Reason #9,309,284,893,264,564 why Apple is a dick company

[2ndAmForComputers]

Apple kills a Kickstarter project: Portable power project POP refunding $139,170 to backers

http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/20/apple-kills-a-kickstarter-project-portable-power-project-pop-refunding-139170-to-backers/

Edison Junior, the technology and design lab behind the POP portable power station, is returning the full $139,170 in funding it received from Kickstarter backers to develop the device. Unfortunately, Apple has refused to give the project permission to license the Lightning charger in a device that includes multiple charging options.

POP was billed as “the intersection between charging and design” and featured connectors to charge iPads, iPhones, and yes … Android devices. Its four retractable cord reels would have powered anything using micro-USB charging connectors.

That’s a problem with Apple. In fact, even combining Apple’s new Lighting connector with the old 30-pin connector in a charging device was verboten; Apple would not approve, forcing the team to abandon the project.

“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.”

[randome]

1. Your subject line implies an agenda. On the face of it, the story shows this to be a dickish move.

No need to show all your cards!

[liberal N proud]

2. I suspect that it wasn't entirely their decision

I know a little background to this and they were not actually developing the technology and the company that was abandoned the project last month.

[dballance]

3. And which of those major tech companies isn't?

Microsoft? IBM?

They all do the same thing.

[2ndAmForComputers]

4. What about all the companies that agree on a standard (like Micro-USB for charging)?

Are they saints? No. They certainly commit dickery in other occasions.

But some dicks are bigger dicks than others.