Chances are you’ve used something developed by Dutchman Bas Ording. Ording is responsible for the OS X dock (in fact, Steve Jobs hired him on the spot because Ording showed him dock magnification in 1998), the little pinheads for text selection and magnification in iOS, iOS’ kinetic and bouncy scrolling, the pre-iOS 7 keyboard, and probably more. He’s listed on a long list of Apple patents, including those Apple is asserting against its competitors.
After about 15 years at the company as User Interface Designer, he left about a year ago for unknown reasons – until now. Speaking at a conference here in The Netherlands, and noted by Emerce (via Tweakers), Ording explains that he decided to leave Apple because he was fed up with having to appear in court.
“Because my name is listed on patents, I increasingly had to appear in court cases versus HTC and Samsung,” he said, “That started to annoy me. I spent more time in court than designing. Aside from that, I missed the interaction with Steve Jobs. We discussed matters every fourteen days.”
It’s easy to forget – and I’m certainly guilty of that – that companies like Apple, in the end, consist of people like you and me, who dislike all this patent crap just as much as we do. Developers and designers working at Apple are not magically different from everyone else, and since developers almost unanimously dislike software patents, so do Apple’s developers.
It does make you wonder – how many more talented people have left companies like Apple and Microsoft for their patent aggression?
This must be the single most annoying “feature” I’ve seen in any UI over the last few years.
A pointless distracting animation that makes the screen unreadable for a full second, and that you hit every 5-10 seconds when you’re navigating through the OS settings.
I can’t even imagine how he came up with something like this.
The point of it is you can navigate long lists in a very natural and precise way that’s easy for everyone to pick up. If you remember back to the days of trying to hit a scrollbar with a stylus then you’ll appreciate how great it is.
I know you love to invent outrage about patents, but if you pay attention you would notice he didn’t leave because of patents, but in fact because his job changed and he had less time for design.
Yes in a purely technical sense he left because that non-design work happened to be related to patents, but he would also have left if he was told to hula hoop every second day instead of design.
He left because he didn’t get enough time designing, not because of patents. Of course that happens thousands of times a day in every company, so it’s hardly exciting enough. Much better to invent a juicy story.
I don’t see anything in this guys comments about the value, rightness or ethics of Apple’s legal strategy. His job was making him do things he didn’t like and working with Steve Jobs had been a big part of the upside and that was now gone. Reading anything more into this is just projection.
So… No matter how you try to spin it patent lawsuits is one of the two things that made him quit. Not any other thing. He did not say that he quit because he did not get to do what he liked any more, he explicitly referenced the lawsuits.
When about 2 sentences are paraphrased from a conference presentation on one particular topic, you can almost be certain it is being taken out of context and used for ideological reasons.
I see nothing in that article remotely suggesting that Ording was ideologically opposed to Apple’s patent strategy and that he could no longer work for them on personal, ethical grounds.
It does read like someone who has had a 15 YEAR career at Apple who had to move on from doing fun things, because he had already done so, and moved on to bigger responsibilities, and that he simply wants a change.
I’d wager if you asked him directly, “Did you leave Apple because you felt Apple’s patent strategy was unethical and that you could personally not be a part of it?”, you would not get the answer you want.
Very few people could turn “That started to annoy me. I spent more time in court than designing.” into this not being about the patent lawsuits.
Bravo. Have an upvote.
What you are doing is the equivalent of someone saying, “After 15 years and having accomplished so much, I got annoyed with being a manager” and then saying that that person is against managers and management, in general. Complete nonsense.
Edited 2014-06-27 17:22 UTC
If you have proof that this man had been also in and out of the courtroom in his 15 years prior to this patent mess, you might have a point. But I have a strong feeling that is not the case.
I’m sure many principled people have left.
And many have stayed or joined.
I would be flabbergasted if Apple’s legal strategy figured in the top twenty of the negative work concerns of most people at Apple.
The question is, why do those people accept such environment they work in if they are principled? It seems like a contradiction.
I’m sure many didn’t even want to join because of this issue.
Edited 2014-06-27 19:54 UTC
“Developers and designers working at Apple are not magically different from everyone else, and since developers almost unanimously dislike software patents, so do Apple’s developers”
While I would say that this is the prevailing view, “almost unanimously” is a vast over statement! (from Thom? never!) I know quite a few developers (mostly from the Android/iOS camp) that support software patents of some sort.
… Guess there’s a price to becoming a litigation-happy company.
”
5. Innovative people are *usually* free-spirited and rather dislike spending their days writing patents (especially obvious ones); The company will most likely start bleeding out the best and brightest developers and be forced to pay far more (Read: both paychecks and patents bonuses) to keep the remaining developers happy (or at least employed), and chewing up right-click-menu-like patents.
” [1]
– Gilboa
[1] http://www.osnews.com/permalink?483138
Edited 2014-06-28 07:45 UTC
…or FIFTEEN YEARS is a rather long and illustrious career at a single company for any one at the top of their field in Silicon Valley and trying to equate one employee moving on after 15 years as “bleeding” is wholly unsupported and laughably ridiculous.
I think it would be silly to propose that patents are affecting Apple’s employee retention more than the usual factors (stock option growth, the maturity of Apple’s business, and competitors attempting to woo employees away with greater compensation) based on this or any other evidence.
Edited 2014-06-28 16:08 UTC