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pembrook 4 hours ago

I’m a huge fan of Apple but this kind of thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Regardless of whether OpenAI poached some of their talent or is the one in the wrong, Apple has such a massively dominant hardware business (some might say monopoly level in some areas) that for them to be publicly acknowledging how scared they are of OpenAI…it’s just…pathetic.

They’re a $5T company and can’t muster up the motivation to get in the game and compete in the next computing frontier.

Apple fanboys will invent some narrative about them swooping in with the best product as a laggard and claim it’s always their strategy, but I see zero evidence they have the capacity to do that anymore.

The Siri situation is just absolutely pathetic and no amount of bad press about OpenAI is going to change the fact that Apple neglecting Siri for a decade now has been a big F-U to their customers.

NBJack 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You may want to read the related articles first. I'm personally quite anti-Apple on several fronts, but the evidence so far seems damning if it holds up in court.

jmull an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can’t poach talent, because companies don’t own their employees.

You can steal trade secrets, which is what this case is about.

(If you’re going to suggest a full rewrite of IP and anti-trust law, you should at least have an understanding of the current situation.)

presbyterian 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This isn't just them being scared of a competitor because they're able to outperform Apple, according to Apple they have proof of an active plan not just to poach talent, but to get that talent to syphon out information as they leave, as well as former employees keeping Apple hardware and using it to access confidential information. If what Apple claims is true, this is straightforwardly illegal. Could Apple be lying? Maybe, but that's a very risky move.

pembrook 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It totally could be illegal, and I don’t care. Those laws exist to entrench dominant incumbents, and make our economy less dynamic.

The history of Silicon Valley and most of its innovation come from this kind of thing, and we eliminated non-competes in California for exactly this reason.

Apple having a serious competitor in hardware would be a good thing for consumers all over the world.

Apple’s overzealous secrecy culture starts to become insidious once you become such a dominant force in the marketplace.

At what point do we allow their innovations to bleed into the rest of humanity and lower their margins so humanity doesn’t pay out a 60% tax to them anymore. I think they’ve made enough profits for investors at this point. Id be happy if my Apple stock went nowhere if it meant 20 other companies could grow and innovate new products off the back of it.

jamespo 4 hours ago | parent [-]

So we should "make our economy more dynamic" by encouraging IP theft which will simultaneously discourage genuine research & development?

homarp 3 hours ago | parent [-]

it worked for China, no?

(and to develop 5G modem too)

nomorewords 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In china's case it wasn't internal but external

lowmagnet 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In what case is apple a monopoly?

trollbridge 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Some people think that being the exclusive supplier of iOS based devices is a “monopoly”.

twoodfin 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Also, I’ve observed a rhetorical trend among the “anti-bigness” crowd towards defining “monopoly” down:

“You may think a monopoly is an overwhelmingly dominant position as a supplier of a good or service, but that’s just naive popular economics! Acshually, according to the latest economic theories (by economists who share our politics), a monopoly is any firm that is big enough to have market power—like pricing power—to do things that can harm a competitor unfairly.”

Us dummies will keep calling that competition.

vel0city 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

McDonald's is the exclusive supplier of Big Macs and McNuggets. They're a monopoly.

Danox an hour ago | parent | next [-]

In and Out Burger is an even bigger monopoly, the way they organize themselves is unfair to the rest of their competition.

vel0city 44 minutes ago | parent [-]

They control the In and the Out? What other options does the competition have?

steve1977 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One sells Big Macs... the other Mac minis... there must be a connection.

vel0city 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Clearly Apple and McDonalds has had a deep level of market collusion on Macs, the FTC should really get involved here and break up this Mac cartel.

covercash 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And they’re the exclusive fast food partner of Monopoly… so they have a Monopoly monopoly?

vel0city 2 hours ago | parent [-]

How deep does this rabbit hole go?

Der_Einzige 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Blue bubble discrimination so bad that android users are the vast majority of incels. Even if that’s not technically a monopoly breaking up Apple would materially increase USA birthrates. Unironically!