OS and Software > All Things Unix > Apple & Google In Talks To End Patent War?

The heads of Apple and Google are said to be in talks to try and find a solution to the current patent war over the Android operating system.

Much like President Obama, Apple CEO Tim Cook inherited a some-would-say pointless war from his predecessor, but unlike the politicians it seems the techies are willing to try "jaw, jaw, rather than war, war," to quote Winston Churchill.

Reuters reports that Cook and Google CEO Larry Page already had one extensive phone call last week to try and settle their differences, with another that was scheduled for this week but cancelled for unspecified reasons. Meanwhile, lower corporate minions are working on a series of discussion points for the two.

It's not clear if these talks are just about the Android operating system and its similarities to iOS, or if the two are looking at a broader non-aggression pact. Apple may have won $1.05bn in damages from Samsung in court last week, but the Koreans look set to take the issue right to the Supreme Court - and that's a lot of legal bills and bad publicity for Apple.

Similarly, Android OEMs need a bit of stability in their lives. Tim Cook warned the industry that Apple has taken heart from the Samsung verdict and has other companies in its sights, and Larry Page could be willing to come to some sort of deal with Apple that would stave off further legal action.

With both protagonists gone, it may be that both companies have decided the time has come to bury the hatchet. Apple's the most valuable company in the world, but Google's not short of funds, and a protracted legal war could prove very expensive.

It's not clear if these talks are just about the Android operating system and its similarities to iOS,

You mean iOS is similar to Unix, of which it is a complete rip-off, as is OSX. Linux/Android is also rip-off of Unix, but it never claimed to be anything else.

The term Unix-like is widely used to describe operating systems that share many of the characteristics of the original UNIX, which was written in 1969 by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs, and its early successors.

However, they do not have a direct lineage to the original UNIX source code, and most of them do not officially describe themselves as being UNIX. This category includes the BSDs (i.e., FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Darwin), Linux, MINIX, QNX and Cygwin.

Broadly, any Unix-like system that behaves in a manner roughly consistent with the UNIX specification; more specifically, this can refer to systems such as Linux or Minix that behave similarly to a UNIX system but have no genetic or trademark connection to the AT&T code base.

Apple Mac OS X 10.5 and later is a BSD variant, and has been [UNIX] certified, and a few certified systems (such as IBM z/OS) earned the trademark through a POSIX compatibility layer and are not otherwise inherently Unix systems.

I'm surpirised that some posters here believe that Linux is a UNIX rip-off.

I'm surpirised that some posters here believe that Linux is a UNIX rip-off.

Understand that my post was in jest.

The "Is Linux Unix?" debate is about an interesting debate as YOTLD debates.

Apple has never been truly innovative, they have merely taken the hard work from others (like BSD) and then done an excellent job at marketing it. Most of the parts in the iPhone are made by Samsung -- the company they just sued. Apple's desktop never really got popular until they switched from their crappy PPC to Intel x86 (because x86 is cheaper and more powerful at the same time). So nothing Apple has is original. Their hardware in their mobile devices is primarily Samsung, and their hardware in desktop/laptops is x86. All of it is made by third-parties. And their software is primarily BSD/Mach. Their only innovation is a few userspace applications and rectangular icons.

I'm not seeing your point.

Was the navigation wheel in the iPod an Apple invention, or did that acquire that?

It is not widely known that Apple did not develop the click wheel; Synaptics came up with the design for the device. There have nevertheless been a few lawsuits concerning its capacitance-sensing technology.

In January 2007, a U.K Based company named Quantum Research made public a lawsuit against Apple claiming that its own patents on this technology were being infringed by Apple itself. Legal action regarding this lawsuit had been going on since 2005, but was not made public until two years after.

Incidentally, what ABOUT Rockbox, is it nix like?

Rockbox is a free and open source replacement for the standard firmware in various forms of digital audio players (DAPs).

From the 1980s to the present, Apple has been plaintiff or defendant in civil actions in the United States and other countries.

Some of these actions have determined significant case law for the information technology industry and many have captured the attention of the public and media.

Apple's litigation generally involves intellectual property disputes, but the company has also been a party in lawsuits that include antitrust claims, consumer actions, commercial unfair trade practice suits, defamation claims, and corporate espionage, among other matters.

I assumed the allegation was about ideas, not code.