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WSJ: When Apple Comes Calling, ‘It’s the Kiss of Death’
Related: Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPhone and iPad, iOS, security, The Wall Street Journal
re: Data Loss by Failing To Backup
re: WSJ: A Basic iPhone Feature Helps Criminals Steal Your Entire Digital Life
Apple cultivates a friendly image with its customers, along with steaming loads of virtue signaling. Reality begs to differ, whether it is gaslighting its users about data loss, or failing to deliver releases free of major security flaws, or cooperating with the CCP. But Apple’s masterful PR has so far served won hearts and minds.
WSJ: When Apple Comes Calling, ‘It’s the Kiss of Death’
2023-04-20
Aspiring partners accuse tech giant of copying their ideas; Apple says it plays by the rules
It sounded like a dream partnership when Apple Inc. AAPL -0.88%decrease; red down pointing triangle reached out to Joe Kiani, the founder of a company that makes blood-oxygen measurement devices. He figured his technology was a perfect fit for the Apple Watch.
Soon after meeting him, Apple began hiring employees from his company, Masimo Corp.,MASI 0.27%increase; green up pointing triangle including engineers and its chief medical officer. Apple offered to double their salaries, Mr. Kiani said. In 2019, Apple published patents under the name of a former Masimo engineer for sensors similar to Masimo’s, documents show. The following year, Apple launched a watch that could measure blood oxygen levels.
“When Apple takes an interest in a company, it’s the kiss of death,” said Mr. Kiani. “First, you get all excited. Then you realize that the long-term plan is to do it themselves and take it all.”
Mr. Kiani is one of more than two dozen executives, inventors, investors and lawyers who described similar encounters with Apple. First, they said, came discussions about potential partnerships or integration of their technology into Apple products. Then, they said, talks stopped and Apple launched its own similar features.
...Apple has tried to invalidate hundreds of patents owned by companies that have accused Apple of violating their patents. According to lawyers and executives at some smaller companies, Apple sometimes files multiple petitions on a single patent claim and attempts to invalidate patents unrelated to the initial dispute.
... AliveCor board chairman and investor Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist, said he now steers companies in which he has invested away from having any talks with Apple. “Apple will talk to everybody and then try to steal the best people who are developing the technology,” he said.
...A few months later, Mr. Kiani said, he got a call from his chief medical officer, Michael O’Reilly, informing him he was joining Apple, which he said had agreed to double his salary and pay him millions in Apple shares. Mr. O’Reilly didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Kiani said Apple urged him not to worry about the hiring of Mr. O’Reilly, and the two companies continued to talk about potential plans. Apple went on to hire 30 of Masimo’s employees, he said.
...
MPG: Apple plays hardball, very effective and legal too. When people leave of their own free will to join Apple, who can blame them? But there never is any real way to preclude also taking the knowledge that might not be theirs to take.
One has to always wonder whether such articles are unfair hit pieces, but over time I keep reading the same kind of story.
The patent system is now a system for those with loads of money; it is all but unavailable to small companies and inventors, due to the very high costs involved.
See also: Taiibi: On the Hypocrites at Apple Who Fired Antonio Garcia-Martinez
