All Comments on 'The Thief in the Corner Office Pt. 03'

I like where this series is going. It's amusing that the harder Bill tries to punish Alice, the happier she is. He may think he's going to dump her someday, but I'll bet that never happens. Ultimately, turning Alice into his willing slave is better revenge than wrecking her life.

I like the story concept, but the last couple chapters seem very short sadly. Additionally, why didnt he humiliate her at the resteraunt. Even the standard take off your panties and put them on the table would have been a great touch....

Great story still, but stay away from technical areas you obviously know nothing about. If you did even cursory research into iOS, Android (not originally a Google product!), and in particular the contemporary competitors like every other Linux-based "smartphone" out there, you'd see that Apple did what they always did: they stole something from others, improved it a bit, and got to market first. Just like with MacOS in the 80s was stolen from demos at Xerox.

The iPhone was revolutionary because it was first to mass market success, but no ideas there were original. The packaging of all the ideas on one place, and especially the conversion of people from iPods (another good example of improving on existing, but not an original idea) had a bigger factor than it being so original. A great piece of engineering to be sure, but "invention"? Not exactly.

I see the author is an Apple fanboy, going by the limo conversation - newsflash, boyo, but the iPhone was a ripoff of previously-existing smartphones, just with the Apple brand behind it. See also the iPod and iPad.

Alice is a fictional character, and the opinions she states are not those of the author. The idea that I must be some kind of Apple fanboy because of the words of a made-up character seems very odd to me. Since Alice’s opinion about the iPhone/Android war seems to interest some readers, I think I should admit that I didn’t actually come up with that.

I plagiarized it from a project I did years ago when I worked for the US Patent & Trademark Office. One of my duties was to summarize the content of continuing education seminars for patent attorneys; at one of these seminars, the presenters told the story that I turned into the dialogue Alice said in the limo scene. One of the lawyers said that ripping off independent inventors is a risk-free way for big corporations to make money. I thought that comment was memorable enough that I thought of it when I was looking for a way to show how evil Alice is.

I don’t actually know or care if Android is an iPhone rip-off, but I found the information to be useful when I decided to write a story about an inventor whose work was pirated. I’ve met a lot of guys like that, and they all say they were shocked to discover that their patents were virtually worthless. As a writer, I think it’s interesting to imagine what would happen if one of those guys had a way to get revenge. That's why I wrote "The Thief in the Corner Office."

I admire the passion of you tech fans who care about this debate, but I don’t actually give a damn about Apple, Google, Samsung or any of those companies. I care about writing and creating memorable characters.

To be honest, I think I've done a very good job developing Bill's character, but Alice isn't as believable.

I've already finished this series, but I'd be interested in hearing what you readers think. What could I have done to make Alice a better-written character?