Ng: : Apple vs. Samsung

THE biggest tech news this week would be the award of a court for Samsung to pay Apple over a billion dollars for patent and design infringements. No sooner had this come out when a lot of posts were published on Facebook saying Samsung decided to pay Apple the fine with nickels (5-cent coins) and reportedly sent over 30 trucks to Apple’s headquarters full of it.

The news was all fabrication and readers should not believe everything they read, most especially if it comes from the Internet. First, the fine is not yet payable. Second, as what a user in Twitter said, $1 billion in nickels would require over 2,800 18-wheeler trucks to transport.

However, it must be admitted that this is a big loss, especially for Google, who develops Android. Apple is fulfilling Steve Job’s thermonuclear war against Android for copying his “designs and ideas.” Why doesn’t Apple just go after Google? Because there is more money to earn (because they have actual sales, and therefore can compute actual damages) if Apple goes after the tablet and phone makers. Although Google develops Android, they don’t have actual sales and therefore, the damages can be minimal. Besides, Google can also afford the very good lawyers who win cases.

It will soon be elections in the US, and it will be President Obama against Mitt Romney. It is very interesting to note that Microsoft and Google and most of the tech firms in the US are backing Obama. In fact, these two companies, according to OpenSecrets, are two of the top three fund raisers for President Obama. What about Romney? It seems his backers are the companies in Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America etc. This election could well test who has the bigger clout – tech companies or Wall Street firms?

Google chairman Eric Scmidt is a member of Obama’s economic advisory board and Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy for Microsoft, is the president’s advisor on Science and Technology.

If you are a collector of old computers, some of them might be worth a lot of money now. A CNET news source just said that an original Apple 1 computer manufactured around 1976 was bought for about $127,000. If you think that it was bought probably for about $650 when it was brand new, that means the user did get a very good return.

There were only about 200 units of Apple 1 computers produced and the auctioneers said that less than 50 of them are still in existence. So if you think if you have some old computers somewhere you haven’t thrown away, better check them!

Two years ago, another Apple 1, still in its original box with instruction manual and a signed letter from Jobs himself, sold for $210,000. Another Apple 1 motherboard, which was still working, was said to have sold for $374,000!

(twitter.com/wilsonng)