When suing over patents such as "rectangle with rounded corners" and "basic
interface functionality with a touch screen" - they are no longer consumer
oriented.
Not other consumers and not their own.
Who ultimately
pays for Apple to handle these Lawsuits? Their own consumers via marked up
prices of their products. Other consumers over marked up prices of other
products.
Who ultimately pays for Apple to acquire and misuse patents on
standard functionality1? Both Apple and non-Apple
consumers.
Once upon a time Apple was consumer focused. But at some
point they lost their way. Perhaps having to deal with entities like Psystar
helped set them off course. For whatever reasons: they are no longer consumer
focused.
1) Touch screens have been in use for a long
time now. Putting a touch screen together with any computational device should
now be considered obvious. Whether that device is a computer, laptop, tablet,
smartphone, netbook, [pick your choice of what the next device will be called]
doesn't alter the fact it was originally build in the late
'60s.
Historians consider the first touch screen to be a
capacitive touch screen invented by E.A. Johnson at the Royal Radar
Establishment, Malvern, UK, around 1965 - 1967. The inventor published a full
description of touch screen technology for air traffic control in an article
published in 1968.
For shame Apple: trying to block someone from
adding touch screens to smartphones when the concept is at least 40 years
old.
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