Apple claims Android has roots at Apple

Before you go all crazy and accuse me of fanboyism or Apple being ridiculous (or both), go read the piece from Florian Mueller. In one of Apple’s filing against HTC, it says that when Andy Rubin worked at Apple in the 90s, his superiors were the ones who came up with a patent that Rubin later used to create Android, which means he may have been a contributor to the patent that Apple owns. If the ITC judge holds up Apple’s argument, this clearly will not bode well for Android.

Rubin worked at Apple long before the iPhone – even long before the iPod. If Apple had just claimed without particularity that Android started at Apple, most people would dismiss such an allegation as complete nonsense. But Apple now asserts – in a filing with the ITC, which means Apple has a legal obligation to make truthful representations of fact – that Rubin’s superiors at Apple were the inventors of that realtime API patent and he worked for them at the very time they made that invention. He worked as a low-level engineer while the inventors were senior people. It’s possible that he then contributed to the implementation of the claimed invention.

What’s going on with Michael Arrington?

At the beginning it looked like Arrington simply wanted to go back to investing since that’s how he got into this blogging business in the first place and even more so recently when he put money into a number of startups.

The way AOL is going about the news from today however, is a lot less clear. AOL had committed Arrington for three years as part of the TechCrunch acquisition which means he’s still got about two years to go but if AOL wanted him out of TC, they could be shifting him aside to another arm outside of the Huffington media group.

Here’s a summary by Dan Primack at Fortune:

It told the NYT that Arrington would still have a (reduced) role with the site, and continue reporting directly to Arianna Huffington. Then AOL said he would report to AOL Ventures. Today it says that he is no longer employed by the company, but can continue contributing to TechCrunch as an unpaid blogger. In other words, AOL is acting like AOL typically acts: Scattershot.

It’s been less than 24 hours so the flurry of news is still coming in and even news out of AOL itself isn’t clear. Nobody seems to have a straight story to tell.

Meanwhile, not a peep from TechCrunch but a monster rant from Kara Swisher.

[update] Paul Carr has his say on the matter. Yes, AOL screwed up in announcing the CrunchFund.

What’s going on with Michael Arrington?

theatlantic:

The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time

It’s been called the Gig Economy, Freelance Nation, the Rise of the Creative Class, and the e-conomy, with the “e” standing for electronic, entrepreneurial, or perhaps eclectic. Everywhere we look, we can see the U.S.workforce undergoing a massive change. No longer do we work at the same company for 25 years, waiting for the gold watch, expecting the benefits and security that come with full-time employment. We’re no longer simply lawyers, or photographers, or writers. Instead, we’re part-time lawyers-cum- amateur photographers who write on the side.

Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops/coworking spaces. Independent workers abound. We call them freelancers, contractors, sole proprietors, consultants, temps, and the self-employed.

And, perhaps most surprisingly, many of them love it.

Read more at The Atlantic

Would personal computers have gained GUIs without Jobs? Sure, but not as early. It took Microsoft 10 years to come up with a decent GUI, and that was with the example of the Mac staring them in the face. How likely is it that non-Apple smartphones would look and behave the way they do now if the iPhone hadn’t come out in ’07? And we’re still waiting for good tablets other than the iPad.

…

In a sense, you’re using a Steve Jobs product whether it has an Apple logo or not

@drdrang

sigh not again

Apple lost another prototype iPhone. Yes. In a bar. Again.

*sigh* not again

That scene. Changed forever.

in a climactic scene from “Return of the Jedi,” when Darth Vader hurls the evil Emperor to his demise on the Death Star, he would now shout “No!” (In all previous versions of “Jedi,” Vader has committed this crucial deed in silence.)”

On Wednesday, a press representative for Lucasfilm confirmed that this change will be included in the Blu-ray release, writing in an e-mail: “Yes — Darth says NO.”

NY Times

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Source: The New York Times