Apple and Google's Motorola Unit Seeking Arbitration to Resolve Patent Dispute

[AppleScruff1]

Originally Posted by KPOM

Windows (through versions 3.X) was obviously a blatant ripoff of MacOS (down to such elements as windowing, the CTRL keyboard shortcuts and the appearance of icons), but lots of Mac users found it unintuitive and difficult to use. Microsoft won its case primarily because John Sculley screwed up and gave Microsoft an overly broad license in exchange for Microsoft promising to deliver Office to the Mac first. Plus software patents weren't as common back then, and courts ruled that mere "look and feel" weren't copyrightable.

The idea is that someone can copy the basic concept, but completely butcher the UI because they don't pay the same attention to detail. In the case of Android, it took Google a few years to iron out the UI but they got a "head start" as Apple showed the way with such tight integration between the phone, contacts, and maps apps, for instance.

By this reasoning every Apple product is a ripoff of something else. They didn't invent anything. If Android is a ripoff, so is every version of the Mac OS.

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Originally Posted by Unggoy Murderer

Because it's a poor ripoff. Android is a sluggish, virus ridden mess.

Really? How long have you used Android and which versions?

[thasan]

Originally Posted by KnightWRX

Same as iPhone was inspired by Android. It's not about being "Fandroid" or "Apple fanboy". Those are just derogative terms. There's a big line between the spiel of "Android is a stolen OS!" and "a few of its UI and features were iOS inspired, same as a few UI elements and features in iOS are inspired by Android".

In the end, both projects are different, with different architectures and goals, but do get inspiration for each other and other players in the market that have been and are still with us.

sorry, cant agree. android got inspired/copied whatever.. but they did it first and thats undeniable. to invent something from 'almost' beginning and create a market is the hardest part. copying someone and then flood the created field is something different....lots of chinese companies can do it. i hope some day one of the chinese manufacturers rip samsung mobile apart by getting 'inspired' by them. i would say 5-7 yrs down the line...but well, chinese are much more enterprising, they will definitely make a better product than ss and yess...they wont copy colours and icons

[Mactendo]

Originally Posted by dalbir4444

You keep telling yourself that.

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He spread the most FUD about Android and people ate it all up, and still do.

And 'He' knows the situation better than you or anyone else in the world. Google CEO Schmidt was a member on the board of directors for Apple and resigned due to 'conflicts of interest'. Pure comparison shows that Android evolution was heavily 'inspired' by iOS.

[the8thark]

Originally Posted by portishead

Good. Hopefully Apple and Samsung can hug it out too. It's going to happen eventually I'm sure, hopefully soon.

It will. Neither party can hit the courts for ever. But the question is who will win in these talks. Or will their talks only come when one has the other by the balls. I'd hope for their both sake it does not come to this. Samsung needs to be like everyone else, make a deal with Apple, innovate/design their own products (not steal) and get back to business.

[portishead]

Originally Posted by haruhiko

Samsung is not going to do so, as they are "winning" now.

what have they won? a statement by Apple on their UK page? They're both going to have to shake hands eventually. This isn't sustainable long term for either company.

[bugzie55]

Originally Posted by inkswamp

That's incredibly oversimplified.

Apple came out with the Mac, wowwed a computing world that was knee-deep in PCs and the DOS command line interface. Apple famously turned their noses up at that and insisted that Mac hardware was the only way to go. Microsoft came along and had the brilliant idea of slapping a Mac-like UI on DOS and instantly brought all those customers into the GUI age with minimal effort. Almost overnight, Microsoft had an instant customer base for their new OS. Whether you like MS or not, it was a genius move and a kind of lock-in. People didn't have to give up all that legacy DOS software but could move into the modern era without jumping to the Mac. Masterful move by Gates and Co.

The Macintosh did not "wow" the computer world. PC users liked their MS-DOS. Which of course, was a Microsoft product. The Macintosh was "too easy to use". PC users loved their command line interface. Made them feel clever. The Macintosh wasn't a real computer, they argued. At this point the market was much smaller, narrower and the users tended to be geekier. The Mac was seen as a "toy". They laughed at the mouse. IT departments loved the PC and MS-DOS because it made them feel superior and gave them lots of work. Harder to set up and harder to use. The Macintosh was slower because of the overheads imposed by the GUI. PC users said, okay, our screens look like crap and, no, we don't have What You See Is What You Get, but damn! look at how fast it is. If you need to do a very specific task like word processing and spreadsheets, the PC was f-ugly but damn efficient. And PCs were much cheaper than Macs. Most PC users didn't give up DOS and move to Windows until Windows 95. PCs just had so more software and, very importantly, way more games.


I do agree with you on a lot of your points. The phone market is much more fluid. Apple vs. IBM was the battle for a "standard". The argument went, well, even if the Macintosh is better, life would be much easier if we all just used the same thing. There were real issues of "compatibility" because most tasks were disk-based. It took Apple a long time to come around to making Macs capable of reading PC disks transparently. Exchanging files at first was a real problem. Phones are different because there's simply no compelling reason why we should all use the same thing. There are simply more cross-platform standards. People can jump ship from one to the other and the market is really fluid. The race for market share is bogus.

Apple has never dominated the personal computer market. There's this myth about that it was "ahead" in some way in the 80s. The IBM-PC running DOS and the clones (and increasingly the clones) dominated the 80s. Microsoft supplied the OS software. And they didn't give it away for free. When Windows 95 eventually came along, they used their advantage as developers of the OS to establish Word and Excel as the standard word processor and spreadsheet programs for the PC. You got your hardware nice and cheap, but Microsoft ended up with a monopoly on much of the software and a license to print their own money. Cheap hardware can be a Trojan Horse.

Apple dismissed the race for market share and decided to opt for retaining the profits on the hardware. And in the long-term that strategy has worked very well for them. So much so that other companies are looking to emulate their business model. Market share means jack if you're not making money. Samsung gets it. It's marketing its more expensive phones aggressively and it's playing Apple at its own game. It's going for brand recognition and establishing itself as another premium brand. The question now is will Google blunder in, loss lead its own branded hardware in the interests of gaining as much market share as possible (to what end it's very hard to fathom ) and eventually work against this very successful strategy?

History simply doesn't repeat itself. You can learn from history but you have to go back and look at all the smaller factors that made that situation very unique. The dominance of the PC was driven by the fact that IT departments in business made the buying decisions and at home, people wanted to play games. The PC had definite advantages for both these markets and the hardware was so much cheaper. Playing for market share is simply not enough these days. To what end? To what advantage? Just because the clones won, or Microsoft won, or whatever, because they gained the largest market share, it doesn't follow that Google should be hell bent on market share at any cost.

And when do we say it's finished? And there's a winner? The race is still on and Apple's doing quite nicely. It's world-wide market share in PCs is declining and declining and declining... But it's actually selling more Macs than ever before. Way, way, way, more than it did in the 80s. The market is just so much bigger these days. The whole market share preoccupation is a steaming pile of crap, really.

[swy05]

Originally Posted by thasan

sorry, cant agree. android got inspired/copied whatever.. but they did it first and thats undeniable. to invent something from 'almost' beginning and create a market is the hardest part. copying someone and then flood the created field is something different....lots of chinese companies can do it. i hope some day one of the chinese manufacturers rip samsung mobile apart by getting 'inspired' by them. i would say 5-7 yrs down the line...but well, chinese are much more enterprising, they will definitely make a better product than ss and yess...they wont copy colours and icons

Are you saying this with a straight face? China is the land of bootlegging and copying. Hell even the baby formula is bootleg and made of lead.

China sure has innovative things......I could list them but.....oh nevermind.

[marksman]

Originally Posted by Evoken

Yeah, I am sure Tim Cook published an apology letter due to how much Apple Maps rock. Scott was also given the boot due to how amazing everything is with iOS.

Frankly given the recent state of affairs, I think iOS users/fans (and really Apple fans in general, myself included) should cut down a bit on the rhetoric and have a bit more humility.

Given the totality of androids existence including major issues, eol devices the day you purchase them and the rest maybe apple just has sugnificantly higher standards then the android cartel. When has any party in the android food chain ever apologized for years of inferior products and total lack of updates.

[Mactendo]

Originally Posted by AppleScruff1

If Android is a stolen OS and a blatant ripoff of iOS why do so many iOS users say that Andoroid isn't intuitive and too difficult to use? It doesn't make sense to me.

Just like Windows was a copy of Mac OS. And to this day Windows is still less intuitive.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by faroZ06

Windows is a stolen OS. Android is just highly inspired by iPhone OS. It's not like they ripped off the OS and its specific features.

Windows is a stolen OS, just like Apple Stole MAC OS from Xerox, thats why the entire thing was thrown out of court.

[faroZ06]

Originally Posted by G51989

Windows is a stolen OS, just like Apple Stole MAC OS from Xerox, thats why the entire thing was thrown out of court.

Mac OS only has the stolen idea of having a GUI operating system. That's about it.

[AppleScruff1]

Originally Posted by Mactendo

Just like Windows was a copy of Mac OS. And to this day Windows is still less intuitive.

And what was Mac OS a copy of?

[camnchar]

Originally Posted by G51989

Windows is a stolen OS, just like Apple Stole MAC OS from Xerox, thats why the entire thing was thrown out of court.

Apple licensed the parts of the GUI it wanted from Xerox (and then improved upon them).

[KnightWRX]

Originally Posted by thasan

sorry, cant agree. android got inspired/copied whatever.. but they did it first and thats undeniable.

Sorry, if you're going for firsts, Android was founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin as he left Danger Inc. and bought by Google in august 2005, 6 months before any kind of work was started on the iPhone project. And in 2006, there were still 2 OS projects going at Apple, one for a Linux based phone, the other the Darwin based OS we know as iOS today.

So just no.

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Originally Posted by faroZ06

Mac OS only has the stolen idea of having a GUI operating system. That's about it.

Seriously guys, stop with the "stolen" crap. There's no such thing. No one stole any OS. Microsoft, Apple, Google, they all wrote their code independantly. If you think the "ideas" that can be patented are what take a long time to build in the software world, you need to wake up.

The code bases for these OSes are massive and copyrighted. No one stole any code from anyone else, everyone put in the effort to write it.

You guys diminishing the work on OS X, Mac OS, Windows, Linux, Android, whatever, you're just being daft and uneducated in software development. Get a clue and read up on the subject of IP, software and development before you even start spouting all the non-sense you keep spouting in these threads.

It's just bringing the conversation down.

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Originally Posted by camnchar

Apple licensed the parts of the GUI it wanted from Xerox (and then improved upon them).

Apple licensed nothing. Steve Jobs traded some stock for a chance to visit PARC.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by camnchar

Apple licensed the parts of the GUI it wanted from Xerox (and then improved upon them).

Just as Microsoft licensed ideas and features from Apple, its legal, and its OK.

Weather you want to call it " stealing ", the CEO of Apple signed that paper, legally binding contract.

The fact is tho, Apple did not invent the idea of the GUI, or most of the ideas behind it, Xerox did.

[kdarling]

Originally Posted by camnchar

In the way that Apple did most of the hard work of creating a beautiful user interface that was perfect for the format (they licensed Xerox's ideas but improved on nearly every single one)

Not blaming you. Everyone repeats the myth that Apple licensed Xerox's ideas, but Xerox does not concur.

Xerox said in their lawsuit against Apple that they only licensed Apple for what was supposed to be a joint Smalltalk project.

Xerox asserted that Apple should not be able to copyright or charge for their GUI, since they did not invent the base concepts.

[camnchar]

Originally Posted by kdarling

Not blaming you. Everyone repeats the myth that Apple licensed Xerox's ideas, but Xerox does not concur.

Xerox said in their lawsuit against Apple that they only licensed Apple for what was supposed to be a joint Smalltalk project.

Xerox asserted that Apple should not be able to copyright or charge for their GUI, since they did not invent the base concepts.

True enough. I should have put "licensed" in quotes.

Xerox lost their suit against Apple, Apple lost their suit against Microsoft, and somehow everybody found a way to get along. Hopefully the same thing will happen here when all of the seemingly endless legal maneuvering winds up.

[nutjob]

With Apple stock tanking, it's pretty obvious that Apple thinks it needs to change course, but it can't work out which way to go, really.

When a company as large as this becomes difficult to steer, without a strong personality at the helm, it gains a momentum of its own and usually ends up hugely diminished.

Think about some of the great companies that are no longer around or are shadows of their former selves.

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Originally Posted by AppleScruff1

And what was Mac OS a copy of?

The research done at Xerox PARC.

[Monkeydude]

Stolen, stolen, blablabla. I'm the end-user and I'm not married to any of the companies, so I take whats best for me. Regarding Computer OS' this is OS X but on the phone market it meanwhile is Android in my opinion. The android companies may have stolen the OS, but what counts for ME is that they made it better. Everything else I leave to the courts.

p.s. In Germany we dont even have iCloud push mail, because the courts say Apple is infringing Motorola's patents.

[KdParker]

This is only money related. They just want to cut down the legal costs.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by camnchar

Apple licensed the parts of the GUI it wanted from Xerox (and then improved upon them).

Not quite "licensed" in a formal sense. Apple paid a good amount in Apple shares for permission to have Apple engineers visit Xerox PARC, look at everything, and make use of whatever they saw. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adele_G...uter_scientist) what Adele Goldberg thought of it. So Xerox was in posession of a gold mine and their management was too stupid to realise. Later they figured out that they made a mistake and sued Apple to make some more money, but too late. (And of course Apple did substantially improve on what Xerox had).

Originally Posted by AppleScruff1

And what was Mac OS a copy of?

Lisa OS.

[Rodimus Prime]

Originally Posted by KPOM

Windows (through versions 3.X) was obviously a blatant ripoff of MacOS (down to such elements as windowing, the CTRL keyboard shortcuts and the appearance of icons), but lots of Mac users found it unintuitive and difficult to use. Microsoft won its case primarily because John Sculley screwed up and gave Microsoft an overly broad license in exchange for Microsoft promising to deliver Office to the Mac first. Plus software patents weren't as common back then, and courts ruled that mere "look and feel" weren't copyrightable.

The idea is that someone can copy the basic concept, but completely butcher the UI because they don't pay the same attention to detail. In the case of Android, it took Google a few years to iron out the UI but they got a "head start" as Apple showed the way with such tight integration between the phone, contacts, and maps apps, for instance.

I would like to point out I remember using CTRL keyboard shortcuts in the days of DOS in a few programs. So that the short cuts is not something really Apple invented. It was already out there. Honestly I think Apple command key short cuts are inferior to CTRL key short cuts. It drives me nuts using them on my MacBook over hitting CTRL. The reasoning is the key placement of the Command key is more unconfortable to hit. It designed to have the ring finger hit it compared to the CTRL key which the pinky can hit. Have the pinky hit the key does not effect the hand and other fingers as much.

The entire point of this rant was to point out that your entire CTRL argument is pretty much FUD and not some apple invention.

[samcraig]

Originally Posted by thasan

i hope some day one of the chinese manufacturers rip samsung mobile apart by getting 'inspired' by them. i would say 5-7 yrs down the line...but well, chinese are much more enterprising, they will definitely make a better product than ss and yess...they wont copy colours and icons

Let me ask you this. Why do you wish this. Why do you care? Are you seeking revenge? Were your designs stolen by Samsung?

[KPOM]

Originally Posted by Rodimus Prime

I would like to point out I remember using CTRL keyboard shortcuts in the days of DOS in a few programs. So that the short cuts is not something really Apple invented. It was already out there. Honestly I think Apple command key short cuts are inferior to CTRL key short cuts. It drives me nuts using them on my MacBook over hitting CTRL. The reasoning is the key placement of the Command key is more unconfortable to hit. It designed to have the ring finger hit it compared to the CTRL key which the pinky can hit. Have the pinky hit the key does not effect the hand and other fingers as much.

The entire point of this rant was to point out that your entire CTRL argument is pretty much FUD and not some apple invention.

I actually prefer the placement of the command key. However, my point is that things like CMD-W to close a window, and CMD-Q to close a program were on the Mac first, and Microsoft deliberately copied them on the early versions of Windows. Also, Microsoft engineers originally argued that Windows should use tiling (sort of like what Windows 8 does now in "Metro"), but Bill Gates insisted that it needed to have overlapping windows because the Mac did.

It's pretty clear that Apple granted Microsoft some pretty low-level access to the Mac when it was under development. The idea was to help Microsoft write software for the Mac, but what wound up happening is that they copied a lot of the design elements for Windows. I don't think even Microsoft would dispute that. The dispute came down to how generous Apple's licensing agreement was. Apple's backstop argument (which failed) was that the "look and feel" was copyrightable.

[Rodimus Prime]

Originally Posted by KPOM

I actually prefer the placement of the command key. However, my point is that things like CMD-W to close a window, and CMD-Q to close a program were on the Mac first, and Microsoft deliberately copied them on the early versions of Windows. Also, Microsoft engineers originally argued that Windows should use tiling (sort of like what Windows 8 does now in "Metro"), but Bill Gates insisted that it needed to have overlapping windows because the Mac did.

It's pretty clear that Apple granted Microsoft some pretty low-level access to the Mac when it was under development. The idea was to help Microsoft write software for the Mac, but what wound up happening is that they copied a lot of the design elements for Windows. I don't think even Microsoft would dispute that. The dispute came down to how generous Apple's licensing agreement was. Apple's backstop argument (which failed) was that the "look and feel" was copyrightable.

ohh they copies the cmd-Q to quit.... REALLY that is your argument? This is beyond weak. Lets see quit starts with a 'Q'...... I wonder why they both chose it. Window starts with a 'W' yet another reason why W was used.

The only reason 'V' is used for Paste is because P was already been takening up by Print.

Really your entire argument right there with the keys is just smells of fanboy argument.

When you chose short cut keys you tend to try to choose the first letter of the word you using if you can. Q for Quit. Since C is taken up with copy you go to the next best letter ('W') for close Window......

Come on you are just spreading FUD and what is worse is you are trying to argue that you are right.