23 essential facts from Apple’s Q2 fiscal call

> Microsoft, Google (Android), Facebook,

Google and Microsoft did not openly extort a duly elected governor like Apple and Wal-Mart did. If Google does, then I will buy a cheap burner flip phone, next.

As for Microsoft, I’m a Linux user (and engineer), so I don’t have a lot of use for it.

But it’s one thing to pay lip service under the duress of the gaystapo shake-down. It’s quite another to join them in their fascist pogroms.

Wal-Mart and Sam’s are dead to me, too, as is Best Buy, Home Cheapo, and Target.

There’s still Lehman’s, Goody’s Variety Store, Vermont Country Store, Staples, Radio Shack. There are alternatives. You’ll often pay more, but it’s worth it.

I remember when Microsoft gave Apple a loan to keep them viable.

SIGH! How many times must I have to shoot down this myth? There was no loan, bailout, or white knight savior from Microsoft that saved Apple.

Here is the explanation of what actually occurred:

This canard is false. Apple was past the crises when Microsoft settled a lawsuit that Apple had brought against it for infringing Apple patents and copyrights of QuickTime. The judge in the case had told Microsoft they were going to lose the QuickTime suit big time. Apple had smoking gun evidence proving the infringement: not only was much of the code for Microsoft's Windows Media Player identical to Apple's Quicktime, but the name of one of Apple's software engineers who had been intimately involved in designing and coding QuickTime had imbedded his and his mother's maiden name and even his social security number in the code of QuickTime, and it was still present in the Microsoft code. There was no avoiding the fact that Apple's code was stolen. Microsoft was going to lose, and the judge would be ordering treble damages. Apple's attorneys were insisting on a Jury trial so the potential for a huge award were very high.
Microsoft was also under heavy scrutiny from the Department of Justice for restraint of trade and monopolistic practices and did not want a public trial with this very anti-competitive practices. . . and Microsoft already had a reputation of theft of IP. They were looking for a way to make this simply go away.
Steve Jobs approached Microsoft with a proposal to end the issues because he wanted to clear the table for Apple as well as he took control of Apple as Interim CEO. He proposed a settlement of the lawsuit.
Microsoft PAID Apple to settle the lawsuit that could have run into the multiple BILLIONS of dollars had it gone to trial.
That sounds like Microsoft got off light, but there was a lot more to this settlement that benefitted Apple.
Instead of outright admitting guilt, Microsoft, to save face would buy $150 million for non-voting Apple five year restricted Preferred stock, re-issue and continue developing Microsoft Office for Mac for those five years, License from Apple the in-suit patents and copyrights for a further undisclosed royalties for five years only, and license to Apple for the life the life of the patents and copyrights at no cost many of Microsoft's intellectual properties of copyrights and patents.
In exchange for all that, Apple would issue a $5 piece of fancy paper (the stock certificate), grant the in-suit licenses, agree to package Microsoft Internet Explorer with every new Mac for five years along with Netscape Navigator, and drop the lawsuit with prejudice and in addition drop all other possible causes of action against Microsoft that Apple might have. Do you see the imbalance? That's because there is none. Microsoft got more than quid quo pro in the dropping of the lawsuit.
These agreements were outlined in three interlocking contracts that were filed with the court. . . and were unsealed around seven years later. All of them were contingent on the sale of the non-voting stock. A company that is bailing out another does not buy non-voting stock. . . they get voting stock and one or two seats on the Board of Directors. They especially do not get RESTRICTED stock which they cannot sell for a specified time. Forensic accountants have looked at both companies' books and have concluded that those "future royalties" came to as much as $2 billion over the five years of the agreement. . . and funded much of Apple's R&D for the iPod and future iPad and iPhone.
As I stated, at the time of the so-called "bailout", Apple had over $2 .4 Billon in cash and liquid assets, had gone though two profitable quarters, each greater than the previous, and including buying NeXT from Steve Jobs for a combination of cash and stock.

Ergo, Moonman62, there simply was no bailout, no "saving of Apple", no Bill Gates as a white knight. And Apple pulled itself out of its problems.

That was Microsoft settling a legal action with Apple. Although the total amount is somewhat clouded ... the settlement that Microsoft paid to Apple might have been around ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

Couple of corrections, the article you link is good but got some detail wrong . . . There were three interlocking agreements that were revealed 10 years later. They were once published on Scribd. Also Forensic Accountants went back over both Apple and Microsoft books and came to the conclusion that it was not $500 million to $1 Billion in additional payments but as much as $2 BILLION and possibly more in additional licensing payments over the five years the agreements were in place.

The "cross-licensing" was essentially only one-direction. Apple only licensed the at-suit QuickTime IP. . . but Microsoft was required to license essentially everything they developed during the five years that Apple wanted at no cost in perpetuity. Apple apparently did not exercise this often, but they had the option to do it. Essentially, Apple had free access to Microsoft's patent portfolio, but not vice verse.

The inclusion of Internet Explorer, was not really even the "default" browser, but was only included WITH Netscape Navigator. Microsoft did not need to have one more example of forcing their products on the computing world when it was the Netscape/Internet Explorer browser fiasco that had brought the attention of the Justice Department in the first place. So both browsers were included in the Application folder of MacOS and the user could choose.

Ironic that we have not heard calls to break up the Apple monopoly from the Elizabeth Warren's of the world.

That's because Apple has no monopoly to break up. They are a single company selling their products. They are not practicing monopolistic predatory pricing, or other non-competitive actions.

The single conviction for anti-competitive action in Judge Cote's Kangaroo Kourt on the e-books case where she found that Apple was guilty of using the entirely legal Agency model for selling e-books, looks as if it being laughed out of the Appeals process and being decided in Apple's behalf. . . as Judge Cote went into it announcing she had made up her mind before hearing any evidence that Apple was guilty, of being the "ring leader" in the price fixing of he e-books price fixing, despite not even being part of the e-book industry when the publishers did their conspiring or being at in any of the meetings of the publishers, or Apple having any market share at all. . . while the true monopolist, Amazon, with 90% of the market WAS fixing prices to its advantage!

Now that's irony for you.

Google and Microsoft did not openly extort a duly elected governor like Apple and Wal-Mart did. If Google does, then I will buy a cheap burner flip phone, next.

Google and Microsoft signed the same letter that Apple's CEO did. . . and funded the project. Apple's CEO and Walmart's CEO only signed the letter. The LIBERAL MAIN STREAM MEDIA made Apple and Walmart the poster boys of the movement. . . but those other companies did just as much. Tim Cook did make a public statement because he is gay. Whoopee duck. If you total up the amount each company has spent on the agenda, Microsoft and Google will have SPENT far more.

By the way, Radio Shack went belly up two months ago. All their stores are empty and gone. For Lease signs are hanging in everyone of them. But then they were Zombie stores walking for some time. Too bad.

Radio Shack is still in business here in New England. I drive by one almost every day.

Radio Shack is a Zombie company. Radio Shack is bankrupt.

"On March 31, 2015, the bankruptcy court approved a $160 million offer by the Standard General affiliate General Wireless, gaining ownership of 1,743 RadioShack locations. As part of the deal, the company entered into a partnership with Sprint, in which the company would become a co-tenant at 1,435 RadioShack locations and establish store within a store areas devoted to selling its wireless brands, including Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. The stores will collect commissions on the sale of Sprint products, and Sprint will assist in promotion. Sprint stated that this arrangement would increase the company's retail footprint by more than double; the company previously had around 1,100 company-owned retail outlets, in comparison to the over 2,000 run by AT&T Mobility. Although they are treated as a co-tenant, the Sprint branding will be more prominent in promotion and exterior signage than that of RadioShack. The acquisition did not include rights to RadioShack's intellectual property, such as its trademarks. While Standard General was granted a limited, six-month license for use of the RadioShack brand, rights to the brand, along with RadioShack's franchised locations, will be sold during a separate auction in May 2015. Standard General representatives have stated that while the company does not necessarily need the RadioShack trademarks to conduct their new business, it may still bid for them.[161][162][163][164]
The re-branded stores soft launched on April 10, 2015, with a preliminary conversion of the stores' existing wireless departments to exclusively house Sprint brands. The stores will eventually be renovated in "waves" to introduce larger spaces for Sprint.

But I will not patronize Apple, Google, Micro$oft, Wal-Mart or any other signers of that extortion note.

Well at least you are going to try to be consistent? Now, how about CISCO? Are you going to strip Cisco out of your phones, routers, and your carrier's equipment? That's a problem. . . ;^) Face it, the signers of that letter are ubiquitous and unavoidable.

Like I said, their hardware is top-notch. THey have a checkered history with the software on their mobile platform, however. Example:

My first non-Blackberry smartphone was an iPhone 3GS. I loved that phone, right up until the iPhone 4s came out. At that point, Apple released an OS update. I installed this on my 3GS, and immediately started having issues - 1 or 2 crashes per day. 20-30 second launch times for the built-in mail and some other apps. Even starting a call took 4 or 5 seconds. It was completely unusable - so bad that I was forced to look for an alternative. Had Apple not done that, I would almost certainly have purchased an iPhone 4. But I resented being forced to upgrade, so I went with another vendor.

They've done the same thing again, although to a lesser degree, with my iPad Air. Here's a video that shows my iPad Air displaying the Drudge Report web page. Note the extremely slow rendering of the page as I scroll through it. This gets worse over time, and won't improve until I restart Safari (and then it just goes back to the speed shown in the video - abysmal). Drudge is a very simple web site, with few images and minimal ads, so I don't understand this. My phone actually renders it much better than my iPad. Some websites will also trigger Safari to reset the page and display some message along the lines of "There was a problem with this web page so it was reloaded". This happens *a lot*. Again, I'd be right there upgrading to the latest iPad, but this experience has so soured me that when it's time to upgrade, I'll most likely just get an Android tablet, or maybe a Surface Pro 4 if that's out. Video

But I don't mean for this to turn into a rant against Apple, because aside from these complaints, I do like their products. Like I said above, they make great hardware, and I've had no issues with the non-mobile platform (ie OS-X).

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