well, and either paying Oracle off or being forced to join OpenJDK won't do wonders for the Android business plan.