Google has reportedly joined a coalition with several other prominent tech companies supporting an effort to ensure that all touch-screen tools known as styluses work across the board for every major firm.
Apple, Microsoft and Samsung have not signed on to the agreement known as the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI), according to BBC. Steve Jobs, famous Apple co-founder, came up with the idea for the revolutionary iPhone because “he hated this [stylus-loving] guy at Microsoft,” according to Scott Forstall, the co-inventor of the product.
“Anytime he had any kind of social interaction with that guy, he’d come back pissed off,” Forstall said in June 2017 at the Computer History Museum in California, Business Insider reports.
That Microsoft higher-up told Jobs during a party that he and his team had “solved computing” with its new Tablet PC. The device required a stylus, a pen-like instrument used to make commands directly on the surface of the screen.
“First thing is, they’re idiots. You don’t use a stylus,” Jobs said, according to Forstall, since he felt they were not practical and people can lose them. “We’re born with 10 styluses!” he continued, allegedly letting out “a set of expletives.”
Jobs, with Forstall, then beat Microsoft with the market’s favorite tablet at the time, and used this consumer knowledge to create the same type of device, but only smaller, the iPhone.
Apple has long been criticized for creating or requiring accessories that only work on its own products, inciting accusations that its trying to either corner the market, or reap as much profit as possible, even if it harms consumers.
The iPhone 7, for example, is built without a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which many regard as a ploy to force customers and other companies to adapt. (RELATED: Apple Created The iPhone 7 Without A Headphone Jack And The Free Market Pounced)
Google and many other smartphones and electronics manufacturers like LG, Dell, Intel, and Lenovo, which also signed onto the USI, on the other hand, have for the most part embraced a USB charger of some sort, which works for a variety of different kinds of devices and cuts across company lines.
Apple and Google did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment by time of publication.
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