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Last year, Apple’s lawyers sent Henrik Huseby, the owner of a small electronics repair shop in Norway, a letter demanding that he immediately stop using aftermarket iPhone screens at his repair business and that he pay the company a settlement.
Norway’s customs officials had seized a shipment of 63 iPhone 6 and 6S replacement screens on their way to Henrik’s shop from Asia and alerted Apple; the company said they were counterfeit.
In order to avoid being sued, Apple asked Huseby for “copies of invoices, product lists, order forms, payment information, prints from the internet and other relevant material regarding the purchase [of screens], including copies of any correspondence with the supplier … we reserve the right to request further documentation at a later date.”
The letter, sent by Frank Jorgensen, an attorney at the Njord law firm on behalf of Apple, included a settlement agreement that also notified him the screens would be destroyed. The settlement agreement said that Huseby agrees “not to manufacture, import, sell, market, or otherwise deal with any products that infringe Apple’s trademarks,” and asked required him to pay 27,700 Norwegian Krone ($3,566) to make the problem go away without a trial.
“Intellectual Property Law is a specialized area of law, and seeking legal advice is in many instances recommended,” Jorgensen wrote in the letter accompanying the settlement agreement. “However, we can inform you that further proceedings and costs can be avoided by settling the case.”
Huseby decided to fight the case.
“That’s a letter I would never put my signature on,” Huseby told me in an email. “They threw all kinds of claims against me and told me the laws and acted so friendly and just wanted me to sign the letter so it would all be over. I had a good lawyer that completely understood the problem, did good research, and read the law correctly.”
Apple sued him. Local news outlets reported that Apple had five lawyers in the courtroom working on the case, but Huseby won. Apple has appealed the decision to a higher court; the court has not yet decided whether to accept the appeal.
[...] The specifics of Huseby’s case won’t matter for American repair shops, but that Apple continues to aggressively pursue a repair shop owner over 63 iPhone screens signals that Apple is not interested in changing its stance on independent repair, and that right to repair activists and independent repair companies should expect a long fight ahead of them: “I feel that this case was extremely important for them to win,” Huseby said.
He just hopes to get back to his shop, he told me.
“I will continue to repair iPhone like I did before, no change,” he said. “I’m glad I now don’t have to be afraid of importing compatible spare parts for iPhone again.”
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday April 17 2018, @10:44AM (7 children)
If ever there was a demonstrated reason for never doing business with Apple ever again, I think this is it.
Whether you're making products for their phones, their users, or whatever, just leave them to their closed-off ecosystem and let them deal with customers not wanting to pay their price and hence moving from their products entirely because they CAN'T find a cheap repair.
I would want nothing to do with such a company, or their products, or the users of their products. And I'd explain why.
Plus, I'd also question quite how much money is in iPhone repair - they are so difficult to repair correctly that I've had entire companies refuse to deal with even miniscule amounts of damage "in the wrong place" and saying that a screen replacement can't be guaranteed to last even ten minutes in them because of how integrated everything is and how shitty the cases the are. I can't believe that you can actually profit, when you take into account the costs, the hassle, the time, the equipment to do it properly, and the returns for when your repairs fail (even because of an iOS update!) for reasons directly related to Apple not wanting you to do this.
Let them eat their own dogfood. If they want to make something irreparable, let them. Users will catch on sooner or later when all the independent repair shops refuse to touch them, and they have to pay Apple prices.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday April 17 2018, @01:45PM (6 children)
Disagree.
The Apple Acolytes have had years of this treatment. They don't seem to mind paying high prices. They don't mind high repair bills. They don't mind deliberately accelerated obsolescence. They don't mind new user interface ideas, that don't pass the laugh test. (But that one is true of Microsoft acolytes.) They don't mind the walled garden. As long as the concrete walls look nice on the inside, they don't care if it looks like a prison camp from the outside. It's okay that Apple's biggest innovations in the last ten years are in its courtroom arguments. (I forget which country, but: of all possible design choices, Samsung chose to make its tablet so thin and bezels so narrow as to blur Apple's distinctiveness.)
The Apple developer acolytes don't mind being abused either. They willingly pay yearly in order to hope that their prayer and suplication for inclusion in the Apple store will be heard and granted. That Apple won't suddenly look disfavorably upon them because they are making too much money and Apple would now like to build it's own similar thing. That Apple might grant them the favor of honoring them with the high privilege of being allowed to develop for Apple products. Making a yearly pilgrimage to the WWDC will help cleanse your heart from the temptations of other platforms. Just be sure to clap on cue when the messiah announces anything that seems new and not copied.
Jobs: Who needs multitasking on a phone? Cheering applause!
Jobs: We've got multitasking on the iPhone!! Cheers! But done poorly with badges! More applause.
Jobs: We brazenly stole Android's notification system and say it is unique innovation instead of stupid badges! More applause!
Jobs: We are going to build the tallest iPhone ever! So tall you won't believe it. It will be the biggest, tallest, greatest, iPhone you've ever seen. And Mexico will pay . . . . oh, wait. Nevermind.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:26PM (4 children)
Not fully true. Been an iPhone user since iPhone 1 and my daughter also. But we both are thinking to move to the pixel 3 (my wife uses the pixel 1 and loves it). She said the Samsung phones have to much bloatware. However the pixel is its own form of evil since the main reason my wife loves it is the google services.
Not sure who is more evil these days. Apple Google or FB. Probably FB > Apple > Google in evil? And we are just at the surface of the FB stuff. That rabbit hole will descend to the gates of hell I think.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:56PM (2 children)
They're ALL evil in one way or another.
Google just wants to put ads in front of your eyes. In exchange they provide you with lots of fantastic services that improve your life. Google is not interested personally in you. Your data is just a drop in a vast ocean of data. (That is probably true of others too.)
FB seems to want to violate your privacy. Their default position on everything seems to have been to hide nothing. Facebook will sell your info to the highest and lowest bidder. Maybe Google does too? But that would seem to actually work against Google's interests of being the best place to pay to run ads.
Samsung IS indeed bloated. I had several generations of them. I got a Google Nexus 6P in 2016. My wife got a Pixel 2. (She was former Samsung and iPhone user.) Both of us will never go back. This month I bought a Pixelbook (using Crouton on it). Our phones have NO bloatware. No apps forced upon us that we didn't need nor want. If I want a certain app, I can go to the Play store and install it.
I almost jumped to the Pixel 2 XL. I don't know anything about Pixel 3 yet. But that is probably what I may become interested in. But I'm disgusted about that foul "notch". I WANT a little bit of bezel at top/bottom to have great stereo front speakers. Now that I've had that, it is probably a deal killer.
One thing I would say in Samsung's favor is that they have not yet had the "courage" to get rid of the headphone jack.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 17 2018, @03:31PM
Pixelbook observation: It has two USB C ports. One on each side. Each with LED to indicate charging status or battery remaining. At any time with the lid closed, if you double-touch in the area of the LED or USB port, the LED will briefly light to indicate battery level. It is unclear how the double-touch is detected.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Tuesday April 17 2018, @08:29PM
Any ranking of those three is just a matter of degree.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @11:25PM
Yes, they all suck.
I've managed to avoid smartphones entirely so far, but I'm cautiously optimistic about Librem 5 [puri.sm] (no affiliation, etc), though the price is a bit spicy. I'll see if I can save up ~$600 for it before it comes out, in a year or so. I just hope that my 10-year-old flip dumbphone lasts that long, hah :D
Anyhoo, I'd like to hear if anyone's had any bad experiences with Purism stuff? From what I heard they seem nice, but that makes me suspicious (where's MostCynical when you need him?).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quacking duck on Tuesday April 17 2018, @03:55PM
You might be surprised. iDevice-only fans might fall into that category, but Mac fans are having a serious falling out with the company and that's translating into reduced enthusiasm for iDevices too, myself included.
Just check this article [macdailynews.com] on a website I've called the Fox News of all things Apple. Until the last few few years, the editors and many commenters praised and rabidly defended Apple no matter what. But in this article, all the comments saying they are abandoning the Mac and switching to PC, or strongly considering doing so, are averaging 5 star ratings. Many are by long-time posters.
A half-decade ago much was made about how Mac and iOS integration and the Apple ecosystem was a large part of what kept users stuck on Apple products, and it's much the same for me, too. Lose the Mac users, and suddenly the strongest Apple supporters have just lost a huge reason for sticking with iDevices.
I no longer recommend or suggest iOS or Mac products unless I'm obligated to support them directly (e.g. family; no way in hell I'm wasting my personal time supporting Windows). Apple keeps making design decisions that go against my interests, so they can use their billions and market their own products themselves.