Well, 99.99% of the millions of people queuing up for iPhone 5 don't know about stuff like this and some don't care even if they do.
If the Kindle app lacks the ability to buy books, they will blame Amazon the for lack of that feature and not even linking to the Amazon.com page to buy. This is losing battle regardless of a few HN'ers switching to alternate platforms because of this.
Same as with the patent case against Android, Apple has much more to gain that lose by pissing off some developers. In fact, much of their fan base was cheering on Apple against Samsung and Gruber has ~220K Twitter followers, so I felt that the lawsuits may have the effect to actually legitimizing patents among the sizable segment of Apple aficionados. Like Microsoft in the 90s, Apple has turned into this juggernaut that no power grab can really affect their market sales.
I have been bashing Apple for all of this on my blog (I have some regular readers) and I have carefully explained the "Apple problem" to 15+ people in non-Internet space.
It is OK with me if most people don't get the problems that Apple's new butt asshole behavior is causing. Personally, I will spread the message as I am able, and move on. (As I have previously mentioned here, I wrote the simple Chess program distributed with the early Apple II and I had fairly good luck with an app I wrote for the Mac in 1984 - but that is history for me now.)
Yes, I definitely worry that of the many negative impacts of Apple's patent lawsuits that the worst might be creating a popular constituency that has begun to believe in the legitimacy of our deeply broken patent system.
If the Kindle app lacks the ability to buy books, they will blame Amazon the for lack of that feature and not even linking to the Amazon.com page to buy. This is losing battle regardless of a few HN'ers switching to alternate platforms because of this.
Same as with the patent case against Android, Apple has much more to gain that lose by pissing off some developers. In fact, much of their fan base was cheering on Apple against Samsung and Gruber has ~220K Twitter followers, so I felt that the lawsuits may have the effect to actually legitimizing patents among the sizable segment of Apple aficionados. Like Microsoft in the 90s, Apple has turned into this juggernaut that no power grab can really affect their market sales.