Full control, not to continue helping a rival, and to protect users' privacy (note the role of Latitude in the negotiations).

I know Mormons. They're people like every other group. Some good, some bad. But the religion is ridiculous. The charrlatanism simply has the disadvantage of having originated during fairly recent (relatively speaking) recorded history (there is a rich record of Smith being a huckster), and of being at odds with anthropology and other sciences on a number of items (he wasn't educated enough to know is his fairy tales which beasts were indigenous to pre-Columbian North America). It doesn't matter that they don't blow up buildings, neither do Scientologists.

Public figures are not allowed to have personal opinions or to voice them frankly!!! /. Which one is running for office? Linus can call whoever he wants whatever he wants. Is he expected to abide by a monklike silence on issues beyond Linux? At least it wasn't as off-color as some of RMS's impolitic remarks--which he also had every right to say.

Oh come on. "We won't use Linux" as a policy by Mormon-owned business affects Linus exactly how? OT, big Dead fan, saw the garcia and Lazy Lightning URL (which happens to be in my area, the TC), big ups to you sir.

I think the chief issues with Maps service is a lack of human oversight. I think a crowdsourced solution like Waze is probably a way to shore up that deficiency rapidly.

I am not an IP advocate, but I'm not sure that logic applies. Just because something is obvious in the physical domain, applying it to a control on a device isn't also obvious necessarily... it's not a skeumorphism for a spring or something, for example, which might make this connection less tenuous. Not defending the IP or IP-based attack, just don't necessarily trust your rationale for saying it's an obvious invention.

That's because they are extortionate: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-egCdCQfOYgY/T3dLa1LjTrI/AAAAAAAAAX4/mIiryUnYncE/s1600/MMI%2B%2527RAND%2527%2Boffer%2BH.264.png

I know this may come as a shock, but the majority of the desktop market is not developers (though no doubt an appreciable percentage of Linux desktop users is, which is why his view is so skewed). What killed Linux as a desktop OS is probably a very complicated and nuanced confluence of factors, but I think Microsoft's embedded position and anticompetitive tactics have more to do with it than the preferences of server developers, as does the lack of grandma-compliant plug and play and usability.

That said, looking at things another way, as we move into device-based computing, GNU/Linux by way of Android is very competitive on the palmtop, if not the desktop, in the same way that Mach/BSD is by way of Darwin/iOS.

...especially if the "desktop" is also the "palmtop." Which I think it is. (Think Android and iOS, GNU/Linux and BSD/Mach).

Apple is failing? Geez, what would success look like?

I disagree--I think their end game is to make sure their competitors innovate instead of slavishly replicating the look and feel that they designed. Windows 8's Metro interface and Palm's webOS interface both demonstrate that it's possible, with a little imagination, to attack this market with new ideas. Samsung needs to get up off their ass and learn how to macroinnovate.

And it will continue to get upvoted by ignorant sensationalists.

The prior art I am a bit skeptical of. It seems to cover screen layout, but doesn't get into the dynamics of the UI, where Apple's asserting patents like the rubber band scrolling and the multitouch gestures: the LG Prada had scrollbars and was still using a desktop-based UI paradigm. I think ground-up multitouch on mobile is really what Apple established at a most fundamental level.

The reason Samsung is outselling Apple in the phone market, in Apple's view, is because they ripped off UI/UX elements from Apple. So, yeah, it's a little of both--protecting their IP, and protecting their market share.

What an interesting chart. The R&D ROI for AAPL is astounding given what Samsung, RIM, and Nokia have invested versus their relative earnings. I guess a lesson here is, it's not QUANTITY of R&D investment so much as QUALITY.