I don't think there was any spite involved in Kodak's early film work. Or imaging work by Olympus, Sony, and anybody else was involved in early digital camera development.
But, by the time we got to Google and Apple? The problems with photographing dark subjects would have been well understood. It's sad that it took being "outed" in the media for those companies to actively address the issue.
What I don't know is how much of the issue was "new" (re-introduced by the software behind the phone camera magic) or "existing" (the same problem with color/white balance that has existed since the dawn of photography). If it was "new", that's rather damning, IMO, since the problem space was known, and the product people chose to ignore it. Put another way - some of this is just physics, but how much was physics and how much was software ignoring one set of subjects in an effort to improve outcomes for another?
But, no, probably not intentionally spiteful. Just some combination of lazy, greedy, and ignorant.
But, by the time we got to Google and Apple? The problems with photographing dark subjects would have been well understood. It's sad that it took being "outed" in the media for those companies to actively address the issue.
What I don't know is how much of the issue was "new" (re-introduced by the software behind the phone camera magic) or "existing" (the same problem with color/white balance that has existed since the dawn of photography). If it was "new", that's rather damning, IMO, since the problem space was known, and the product people chose to ignore it. Put another way - some of this is just physics, but how much was physics and how much was software ignoring one set of subjects in an effort to improve outcomes for another?
But, no, probably not intentionally spiteful. Just some combination of lazy, greedy, and ignorant.