If you want an apple and you go and buy it from someone’s market, it’s called closed source. If you go and get the apple yourself knowing which and what kind of a tree it is from, it is called open source. I wouldn’t want to be unfair, this is not how it always is. Sometimes some grocers give the apple for free for some reason. Nonetheless open source is an important factor for a free internet and a computer life. Of course it’s quite hard to tell about these things to Apple users, because most of them only use Apple for simple tasks like surfing the internet, messaging or calling someone. Of course we can’t blame people for that, but gaining awareness is never a bad thing.
When we say closed source, naturally we immediately think of the patent warrior, environment’s enemy, employee slaver, production camp site creator, Chinese children labourer Apple. It’s not so hard to find this information. If you don’t know about these deeds, I suggest you read on. Of course Apple is not the only company, that does such things, but it’s one of the leaders. So does Apple only hate its employees and users? Of course not. Apple’s one of the most favourite targets is developers. If you are a developer and you want to create an IOS app you first have to get yourself a Mac that costs between $1000-1500. It doesn’t end with that. You have to go get yourself a developer account that costs $99/yr, which Google sells for only $25 without a yearly subscription fee. You want to sell something in your app? You have to use Apple’s In-App Purchase API so that Apple can earn from your earnings. I can hear you saying “But Apple is so big, strong, sexy etc…”. I am sorry but no. It would be unfair to make this comparison between Apple and Android, so let’s compare Apple to other big vendors.
Even though personally I am not very fond of Samsung, the truth is out there. So how did Apple’s battles that inspired patent trolls begin? If you are wondering what a patent troll is let me explain like this: You get an idea and you dive into the market with this idea, but a person or a company, that we call the patent troll has guessed that something like this might happen and they got a patent to it. That’s quite idiotic isn’t it? Of course technically you can’t get a patent for something you don’t have. These trolls use the patents they have and try to show them as something broader and make a claim on your idea. I don’t know if you remember, but this was all Apple did once upon a time. Instead of “innovation” we used to hear about stupid lawsuits with Samsung. Fortunately something similar is happening to Apple too. A patent troll, that has the name of a 90’s computer virus VirnetX apparently has a patent that includes the technology of apps like iMessage and FaceTime. Now Apple has to pay 626 million dollars. Of course we are against patent trolls, but I doubt this is even enough for Apple. Think about it, you have a 14 people company with a rented office for $5000 per month and you accomplish one of the biggest patent trollings winning 626 million dollars. I don’t wanna say anything bad, but it would be suitable if they suffered. Anyway, I should get back to Apple.
If you don’t know anything about Apple’s Chinese factories, it’s the time to learn now, because when we face the reality, Apple is today’s E Corp. People in these factories work 24 hour shifts, they are subjected to poisonous gas and even explosions. But they still work. These people still clean the screens with their hands. Put them aside, is it also okay that Apple causes child labour? Just because a product was leaked early Foxconn was so afraid of Apple’s lawsuits that they pushed an employee until he snapped and committed suicide. Of course the suicides didn’t stop with one person. Foxconn built a suicide-net under their buildings, because their employees started committing suicide a lot from their military-like buildings.
If you don’t trust my words, maybe you can trust the words of the founder of Oculus VR, Palmer Luckey, who said that Apple doesn’t make good computers. If you are interested in virtual reality like me you either have to wait for Apple to make good computers or just buy a PC.
My aim wasn’t to make this article so dark, but I think it’s inevitable when it’s about Apple. The information here doesn’t mean, that the other companies are pure angels. I just felt like writing this because there are too many people who roll on the floors screaming “Apple!”.
We have to support the concept of open source in order to stop companies like this messing everything up for us. We can’t expect a person who doesn’t care about technical stuff to just start caring, but what I wrote should be readable by everyone.