I am really, really, REALLY, starting to hate Apple...

Here's why...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14652482

These guys just really take the sodding cake, they really do. The idea of a hand-held computer is nothing new, after all. It's been around in science fiction for decades, even longer, maybe. Likewise, the idea of using a touch-sensitive screen is nothing new either - there are two types, resistive, where only one touch works at a time, and capacitative, where you can use two simultaneous touches to achieve a better result - that, by the way, is a hardware solution, not software, and has been known about for a fair while as well. Neither, come to that, is there anyting remarkably new in the way to show icons on a screen, or to combine the lot into a mobile (or cellular) telecommunications package, and call it a smartphone.

Yet, here's bloody Apple, waving a shedload of patents that should NEVER have seen the light of day, crying "foul" because, frankly, someone else has the temerity to challenge their so-called right to dominate the market. What Apple appear to be trying to do, by the way, is get a stranglehold, a complete dominance and monopoly, on mobile tablet computing. That's called restrictive trading practices, in my opinion. Wonder if a court will catch onto that theory and make it stick?

The people who run Apple are described in other places online as something of a bunch of control freaks, who demand that you only buy "Apps" from THEIR online store. They also apparently demand as much as 30% of the sale price as a fee for allowing such software packages to be sold there. So much for reasonable commisions. So much for free enterprise.

Microsoft have never demanded that third parties do that, and that's on a so-called 'closed' or proprietory operating system (Windows, in all its various incarnations), for pities sake. Even Android (Google) don't demand you use their "market place", there being a couple more out there, such as the Amazon version, to name but one.

Yet, here's Apple, screaming "Foul" at the top of their army of lawyers lungs, whenever they feel like it.

Enough is enough, and to misquote a King, will not SOMEONE rid us of this troublesome "Priest" (preferably in the courts, of course)?

Anyhow, the upshot for me would appear to be that unless I find the readies to buy a Galaxy S 2 inside the next seven weeks, I probably won't be able to get one at all, ever, thanks to those bloody ranting and tantruming brats over at Apple.

I mean, come ON, you'd think that having more disposable cash than the US Government would've been more than enough, right?

I really have had more than enough of those patent-waving wotsits, I really have.