Apple's Blocks Popular Kickstarter Project [Updated]
from the unfortunate dept
Update: And... after a bunch of negative publicity, Apple has reversed course and lifted the ban. Original article below...A bunch of folks have been submitting this story about Apple refusing to allow a company, Edison Junior, to offer its Lightning connector as part of its POP portable power station, which had run a very successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year.
“We are pissed,” Edison Junior CEO Jamie Siminoff told me on the phone today. “I think they are being a bunch of assholes, and I think they’re hurting their customers.”Understandable. The company plans to still build versions of the device that focus on the Android market, and which might possibly work with Apple products if people use adapters, but it's certainly not ideal.
The whole thing, of course, is silly, but representative of the unfortunate world we live in today where companies lock up their products. In the past, building alternate versions or compatible accessories, and reverse engineering parts, was generally considered part of how an ecosystem was built up around your market. But Apple's infatuation with over-controlling its market only serves to piss off Apple customers who want a solution like this. Unfortunately, due to the nature of using security chips and claiming patents on everything, rather than just being a simple reverse engineering challenge, Apple is effectively able to use patent and copyright laws to block any such innovation.
Filed Under: charging, copyright, crowdfunding, licensing, lightening charger, patents, pop portable power station
Companies: apple, edison junior
