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Apple Asked Google Not to Use Multi-Touch in Android?

michaelvoigt said:
Palm has been busy and the Pre is coming.<snip>
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You've missed the most important factors here: lock outs.

1) The Pre will be Sprint exclusive for all of 6 months. Then Verizon will get it, and GSM carriers within a year. There are LOTS of people who don't want to switch carriers or are mid contract, etc. This is the iPhone for people who don't want AT&T (and there's plenty of them).

2) Software lockout. Apple has the iPhone locked down pretty hard (not that you can't hack it, even easily, just that you have to hack it to do much of anything Apple hasn't preordained). Not sure how the Palm will hold up to thins, but it's likely to be better than the iPhone.

I think you are also missing the mark on the "missing sync". Syncing is very 1990's, imo. No one wants to sync. We should have realtime multidirectional push with the Cloud. Which Palm just might deliver, and where the iPhone fails pretty bad. See: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/01/of-clouds-palms-webos-and-cutting-the-cord.ars

The iPhone may sell to "hipsters" and iPod obsessed techies (I include myself here, I have an iPod touch and love it), but the Palm Pre may merge that market and the Blackberry crowd into a single media rich, business capable device. Maybe. It's too early to tell, yet. I'm getting one, though, assuming the price is decent - I have a Sprint SERO contract (500min, 7pm N&W, m2m, unlimited text/photo msg, unlimited data for $30/month) so the iPhone is just a non-starter for me. I'd pay over 3x the monthly fee for similar service. No thanks.
 
farmboy said:
Apple spends a huge amount on R&D, far more than other companies, so you are just wrong there.
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Are you sure about that?

I think the key point the post you were replying to was trying to make was that other tech companies of Apple's size spend more than Apple on R&D.

Sure, Apple spends a ton, but they don't spend more than their peers, and there's far smaller companies that spend proportionally more than they do.

(Palm, for example, is 1/80 the size of Apple but has 1/6 the R&D budget.)
 
Peace said:
Here's a novel concept.

Perhaps Apple and Google actually like each other ( ergo Schmidt on the Apple board ) and don't want to step on each others toes. Apple simply asked Google not to implement multi-touch and Google said ok.

I really don't think Google has the mindset of trying to overtake the iPhone.
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I have said all along that Google is primarily going after Windows Mobile, not Mobile OS X. The only direct competitor to Mobile OS X is Palm's Web OS (that isn't to say that Android phones can't compete with the iPhone and shouldn't be compared to it).
 
Walk the line

Google is a very difficult position. Since they have their fingers in so many pies it has to tred a very tight line with companies it makes money off in one area and compete with in another. Remeber when they pissed off EBay about scheduling something the same time as a PayPal even and EBay pulled their advertising?

As for Palm I agree they do not care who they annoy. They need the new Phone to be a hit or they are dead. Sprint who will I understand have an exclusive agreement with Palm will be in the same boat as their market share is crashing. It is Palm's own fault cause like many people I was a loyal Palm owner from the V to the Treo 755p and they totally failed to keep up.
 
mrgreen4242 said:
1) The Pre will be Sprint exclusive for all of 6 months. Then Verizon will get it, and GSM carriers within a year. There are LOTS of people who don't want to switch carriers or are mid contract, etc. This is the iPhone for people who don't want AT&T (and there's plenty of them).
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And you're forgetting about the iPod Touch.

mrgreen4242 said:
2) Software lockout. Apple has the iPhone locked down pretty hard (not that you can't hack it, even easily, just that you have to hack it to do much of anything Apple hasn't preordained). Not sure how the Palm will hold up to thins, but it's likely to be better than the iPhone.
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Palm apps are almost exactly like the original iPhone web apps (as far as we can tell with the limited information available). They will have nearly the same abilities with the exception of the Palm web apps being able to run in the background while the iPhone web apps could not. There is no difference with respect to lockout as there is no store for web apps (which is what you're complaining about, not lockouts).

mrgreen4242 said:
I think you are also missing the mark on the "missing sync". Syncing is very 1990's, imo. No one wants to sync. We should have realtime multidirectional push with the Cloud. Which Palm just might deliver, and where the iPhone fails pretty bad. See: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/01/of-clouds-palms-webos-and-cutting-the-cord.ars
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Define fails pretty bad. The iPhone has access to exchange servers (and mobileme, which is vastly improved over the botched launch). By denying the ability to connect directly to a computer and forcing users to use only over the air syncing Palm is in fact limiting the choices, not increasing them.

mrgreen4242 said:
The iPhone may sell to "hipsters" and iPod obsessed techies (I include myself here, I have an iPod touch and love it), but the Palm Pre may merge that market and the Blackberry crowd into a single media rich, business capable device. Maybe. It's too early to tell, yet. I'm getting one, though, assuming the price is decent - I have a Sprint SERO contract (500min, 7pm N&W, m2m, unlimited text/photo msg, unlimited data for $30/month) so the iPhone is just a non-starter for me. I'd pay over 3x the monthly fee for similar service. No thanks.
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As far as I can tell the Pre is not this device. Lets go through your description of the phone compared to the iPhone.

Media rich: Let me know how over the air sync works for you there.
Business capable: Both have access to exchange servers. I'm not sure about the Pre's ability to be remote wiped (nor other security features).
US Carriers: Pre will likely be available to different carriers.

So what will make the Pre perfect by your standards is that it is less capable as a rich media device but is sold by more carriers in the US.

I'm sorry but you're incredibly biased.

I'd love for Palm to succeed but they just aren't living up to the hype as far as I'm concerned. They have been silent on battery life as well as specifics regarding web app development. There is a lot of conjecture here and as far as I can tell it usually stems from someone's iPhone pet peeve (yours being carrier options, others include physical keyboard, the whole "open"/webapp thing, not being a company named Apple, etc...)

Lets wait to see something close to the released product before we go heralding this as the solution to everyone's problems.
 
Unspeaked said:
Are you sure about that?

I think the key point the post you were replying to was trying to make was that other tech companies of Apple's size spend more than Apple on R&D.

Sure, Apple spends a ton, but they don't spend more than their peers, and there's far smaller companies that spend proportionally more than they do.

(Palm, for example, is 1/80 the size of Apple but has 1/6 the R&D budget.)
Click to expand...

Traditionally, a technology company has a large R&D budget as a percentage or revenue until that company either starts generating a lot of income from products (which is what Palm needs to do), gets bought out for the same technology, or goes bankrupt. Dell is an example of a company that did quite well for a while with a relatively small amount of R&D, but a supply chain business model that the competition ultimately mastered.

You might want to look back to a time when Apple was spending a much higher portion of its revenue in R&D, with much less cash on hand, and what has and is still coming out of that in the way of products and revenue.

I applaud Palm for breaking with past products to develop the Pre, but, there is no guarantee that they will be successful. They are, after all, late to the game.
 
Good. Google would have half implemented multitouch and it would have been buggy. I'm glad they didn't put it in the G1.
 
Unspeaked said:
I think the key point the post you were replying to was trying to make was that other tech companies of Apple's size spend more than Apple on R&D.

Sure, Apple spends a ton, but they don't spend more than their peers, and there's far smaller companies that spend proportionally more than they do.
Click to expand...

Correct. Apple spends about 4% of its income on R&D. Most other tech companies spend around 15%.

Of course, amount isn't everything. But raw amount is the wrong thing to boast about, in Apple's case.
 
h.21 said:
Good. Google would have half implemented multitouch and it would have been buggy. I'm glad they didn't put it in the G1.
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And you know this how...?


kdarling said:
Correct. Apple spends about 4% of its income on R&D. Most other tech companies spend around 15%.

Of course, amount isn't everything. But raw amount is the wrong thing to boast about, in Apple's case.
Click to expand...

Yes, you can't look at a single number and learn a lot from it without looking at other figures, and if any company has done well with a relatively low R&D budget it's been Apple, but I just wanted to clarify that for the poster.
 
mrgreen4242 said:
The iPhone may sell to "hipsters" and iPod obsessed techies (I include myself here, I have an iPod touch and love it), but the Palm Pre may merge that market and the Blackberry crowd into a single media rich, business capable device. Maybe. It's too early to tell, yet. I'm getting one, though, assuming the price is decent - I have a Sprint SERO contract (500min, 7pm N&W, m2m, unlimited text/photo msg, unlimited data for $30/month) so the iPhone is just a non-starter for me. I'd pay over 3x the monthly fee for similar service. No thanks.
Click to expand...

I cannot argue with that monthly price you should stay with Sprint. But, I just think this Pre is going to be another me-too smartphone. It just doesn't say sexy, it just doesn't have a 'got to have it' feature, IMO. There are 13 million plus iPhones out there... momentum, momentum.. momentum.
 
farmboy said:
OK, you're just not listening, are you?
...
Apple spends a huge amount on R&D, far more than other companies, so you are just wrong there.
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Like I said, we can agree to disagree. Also, you are dead wrong with wherever you pull your figures from.

As you can see here, here, here, here, and here; Apple spends relatively little on R&D. So no, you are just wrong there. Try looking some facts up before spewing out falsities.
 
mrgreen4242 said:
That is incorrect. You DO NOT give up patent rights if you don't enforce them. You're thinking of trademark law, which you do lose if you don't defend it.

If what you are saying was true there would be no such thing as patent "torpedoing".
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As a matter of patent law, no defense is required. The patent office does not care if you defend your patent. Or if you ever bring it to market.

But as a matter of case law, you do indeed have to put infringers on notice and take active steps to defend your patent or you risk losing the protection against that infringer.
 
I find these "stifling innovation" comments a little pathetic.

What part of using someone elses ideas is innovative?

If a company is unable to churn out copies of the iPhone and multi-touch then to be a success they have to come up with the next big thing and release a product that has a newer, better approach. THAT is innovation.

If every company released a multi-touch smart phone then thats all we would see.
 
JG271 said:
Thats crazy. Why would google need to listen to Apple? They're huge! What would they lose by not listening to Apple?

Doesn't make a great deal of sense to me...
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where have you been?

Google is not that much bigger than Apple market capitalisation wise. It's not like a giant talking to a pee-wee or anything.
 
Silver-Fox said:
It is pretty much getting worse and worse
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Yes, and Apples Director of World Wide Service just exited over it. Can't make an Apple Pie if your given Applesauce. We are entering the Tim Cook era. Steve is gone. Face it. We will see a much more aggressive market driven company. Only time will tell.

At least I can still look at my collection of multicolored Apple Stickies. :apple:
 
megfilmworks said:
Without the intellectual property rights and patent protection no company would invest in the R&D to make innovative products. There would be no iPhone. Or anything else of interest, just old rehashed ideas in the public domain.
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There's a different between no IP rights at all and the highly liberal rules on what you can patent nowadays. Like the ridiculous patent eBay got for oneclick purchases online. How can you patent such general ideas? Should the first guy who made a car that moved four wheels steered through a steering wheel have beena able to patent that 'idea' ? Apple should be allowed to patent specific technology, but not ideas as general as using two fingers to control a device. That isn't Apple technology, and not recognizing at such would not hurt innovation or the incentive on Apple's part to 'invent' it at all.

What R&D budget do you need to think of the idea to use two fingers to control a device? The technology to implement it, yes, but that is something very very different.

Think of the difference between the recipie of Coca Cola (which is not patented btw but still intellectual property) and a similar taste. You can't gain IP to the latter.
 
Digitalclips said:
See above for michaelvoigt's post.

Excellent summation, very thought provoking. Thank you.
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I thought it was an overly long poorly-written bit of self-puffery.

I mean who writes in point form and then gets the numbers of the points horribly out of order/wrong?
(1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 1, 3, ????)

If the guy can't do math and can't write anything in less than five pages, what's the odds that it's really worth reading his lovely, interesting thoughts?
:rolleyes:
 
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