Apple Patent: Translucency

[hulugu]

Usability is key

I think apple did something like this when they implemented PDF print in OS X... they did it without paying adobe.... it was either that or Quartz... i forget which.

My 2 Cents on this issue...
I sure hope you can turn this feature off. Why would anyone want to waste CPU and VPU time rendering transparencies that you won't see... imagine if safari is full screen, and you have windows in the back fading in and out for no reason. This is big waste of cycles... Is this part of Quartz Ultra Extreme???

<rant>Everyone that I know that uses expose' has windows and palettes all over the place and doesn't work very clean to begin with. PERSONALLY i didn't see a need for expose' and I don't see a need for this either... I just want a window to appear... it doesn't need to scale, it doesn't need to zoom or fade... I don't care about those things, I care about speed and performance... my clients could care less what my GUI windows look like, but they do care that it takes milliseconds more time to open a window and pushes their deadlines back!!!!</rant>

Expose is a great feature if you know how to use it, I flip between various windows so often that it was slightly more time consuming to find the window I needed and then flip back. I care about speed too, but more often than not my machine is fast enough for my current needs—I'm sure I could justify a G5 though—and I care about usability more.
Not everyone works the same way you do.

 

[gunnmjk]

This has been used by many people. Including Trillian and Office 2003 (outlook notifications).

Apple still doesn't believe it can build a better mouse trap so it wants to try and patent it.

it's used in Microsoft Office 2004 as well for the formatting palette . The palette fades transparency when you stop focusing on it, and start working on your document. It reappears 100% when you mouse over it.

 

[dontmatter]

This talk is driving me nuts.

OK, lets take a clear look at the world, and then play a little game and say, what would happen if patent law went to either extreme-either no patents, or patents for the tiniest, most superficial of innovations, that restrict all rights so much that only the patent holder can use the technology, for all time.

First, the world of no patents, since that's what people are arguing for:

I've got a great Idea that will provide signifigant gains for human life, increasing efficinecy, ease of use, etc. it's going to take a lot of money to make it work, though, work out kinks, make some prototypes, figure out how to make it user friendly, and put it on the market. So, I do so. Soon as I do it, other people pick it apart, figure out how it works, in just a couple of weeks with a couple of bucks, and make a cheaper version themselves, and I make no money. So, next time I have an idea, I simply don't implement it. The only reason in this world to innovate, is if it gives you a marketing edge by coming into the market first, and if its' significantly hard to copy, so it will take a while for freebee clones to come out. But, if you run a company, it's just smarter to let somebody else take on the cost of devoleping ideas (particularly b/c most ideas will be busts), and then because you dont' have that cost, you can sell cheaper, and get the market share.

Clearly, there's a reason the founding fathers set up strong patent laws, and it has helped to make this country the leader in so many technologies and provide so many of the world's innovations. Patents make it profitable to invent, because until your idea is old hat, you make money off of it, and others pay if they want to use it, and so effectively pay for R&D, just that they subcontract it off to someone else by paying liscencing fees.


Now, the world of all restrictive patents:

In this world, there is no competition. If you make something, of any sort, you're the only one who can make it. Nobody's going to take your market share, if nobody is allowed to make another product doing the same thing, so you have no incentive to make it better, and no access to other people's ideas to make it better, for that matter. If you patented the internal combustion engine, you're going to be the only car maker for the rest of all time. We'd barely get beyond the model T in this world, because it's always cheaper to stick with your market, raise prices, and make no investments for the future, because the future can't really bring you any more money than it already does.


So, lets see. What do we want? I'd say, we want something quite close to our current system. We want patents. We want them to expire, though, and allow for competition, but still give the inventer an advantage over moochers. This is particularly important with computers, because the computer world moves so fast, and it is so easy to copy someone else's ideas or just copy the software directly. If you make a new kind of car, it's going to take a long, long time for people to figure out how to copy it, and get it into procuction. In that time, you've lost money to R&D, but you still have advantages of market share, being able to move on to the next technology by the time the others have caught up, etc. At the very least, you can get a niche market. But, with software, if you don't have protections...you'll be halfway to recovering your R&D costs before you've completely lost the market to people who have made the same thing for free. We must have patents for software, but they also must expire quickly, because innovations become old commodities so quickly with computers.

 

[Jookbox]

I do hope they get this patent. I'm sick of Microsoft stealing every idea Apple has.

i try not to be a jerk here, but that's the lamest thing i've read today.

 

[Toreador93]

According to my Philosophy professor, and a few of his collegues and lawyer friends, patents are beginning to hinder development.

Yes a patent can help a small company, but they can also hurt it. There are people in big companies whose sole job is to think up ideas, and patent them. They may never use them, but if someone else comes up with it, or even uses part of it, they're out of luck. Either pay an outlandish price and go out of business, or be sued and go out of business.

This is true especially for software. Patents last for 20 years. 10-20 year old software should not still be protected. A software's life is probably about 5 years. After that, it is just inhibiting developement.

Patents used now were never meant to be used for software. It is a whole different technology, and fits a different set of rules.

Also, if something goes to court, many times the ruling is in the hands of a jury. Juries are made up of average people. The average person doesn't know anything about programming. Why would you rely on them for determining if there is a patent infringement??

Patents have gotten so out of hand, entire business models have been patented. Have you heard of Netflix? Have you heard of any competition? I doubt it, because every part of that company is patented. I believe Walmart is going to start something similar, but it will undoubtedly go to court.

 

[MetallicPenguin]

Patents have gotten so out of hand, entire business models have been patented. Have you heard of Netflix? Have you heard of any competition? I doubt it, because every part of that company is patented. I believe Walmart is going to start something similar, but it will undoubtedly go to court.

Actually, I think that about 2 companies that are doing the same thing just sprung up out of nowhere, I bet something will happen, or already has.

-just useless trivia that does not add to the content of this topic really.

 

[Sveto]

Xerox PARC

For all the history about the subject with dates get "Dealers of Lightning: Xerox Parc and the Dawn ..."
Than you can learn day by day how everything started. At the end of the book you can find a few words for every participant and will be surprised that most of the guys involved went to Microsoft and not Apple.
Many things were dicovered at Xerox as basic ideas, but the huge benefit of creating a package like the OS has to be given to Apple. Don't forget that!

 

[ibjoshua]

Please don't get me started on Session IDs and Cookies and similarities. They have NOTHING to do with each other. Session IDs are authenticating, time-sensitive tickets used with SSL/TLS security. E.g. like the system used on your banking site(s).
Cookies are simply some sort of combination of unique, identifiable data (typically some combination of processor serial number and operating system on a Wintel machine...AMD doesn't use processor IDs) placed by a website onto your computer in PLAIN TEXT . All a cookie does is that it lets the web server know that you've been on the site before. Sometimes, the previous visit information will be stored on your computer, or (more often) a visit ID/Timestamp is placed in plain text in the file, which corresponds to data on the web server.

I would be highly concerned, even paranoid if secure transactions were carried out using cookies.

And yes, I DO know what I'm talking about...

Yo're quoting the wrong guy in this thread. I know what you're talking about AND I agree with you. But thanks for backing me up.

i_b_joshua

 

[ibjoshua]

Someone please explain (or speculate on) how the described feature would work.

Suppose you click the title bar of a background window to bring it forward. Does that reset the timer that controls fading?

If the answer is YES: Something's fishy, because when the frontmost window finally reaches the point where clicks are passed to the window behind it, the window behind it must have been inactive even longer, so it too should have faded to the click-through point.

If the answer is NO: Something's fishy, because I've just shown my interest in the newly frontmost window yet it may still fade out very soon. Since some windows hold read-only information (nothing to click on in the window), how would you keep such windows from fading if clicking to make them frontmost wasn't enough?

Thanks Doctor Q, the patent argument is getting very boring and circular. This is what I have been trying to work out. A lot of people have been talking about transparency/translucency being an old (and worn out?) idea. I think it's the method of implementation that the patent is talking about.

That said, I still can't work out how they want to implement it. If somebody could mock up or give us a blow-by-blow of how they think it would work, that would be cool.

i_b_joshua

 

[areyouwishing]

Expose is a great feature if you know how to use it, I flip between various windows so often that it was slightly more time consuming to find the window I needed and then flip back. I care about speed too, but more often than not my machine is fast enough for my current needs—I'm sure I could justify a G5 though—and I care about usability more.
Not everyone works the same way you do.

Like I said.. "Personally i..."

I usually never have more than 5 windows open in a particular application at a time. With Cmd + Tab to switch between applications, control + ~ to switch between the current application windows, I didn't like pressing f9 to watch an animation, then try and determine what window i wanted from 15 different windows between the finder and all of my open applications.

I also dropped a hundred bux on Quickeys to be able to customize my keyboard shortcuts beyond Panther and the CS apps... which includes pressing Command+Esc to go to my finder and hiding all applications... which means that if i accidentally click on the outer edge of my desktop, i don't get some un-wanted app.

I agree with you in that my machine is fast enough for my needs too. I really don't want apple introducing more features that are going to inflate my needs... as long as you can turn it off... im a happy camper.

 

[chabig]

I didn’t read the patent, but doesn’t MS Office 2004 have this effect of palettes getting transparent when they’re not used? Is this something completely different?

The Apple application seems to exactly describe the behavior of Office's new palettes. However, just because Office does this does not make it prior art. The right to patent goes to the first to invent, not the first to use or the first to file.

Chris

 

[Doctor Q]

With Cmd + Tab to switch between applications, control + ~ to switch between the current application windows...

So nobody gets misled, a slight correction: Command-Tab to switch between applications and Command-~ to switch between windows of the current application.

 

[chabig]

Someone please explain (or speculate on) how the described feature would work.

Certainly. It's well described in the patent application. But that type of text can make for tedious reading. Here goes...

The example given in the patent application refers to floating palettes. And the one they refer to specifically is the Speech Recognition palette. If you're not using speech recognition, this palette does nothing but obscure what's beneath. So Apple dims the transparency of the palette to show the desktop or document beneath it. Clicks on the palette are assumed to be targeted at the desktop or document as long as the speech palette is not being used. However, if you hold down the hot key to tell the Mac to listen to your voice command, the palette will regain it's opaqueness and come back to the front. If you then don't use the spoken interface for a while, that palette will fade back into a translucent state.

That's really the only implementation described.

Chris

 

[theahnman]

my bad

Yo're quoting the wrong guy in this thread. I know what you're talking about AND I agree with you. But thanks for backing me up.

i_b_joshua

my bad

 

[ibjoshua]

Certainly. It's well described in the patent application. But that type of text can make for tedious reading. Here goes...

The example given in the patent application refers to floating palettes. And the one they refer to specifically is the Speech Recognition palette. If you're not using speech recognition, this palette does nothing for you but obscure what's beneath. So Apple dims the transparency to show the desktop or document beneath it. Click on the palette are assumed to be targeted at the desktop or document as long as the speech palette is not being used. However, if you hold down the hot key to tell the Mac to listen to your voice command, the palette will regain it's opaqueness and come back to the front. If you then go without using the spoken interface for a while, that palette will fade back into a translucent state.

That's really the only implementation described.

Chris

Ta Chris. Good explanation.

i_b_joshua

 

[Analog Kid]

Lower barrier to entry.. more competition.. cheaper prices.

no differentiation... no profit... no incentive...

That's assuming everyone just repeated Xerox's ideas. If companies such as Canon spent any money on R&D, it would be on added, not existing, functionality.

Which would be foolish since Xerox and everyone else would just steal the little innovation you just spent 2 years and $100m developing. Since Xerox already has the market share, they'd get credit for your work.

I suppose it's innovation from the company's perspective. But since the end product is the same (a photocopier in this case), I doubt any user would consider it innovation.

That's kinda like saying iPhoto is just a picture book... It is so incredibly rare that innovation involves doing entirely new things. It's almost always about doing the old things in a different way, evolving towards a better way. Evolution only occurs when there is differentiation and diversity.

People romanticize inventions too much. They think inventing is coming up with discontinuous leaps in logic that bring a whole new era to the world. It's not-- it's a series of incredibly boring incremental changes.

We tend to set milestones for past inventions. The Wright Brothers invented the airplane, for example... Do you have any idea how little they added to existing aircraft designs? They tweaked existing designs. The end product, as you say, was the same. Performance improved just enough though that it was capable of much more than the earlier designs.

p.s. in case you think I'm entirely against patents, I'm not. I'm just making the case they can encourage, but also deter, innovation.

The problem isn't patents, the problem is the enforcement of patents, and maybe some specifics. 20 years is an obscene amount of time in the software industry right now, and holding exclusive rights to an invention for that long seems like too much. There are other issues with how they're awarded and litigated.

Patents themselves though are good. Actually, they were considered to be of enough importance to be specifically mentioned in the US Constitution:

The Congress shall have power to... promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Article I, Section 8.

The Constitution is such an incredibly terse document that anything deserving specific mention was considered critical to the nation. I think the implementation is open to discussion, but the concept is a good one.

 

[areyouwishing]

So nobody gets misled, a slight correction: Command-Tab to switch between applications and Command-~ to switch between windows of the current application.

actually, i use control, but you are right, the default is command...

I switched in in panther because command-~ in photoshop is show all channels... this way control-~ works in all programs.

 

[mcs37]

Unpatentable

I highly doubt this can be patented. While it sounds like a cool idea that no one has done entirely, it's not exactly an innovative concept but rather an extension of the state of the art. Essentially what this boils down to is a timer on each window that increases trans(par|luc)ency as the timer increases and isn't reset. There is nothing here which is non-obvious or novel, although it's certainly a useful addition to a GUI. Due to prior art of transparency combined with the natural extension of state of the art, the patent office will not grant Apple's application.

Damn, I should be an IP lawyer.

 

[chabig]

Unless prior art is found, I suspect this patent will be granted. A patentable idea has to be novel (not been done before) and unobvious to one skilled in the art. If you are the first to do something, then it's novel. And while ideas often seem obvious in hindsight, the fact that it seems obvious once you've been told about it doesn't mean it was obvious at the time of conception. Finally, the burden the patent office has to meet to reject claims on the basis of obviousness is rather high.

Chris

 

[gerardrj]

I hope they don't succeed in patenting it.
Incidentally, speaking of Microsoft "stealing every patent Apple has" conveniently ignores the fact that Apple's GUI (which they then proceeded to sue lots of companies over, including Microsoft) was, at the very least, "inspired" by research at Xerox PARC.

ARG! Please, this has been gone over and over.
1. Apple ASKED to see and use the ideas from XP
2. The OS Apple saw there bears the absolute minimum resemblance to Macintosh. It's like saying the builders of the QM2 stole the look and feel from the a rowboat design down the street.

Can somebody please post the video clips that show what the OS at XP looked like when Apple saw the thing so we can end these uneducated comments once and for all.

 

[J-Squire]

Certainly. It's well described in the patent application. But that type of text can make for tedious reading. Here goes...

The example given in the patent application refers to floating palettes. And the one they refer to specifically is the Speech Recognition palette. If you're not using speech recognition, this palette does nothing but obscure what's beneath. So Apple dims the transparency of the palette to show the desktop or document beneath it. Clicks on the palette are assumed to be targeted at the desktop or document as long as the speech palette is not being used. However, if you hold down the hot key to tell the Mac to listen to your voice command, the palette will regain it's opaqueness and come back to the front. If you then don't use the spoken interface for a while, that palette will fade back into a translucent state.

That's really the only implementation described.

Chris

It took 138 posts, but someone finally gave a reasonable interpretation based on some actual insight.
If this really is all that it gets used for, then I would say that it will be a feature that I have little need for.

UNLESS.....10.4 has made some large advancements in User Voice control. I wouldn't be suprised if Apple has come up with some sweet as features that employ voice recognition, and actually make vocal commands useful and easy. This could be a big step forward in human-computer interaction. They were already hamming up the fact that the next major OS release would have this feature, but maybe we didn't take as big a deal as it will be

 

[qubex]

10.4 has made some large advancements in User Voice control. I wouldn't be suprised if Apple has come up with some sweet as features that employ voice recognition, and actually make vocal commands useful and easy. This could be a big step forward in human-computer interaction. They were already hamming up the fact that the next major OS release would have this feature, but I maybe we didn't take as big a deal as it will be

Ah, but we already know 10.4 contains great voice control enhancements - Apple already announced as much officially. The report was on Page One of this site, barely two months or so ago. I have to agree with the next post: personally I hadn't considered it a big deal - and I still don't - but perhaps there will be people for whom this is useful.

1. Apple ASKED to see and use the ideas from XP
2. The OS Apple saw there bears the absolute minimum resemblance to Macintosh. It's like saying the builders of the QM2 stole the look and feel from the a rowboat design down the street.

Can somebody please post the video clips that show what the OS at XP looked like when Apple saw the thing so we can end these uneducated comments once and for all.

"Uneducated" yourself, my dear sir! Just because you disagree with me, which is all fine and well, does not give you any licence to be rude.

Regarding the substantive issues of the debate, as I mentioned in subsequent posts, there are a number of different accounts of what exactly took place. Depending on whom one believes, the GUI was either developed entirely independently at Apple, under prior development at Apple but floundering until an influx of Xerox PARC researchers, under prior development at Apple and fully in sway until a modest influx of Xerox PARC researchers, entirely "ripped off" from Xerox PARC by Apple, etc. Unlike you would have it, I am not "uneducated" in such affairs, and I accept a plurality of views. As many have argued, however - it is not the copying that lies at heart of the Software Patent issue - it is the First Inventor. So even if Apple did develop the GUI entirely independently, under the current terms of Software Patents that they are taking advantage of, their prior actions would have been contrary to the IP held by Xerox. Whether they copied it or developed it independently is irrelevant because Xerox was the First Inventor.

Get it now? Or are you going to call me "undecuated" another time? Do you see what I'm getting at? If yes, good. If no, nevermind. Just try to be polite.

 

[J-Squire]

...maybe read the whole post

Ah, but we already know 10.4 contains great voice control enhancements - Apple already announced as much officially. The report was on Page One of this site, barely two months or so ago.

...yes, which is why...

They were already hamming up the fact that the next major OS release would have this feature, but maybe we didn't take as big a deal as it will be

 

[Analog Kid]

Don't criticize another board members dissent under the guise of reason. It is and can only be censorship via peer pressure.

Dissent, argue and criticize. I think that the people who care about Apple most, like good patriots, criticize most.

Somehow I don't think you meant to contradict yourself quite so directly...
Still not clear if bringing this up means I'm trying to censor you or I'm a patriot...

 

[Analog Kid]

Certainly. It's well described in the patent application. But that type of text can make for tedious reading. Here goes...

The example given in the patent application refers to floating palettes. And the one they refer to specifically is the Speech Recognition palette. If you're not using speech recognition, this palette does nothing but obscure what's beneath. So Apple dims the transparency of the palette to show the desktop or document beneath it. Clicks on the palette are assumed to be targeted at the desktop or document as long as the speech palette is not being used. However, if you hold down the hot key to tell the Mac to listen to your voice command, the palette will regain it's opaqueness and come back to the front. If you then don't use the spoken interface for a while, that palette will fade back into a translucent state.

That's really the only implementation described.

Chris

Any way you can link to that patent app?

I think the key here is that this is a technique to be used sparingly... Either for top windows you want to position once (the clock, load monitors, etc) or for controls you can easily regain a handle to (such as the hot key for speech, or maybe context sensitive tool pallets that come alive when they're in context and fade out when they're out of context but you still know where they are.)

As far as knowing when you can manipulate them and when you can't I'd guess there are three states: opaque, semi-transparent and transitional (fading). You can manipulate it in the opaque and bring it back to life if you grab it while it's fading, but once it stabilizes at semi-transparent you'll have to find another way of kicking it awake again.

I can certainly see the utility of it, I just wouldn't position it over the "delete my work" button...