Dear Apple,
Your ENTIRE organization lacks morals and free market competition basics, and as such, you are not worthy of having the glory that you now posses. While you may have revolutionized the world as we know it with very well crafted marketing campaigns and some good ideas, you are far from being a true innovator in the field of… anything. Just think for one second about the LEAPS in technology that you would have accomplished, should you have invested in R&D a quarter of the money you spend into advertising and marketing. Then, you would have something worth portraying as a technological wonder, something that would likely be untouchable by others. Something truly genuine that you can call your own, and at the end of the day you could look at with pride. What you have right now is a bunch of reinvented wheels, most of which don’t do much more than other wheels out there.
Redefining concepts and ideas is not what makes a company great; coming up with new concepts is. HTC and other major OEMS have often been in the vanguard by innovating with their products, adding new features, rethinking, and just putting concepts out there to imagine their possibilities. Your last innovations and only major contributions to the world of mobile technology were the inclusion of capacitive multi-touch gestures and an accelerometer in mobile devices, and these were with the original iPhone back in 2007. For that and only that, I give you credit. All the newer models of virtually every product you sell have been remakes of previous technology—perhaps a little thinner and a little faster, but all in all, minor changes.
It is because of companies like yours that technology is not further today than where it currently is. You are so adamant in protecting something that you didn’t even invent that you are holding back future innovation. The spirit and basic concepts of engineering are completely missing from your business models. Courtesy of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology:
Engineering is the profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences gained by experience, study, and practice is applied with judgement to develop ways to utilize economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind.
Notice the importance of the concept that you are no longer following. Engineering practices are used for the betterment of mankind. What have you done for this purpose? Rebrand an existing technology (MP3 players) and sell them for twice the price? Trying to cripple your competitors by claiming that you invented something that was previously invented, when you simply adapted the technology and closed off any other use of this by others? This can be compared to using a Linux kernel (if it weren’t under GPL license), patenting it, and closing it off so that no one else can use it.
Apple, you are simply a disgrace to the world of technology and to engineering in general. I feel ashamed of being called an engineer in a world where your company roams around freely without even following the most basic of the field’s concepts—a world where the law and justice are blind to the fact that your actions are hindering humanity’s advancement. While I understand that there is nothing wrong with making money, there is something very wrong with replacing engineering with greed.
