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lilo777

macrumors 603
Nov 25, 2009
5,144
0
Tim Cook should find better words to convince the employees that they are working for a semi-decent company. I suspect many Apple employees might be embarrassed to work for what Apple has become.
 

rdlink

macrumors 68040
Nov 10, 2007
3,226
2,435
Out of the Reach of the FBI
This part comes down to wanting to like what they offer yet Apple making that hard to do at times. I cannot think of any other reason to complain about a product. (I know people do) For example, no optical drive (should be blu-ray) would be a breaking point and only because I want to be able to own one down the line yet could not justify the cost with a machine that has been so limited.

The iPhones are really nice, very polished and user friendly, they do get a bit behind at times just so they can save a common feature for the next release, not like that is exclusive to Apple. I am on year three with my iPhone 3GS and it is still going strong.

The same can be said for the iPad which only annoyed me with the first generation, then with the updates it makes more sense.

I have noticed my wants and or needs are different then many, I want flash, blu-ray, optical drives are very important etc... and I know that Apple thinks everyone should buy everything on iTunes, music? Sure, Movies? Never going to happen as they are far too costly. However that is also not exclusive to Apple, everyone wants too much for digital content these days.

There are other manufacturers who will provide all of those dead technologies to you if you'd like. I haven't had a DVD player connected to my TV since the early to mid 2000's. I owned a Blu-Ray player for about 2 weeks, only for the internet connectivity. I got rid of that useless antique as soon as I confirmed it was wasting space and electricity at my house. As far as I'm concerned, Apple was behind me on that one.

In the 2 1/2 years that I've owned an iPad, and the 3 1/2 years that I've owned an iPhone I can count on one hand how many times I haven't been able to see something because of the lack of flash. And in every instance the content provider was worse off than me for my not being able to view it. So their loss, not mine.

As far as the price of movies being too expensive, I agree that the content providers continue to use whatever means possible to prop up a business model that's no longer valid. The movie industry is being dragged kicking and screaming into the reality that the music industry, and the print and network news industries have learned over the years: The golden goose is sick and dying. The market for $20 million per movie actors is going the way of the albatross. In the meantime, I would rather pay $19.99 for a digital movie than for a DVD. The only thing that I wish Apple would make happen on the movie side is getting rid of the stupid rule of having to watch a movie within 24 hours of pressing play. Again, however, this is the fault of the content providers. Their greed is also the reason why they've declared a behind-the-scenes war on Netflix, another true innovator who revolutionized an industry, and would be doing it again, if the studios didn't have a target on their back. However, this subject is largely a discussion for another day.

But the fact is you didn't state one need that you can't get by going to another brand of computer or smartphone.

The mindless claptrap about how this verdict is going to stifle innovation is just BS.

The rest of the industry tried to sell us those POS called netbooks. Apple said no, those things "don't do anything well." So they went another direction. When Apple came out with the new MacBook Air what happened? Other manufacturers, who had been sitting on their a**es for all those years started scrambling to come out with ultra books of their own. Suddenly, flash drives and no optical were all the rage in ultra books, and netbooks started their well-deserved death spiral.

I've owned a MacBook Air for over two years. I've never been held back by the lack of an optical drive. There was one time early on when I had to create an ISO on my iMac, and copy it to the MBA. Took about 15 minutes of my time and effort. And, had I found the occasional need for an optical drive compelling enough I could buy an external one. But I have been glad EVERY DAY that I don't have the extra weight and size required to have an optical drive on my MBA. So the score on that one is 720 days happy, 0 days held back.

If you watch the Apple video on the MacBook Pro Retina you may start to understand their vision of innovation. Sometimes you have to leave the old behind to be truly revolutionary, and sometimes revolutionary looks like evolutionary on the surface, but is really a watershed moment.

Do you want to know one of the top three technology moments of the last 20 years? One that has shaped our computing/technology experience more than almost anything else? It profoundly affects hundreds of millions of peoples' lives every day: The day that Apple released iTunes for Windows. Watershed moment in computer history. It started the unprecedented success story that was the iPod, and introduced the Apple ecosystem to millions of people who would never have given an Apple product a second thought before. Yet most people who use Apple products today probably couldn't even tell you when it happened. That's innovation, my friend.

So I say again. Vote with your wallet. Apple makes revolutionary, innovative, easy to use products, and that's why they continue to do well while the rest of the computer industry is sputtering. If you don't share their vision of what a computer or smartphone should be, you're free to buy another product.
 

bamPOW

macrumors newbie
Aug 9, 2012
8
0
the fact that are calling kdarling or knightrx anti apple is a sure fired way to prove you are an apple fanboy.

I am absolutely an apple fanboy. Only difference is I'm not lying about it or hiding the fact. AND I'm not delusional or in denial. Accept the jury's decision.
 

Xiroteus

macrumors 65816
Mar 31, 2012
1,297
75
There are other manufacturers who will provide all of those dead technologies to you if you'd like. I haven't had a DVD player connected to my TV since the early to mid 2000's. I owned a Blu-Ray player for about 2 weeks, only for the internet connectivity. I got rid of that useless antique as soon as I confirmed it was wasting space and electricity at my house. As far as I'm concerned, Apple was behind me on that one.

I personally do not see these technologies as dead just because someone chooses not to use them. DVD's and Blu-rays are still completely current for film. I am into film and for a bit my television and Blu-ray player worked fine, however I may have to just use my computer for a time and I need it to be my complete entertainment system. Of course I am aware that those using their computers as their entire entertainment center is not the norm.

In the 2 1/2 years that I've owned an iPad, and the 3 1/2 years that I've owned an iPhone I can count on one hand how many times I haven't been able to see something because of the lack of flash. And in every instance the content provider was worse off than me for my not being able to view it. So their loss, not mine.

I have had my iPhone for about three years and most of the time it is not an issue, however there is likely a few dozen times something would not play because of flash. No great love for flash, I simply wish to view whatever content I want.

As far as the price of movies being too expensive, I agree that the content providers continue to use whatever means possible to prop up a business model that's no longer valid. The movie industry is being dragged kicking and screaming into the reality that the music industry, and the print and network news industries have learned over the years: The golden goose is sick and dying. The market for $20 million per movie actors is going the way of the albatross. In the meantime, I would rather pay $19.99 for a digital movie than for a DVD.

I cannot even justify twenty dollars for a Blu-ray let alone a DVD or digital copy. Basically a compressed edition of the movie one cannot sell, trade or give away, play anywhere they want and is far too expensive. A digital download would likely have to be five dollars and 1080P for me to even look at it, and be newer movies. (And we know that will never happen) This was just said to state what page I am on when it comes to prices and digital downloads. I am far too used to getting much more for my money.

Netflix is good for what they do have, some worry about content going missing, right now I am rather meh about that. Okay it goes missing for awhile, life goes on. Spend several hundred dollars on a few shows or just use Netflix right now? I will go with the streaming for now.

The only thing that I wish Apple would make happen on the movie side is getting rid of the stupid rule of having to watch a movie within 24 hours of pressing play. Again, however, this is the fault of the content providers. Their greed is also the reason why they've declared a behind-the-scenes war on Netflix, another true innovator who revolutionized an industry, and would be doing it again, if the studios didn't have a target on their back. However, this subject is largely a discussion for another day.

I like Netflix and which more companies would work with them, get newer content, more shows etc... I know what is not always up to them, these studious are far to picky and want everything to stay the same.

Steam, that is a well done business, however I will not pay more then twenty dollars for a game in any format let alone digital. Dozens of games have been five to ten dollars. I do not care if I own a disk for that. Ease of use is well done.

The mindless claptrap about how this verdict is going to stifle innovation is just BS.

I am curious what it could mean for other companies. I am curious where we would be if Apple had not done what they have over the last few years. Even if other companies have made something better they thought of it AFTER Apple did it.

The rest of the industry tried to sell us those POS called netbooks. Apple said no, those things "don't do anything well."

They were so much cheaper which is what a LOT of people needed, however, they also worked like an insanely cheap under powered computer. I sold mine off awhile back, it did run Vista and was insanely slow. You could not get anything done on it. It could hardly play video, at least the one I had hardly could.

So they went another direction. When Apple came out with the new MacBook Air what happened? Other manufacturers, who had been sitting on their a**es for all those years started scrambling to come out with ultra books of their own. Suddenly, flash drives and no optical were all the rage in ultra books, and netbooks started their well-deserved death spiral.

Now if I owned a full entertainment system, and this was just for an on the go computer, I could see it being very nice, light and small and if for travels a optical drive is rarely required. It is funny yet again Apple came out with it and THEN others did. (Unless someone did before Apple?) Even if that is true, it was likely limited to one company. Now everyone is making them, so I wonder why did no one else do it first?

It does feel that many other companies are waiting for Apple to release a new product and then basically copy that idea and it may even be more useful for some yet they still copied.

I've owned a MacBook Air for over two years. I've never been held back by the lack of an optical drive. There was one time early on when I had to create an ISO on my iMac, and copy it to the MBA. Took about 15 minutes of my time and effort. And, had I found the occasional need for an optical drive compelling enough I could buy an external one.

I did a test awhile back on a Windows Tablet, as long as I had a television with a blu-ray player the needs of an optical drive greatly declined and I was able to do most from a USB.

If you watch the Apple video on the MacBook Pro Retina you may start to understand their vision of innovation. Sometimes you have to leave the old behind to be truly revolutionary, and sometimes revolutionary looks like evolutionary on the surface, but is really a watershed moment.

Another example, Apple removed the floppy drive in 1998 (not even close to an optical media, floppies were dying for many reasons) however I did not even start using floppies until 1999 and had to use them for a few years until flash drive prices dropped enough. Thankful when they did, I hated floppies, unstable and hardly any space.

Do you want to know one of the top three technology moments of the last 20 years? One that has shaped our computing/technology experience more than almost anything else? It profoundly affects hundreds of millions of peoples' lives every day: The day that Apple released iTunes for Windows. Watershed moment in computer history. It started the unprecedented success story that was the iPod, and introduced the Apple ecosystem to millions of people who would never have given an Apple product a second thought before. Yet most people who use Apple products today probably couldn't even tell you when it happened. That's innovation, my friend.

iPods were always nice, these days I just use a shuffle and my iPhone, did have a Mini which was amazing when I received it. When released they also were the first company to give us a more streamlined user friendly device. All these things over the years really makes me wonder why no one else could think of these things first.

So I say again. Vote with your wallet. Apple makes revolutionary, innovative, easy to use products, and that's why they continue to do well while the rest of the computer industry is sputtering. If you don't share their vision of what a computer or smartphone should be, you're free to buy another product.

Fair enough overall, however the issue still is that I want to be able to like one of their computers. Since it does not meat my needs I cannot at this time, though I wish it did. Hard to justify the cost when it is lacking a blu-ray drive etc.. however there will likely be a day where that will no longer matter, I will have the television blu-ray player and even a Windows PC for home yet pick up a Macbook Air for on the road. I was looking at one awhile back, and I know lack of an optical drive will not NO effect on travels. No drive in Ultrabooks is a universal across all of the systems, so that is nothing I could get on Apple about. Only when they removed it from the Mac Mini and the Macbooks.

I will see were things go, my needs today may be very different in a few years.
 

ixodes

macrumors 601
Jan 11, 2012
4,429
3
Pacific Coast, USA
I bet this was one interesting meeting. One most certainly designed to stabilize a variety of feelings and expectations on the part of the employees.
 

hchung

macrumors 6502a
Oct 2, 2008
689
1
Name me a patent used by Samsung in a winning case that was so trivial that it shouldn't have been granted in the first place.

In Apple's case, I can point at most of them.

Hmm....Why does winning matter? If it's trivial, it's trivial.

Did you even read Samsung's patents from this recent case?

7,456,893 : A patent on the idea of showing the most recently accessed picture when you go into the "show pictures taken" mode of a digital camera.

7,577,460 : A patent on emailing from a camera phone.

7,698,711 : Doing another task while music is playing in the background.

If you're going to say bounceback is trivial, those certainly are even more trivial?
 

entatlrg

macrumors 68040
Mar 2, 2009
3,385
6
Waterloo & Georgian Bay, Canada
Tim Cook should find better words to convince the employees that they are working for a semi-decent company. I suspect many Apple employees might be embarrassed to work for what Apple has become.

Embarrassed because they succeeded at protecting their IP, making the years and years of dedicated work from their Employees worthwhile? NEVER.
 

hchung

macrumors 6502a
Oct 2, 2008
689
1
No, you haven't answered anything.

The patent does not cover any technical implementation of the gesture detection system. It does not explain how to prevent lags - in fact, it does not cover anything that relates to lags.

So may I repeat my question once more, what's the actual innovation that the patent protects?

He did answer the question. If you can't see it, it just means you're proving that this isn't trivially obvious. Lag is just one minor part of it, it's actually more than that.

The patent is for (amongst other things) doing a multi-touch gesture, and then lifting the fingers, and then doing it again, and having that map to the same operation that just happened as long as the subsequent gesture happens under a certain timeframe.

This is a way of improving usability. Why?
Many times, when you do a multi-touch gesture, you can't do it in one contact. You're also doing it to a surface that responds to more than one kind of gesture.

For example, if you have a web page with links that's huge, and you want to zoom in on a tiny section using pinch-to-zoom, but in one pinch/spread, does not get you to the zoom level you want. If you do the pinch/spread gesture, lift your fingers to put them closer to do the gesture one more time quickly, you could easily put one finger down on a link before the other and then accidentally activate the link instead of changing zoom.

For another example, if there's several knobs onscreen and you want to "pinch and twist" the knob. So you put two fingers on it. And twist. And it turns. And then you lift and then do it again. Well, if you miss the knob just barely (since a phone's screen's pretty darn small) you won't get the twisting gesture to happen. You'd instead do something else. Hit a neighboring button. Or just nothing.

The innovation I see is this:
It allows for a fast gesture, to be done repeatedly, while allowing the user to be inaccurate in where they put their finger on the screen.

It means that if I put my fingers close to the knob, I can still get the turning effect without being exactly on the knob, but just close.

It means that if I do the pinch-to-zoom gesture to do a long range zoom change, I don't have to worry about accidentally hitting a link or something as I do it.

Without this innovation, I'd have to be more careful about where I put my fingers down every time I do a gesture. With this innovation, I just have to be careful the first time I do the repeated gesture.

This isn't pinch-to-zoom. It's making pinch-to-zoom (amongst other things) not a pain in the butt when you have the option to do other gestures (tap, rotate, etc.).

You can also see that since it assumes the previous same fingered gesture, it'd reduce some lag too because it takes less time to recognize the gesture the next time around within the timer.

The rest of the patent is other details of the Apple gesture recognizer system that revolves around that example.

People blatently blew it out of proportion shouting "they patented multitouch when they didn't invent it! that's wrong!" They didn't patent multitouch. They patented innovative techniques to implement multitouch better.
 

Bezetos

macrumors 6502a
May 18, 2012
739
0
far away from an Apple store
He did answer the question. If you can't see it, it just means you're proving that this isn't trivially obvious. Lag is just one minor part of it, it's actually more than that.
(...)
People blatently blew it out of proportion shouting "they patented multitouch when they didn't invent it! that's wrong!" They didn't patent multitouch. They patented innovative techniques to implement multitouch better.

I think you're reading too much into that patent. If you press and hold your finger ont he screen, you won't accidentally hit a link anyway.
 

CFreymarc

Suspended
Sep 4, 2009
3,969
1,149
Wow! Are you serious? I guess so. That is the American way.

Does anyone know how the Big 3 became the top cars sellers? Because of the bombs dropped on Japn as you mentioned (made by european scientist by the way), and then bombing car factories in european countries.

So Apple is doing what we have always done in America. Instead of making the best product we just stop others from trying to do so.

Keep in mind the vast majority of Japanese car designs are done in the USA and Europe. The Mazda Miata was designed in LA to name one. I'll say it again, America has a culture that opens one be creative and take risks.

If you fail? Who cares!?! You try again. However, other cultures, one failure can compromise your career and reputation for life. Why this is? I'm not a sociologist. America is not stopping anyone for innovating, they are doing it themselves.

I have worked with many people here in California from all over the world that say the same thing. Their home cultures discourage and in some cases punish risk. That is why they moved here.

Fortune favors the brave and not the safe.

----------

Hmm....Why does winning matter? If it's trivial, it's trivial.

Did you even read Samsung's patents from this recent case?

7,456,893 : A patent on the idea of showing the most recently accessed picture when you go into the "show pictures taken" mode of a digital camera.

7,577,460 : A patent on emailing from a camera phone.

7,698,711 : Doing another task while music is playing in the background.

If you're going to say bounceback is trivial, those certainly are even more trivial?

It wasn't trival when these patents were filed. A patent is good for 14 years, when that expires everyone can jump on it. There are patent para-legals that have a full time job of looking for patent expiration notices to jump on it.

Whenever you see a "new feature" simultaneously released by multiple competing firms almost at the same time, that is typically due to a patent expiring where they refused to license or the terms were not amicable.
 

hchung

macrumors 6502a
Oct 2, 2008
689
1
It wasn't trival when these patents were filed. A patent is good for 14 years, when that expires everyone can jump on it. There are patent para-legals that have a full time job of looking for patent expiration notices to jump on it.

Whenever you see a "new feature" simultaneously released by multiple competing firms almost at the same time, that is typically due to a patent expiring where they refused to license or the terms were not amicable.

Yes, but look at when these were patented.

7,698,711: Filed in 2007. I'm not sure why my Motorola flip phone from 2005 isn't prior art.

7,577,460 : Filed in 2006. Likewise, I'm not sure why any camera phone isn't prior art.

7,456,893 : Filed in 2005. Not sure why any camera phone, or even the ancient Canon Powershot SD100 isn't prior art.

----------

I think you're reading too much into that patent. If you press and hold your finger ont he screen, you won't accidentally hit a link anyway.

Pressing and holding to avoid a link doesn't even make sense as a workaround. It sounds like you simply don't understand.
 

dBeats

macrumors 6502a
Jun 21, 2011
637
214
Your last 3 sentences just make you look stupid. Samsung uses Google's OS they don't make their own. They make a launcher that skins Google Android. Just thought I'd let you know before you make yourself look even stupider.

The last three sentences are an imperative. Like "Go read my article again and don't snap judge that I don't know Samsung uses Android." My point is go try making a mobile OS from scratch and see how hard it is. Now "go put your foot in your mouth."
 

kdarling

macrumors P6
A patent is good for 14 years, when that expires everyone can jump on it.

In the USA:

A design patent lasts 14 years.

A utility patent filed before mid 1995 lasts 17 years.

Patents filed after then, last 20 years.

There are proposals that software patents should only last two years, if not abolished altogether. However, such patents favor rich companies who can afford refiling until the USPTO gives in, so we're probably stuck with them.
 

CFreymarc

Suspended
Sep 4, 2009
3,969
1,149
In the USA:

A design patent lasts 14 years.

A utility patent filed before mid 1995 lasts 17 years.

Patents filed after then, last 20 years.

There are proposals that software patents should only last two years, if not abolished altogether. However, such patents favor rich companies who can afford refiling until the USPTO gives in, so we're probably stuck with them.


Or just get rich and start a corporation of your own.
 

poloponies

Suspended
May 3, 2010
2,661
1,366
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/09/12/r...ipod-nano-looks-like-nokia-lumia-twitter-too/

Hmm....looks like Apple have copied Nokia (sorry, I mean stolen from them)

original.jpg
 

Tech198

Cancelled
Mar 21, 2011
15,915
2,151
.....and now, Its Samsungs turn....


Thiats sounds even MORE ridiculious.

(edit, almost as ridiculious as constantly editing this for typos. :p)
 
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