You haven't answered the core question. I'll say it again as you didn't seem to understand first time round or choose not to.
What is the benefit to us as consumers with these companies trying to destroy each other?
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You haven't answered the core question. I'll say it again as you didn't seem to understand first time round or choose not to.
What is the benefit to us as consumers with these companies trying to destroy each other?
Try reading a bit on why patents and copyright exist; what they were / are meant to accomplish; why they are bad - or good; what the alternatives are, how the current system is working - or not - and why; the lobbies mired in it; what and how can be changed; and most importantly, what to do about it.
Apple and Google and Nokia and etc are all playing a game with some defined rules; they can't just not play. You don't like it? Then it'll be much more useful if you learn about it and about how to change it than just throwing up rants.
Because meanwhile you rant, others are actively trying to make the system even worse, in the name of the consumer and of the children and whatnot.
A quick, painless way to get started:
http://www.patenthawk.com/blog/2005/04/patent_economics_part_3_the_in.html
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If announcing is enough to claim anything, then Microsoft's must be incredible in your book, what with all their vaporware throughout the years.
No idea about that quote's context, but is that the same Jobs who ******* products because they were not worthy yet? (while presumably some other company would have already shipped the thing)
Xerox and Palm...
The interesting thing is how a lot of those ideas and engineers do bounce around having little to show for it... until they flourish at Apple.
A downside of allowing gesture patents (which I greatly oppose, since one should not be able to patent a touch vocabulary) has been that consumers must learn more than one way to do or visualize things.
Speak for yourself. Please do not try to speak for me. Thanks.
Some of WebOS' greatest innovations (which everyone is now copying) came about due to developers who left Apple for Palm where they could implement their ideas.
Heck, Apple probably wouldn't exist today if Jobs hadn't stolen all the best Apple engineers to go with him to create NeXT, and then brought back their expertise later on.
Individuals and timing are everything.
Just imagine if that one developer had not shown Jobs flick scrolling. Everyone here might easily instead be using Apple's original iPhone design with a scrollwheel, and saying "Who needs touch?"
Huh. Ok, I will just quote you again.
I hope you won't tell me now not to quote or bold for you.
Maybe one should argue then that the thing that made them flourish was Jobs, not Apple in fact.
And context. Individuals, timing and context are everything.
And teams. Individuals, timing, context and teams are everything!
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Just imagine if that one developer had not shown Jobs flick scrolling. Everyone here might easily instead be using Apple's original iPhone design with a scrollwheel, and saying "Who needs touch?"
Or, just imagine if Jobs had not screamed or drawn in some whiteboard that he only wanted flick scrolling. Everyone here might easily instead be using... blah, blah.
(the point being: how do you know the source of the flick scrolling?)
Which brings up the question: Why was it the iPhone that fundamentally changed the way the world thinks about smartphones, whereas the Neo is pretty much forgotten?
To which I'd answer: Apple did the really important stuff. They made it easy to unlock ("Swipe to unlock"); they made it easy to send an e-mail or call someone - (its '647 patent); they wanted "Scroll and bounce Back" (its '381 patent) and probably a thousand other little details. In my opinion, its not that people wanted a touchscreen phone, they wanted a touchscreen phone that worked like the iPhone did. All the snazzy advertising in the world wouldn't have gulled people into buying a phone that didn't delight them.
This time around, Apple had patented its "secret sauce." And in their rush to match the iPhone, the people at Google and Samsung, HTC and Motorola, either by design or by oversight, copied a lot of the features that were protected by Apple's IP.
I presume you are referring to the technology license Apple gave to Microsoft in 1985 to use Mac interface elements in Windows. This was after Steve left Apple. John Scully did that deed, as the story goes because Bill Gates threatened to discontinue development of Mac applications if he didn't get it. Apple presumed that the license applied only to the version of Windows then in development (1.0 if memory serves). When some of the same appeared in a subsequent version of Windows, Apple filed the infamous "look and feel" lawsuit. Much of the case was dismissed, in part due to the license, but since many of the claims never went to trial, in fact we'll never really know whether it would have been successful even if the license didn't exist.
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C'mon apple..just back off now will you?? (or don't crush android until 5-6 months or so, as i would be selling my cuz's sgs2 then
you have an andriod ? sinner !!!!!!!!!!!!
Ahh, but here again you misread me, I didn't say anyone else was working on it in the mobile space. Multi-touch and Gesture based interface was around before the iPhone on touch pads and high end devices designed for the diabled.... BUT after the iPhone, after they included it on their smartphone, everyone had to follow suit to keep up.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but let me clarify what I am not and what I am saying. I am not saying that anyone stole Multi-Touch or Multi-Gesture ideas from Apple. I am not saying that Google blatantly copied any part of iOS to make it part of Android. I AM saying that the multi-touch and multi-gesture features introduced on the iPhone influenced every mobile OS maker. That purpose of that is to counter the folks in this thread that seem to think that everything in Android is 100% pure Google innovation, with no influence taken from others.
So again, I bet that Pre-iPhone the Android recipe did not include Multi-Touch or Multi-Gesture.
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No Apple did not do that stuff. What Apple did was marketing and Apple is one of best at marketing its stuff.
What Kdarling examples prove is the market was clearly heading that direction before the iPhone came out. As it has been pointed out before one of the biggest changes was captive multitouch screens had reach the point that they were both cheap enough and reliable enough to be put in consumer grade devices. Top it off Apple was big enough to have a strong ecosystem and push a new product. The other big players at the time like Rim and MS both had legacy issues with their stuff so it makes it a lot slower to steer those boats and turn them but even they were heading that direction.
Android and iOS both had a huge advantage over the old guard in they had zero legacy issues with older hardware and design. Apple iOS is starting to show is problems now with legacy issues, Android as well. MS WP7 lacks those new legacy issues so it gaining traction. RIM has the oldest OS still left and even they releasing a pretty big overhaul of it this year moving to QNX.
KDarling certainly shows that someone thought about it before with the FIC Device, but I'm not sure the market was headed there. MS, Nokia, and RIM were at the top of the market in 2007. RIM was stuck using scroll balls, and their first attempt at a touch screen phone came out at the tail end of 2008. Nokia's first Touch Screen phone came out a year later and it was resistive technology. Steve Ballmer as recently as 2009 said WM doesn't need a capacitive screen because it's too expensive. I submit that while Apple certainly didn't create the technology, how they packaged it and implemented it in the Mobile Space changed everyone's approach.
Ah, I thought it was clear that what I took umbrage over, was your suggestion that "Microsoft must be incredible" in my book
You see, I spent years working in competition to Microsoft and sacrificed quite a bit in doing so. Long story. Also, I'm still upset they dropped the Courier project because it interfered with their Windows 8 plans. Grrrr.
Back to the thread, the particular topic being addressed had everything to do with announcements, because they demonstrated that certain features were not unique to anyone.
Besides the well known story about Jobs being shown a prototype tablet UI that convinced him to switch to touch for the iPhone, there is the February 2007 Wall Street Journal article using interviews with Apple insiders:
PS. What's humorous about that story (to a longterm touch engineer like myself who started flicking pages in code around 1982) is that probably every heavy touch programmer eventually "invents" flick scrolling... by accident! You see, basic flick scrolling is what happens when your initial code attempt at scrolling with a finger doesn't keep up. You lift and it keeps going for a bit. Some fix their code; others see it as the basis for something cool.
Bang on. The lack of legacy code and devices are exactly why Apple was able to move quickly while others could not. Now they are in the same boat and cannot do radical UI changes without upsetting customers.
I never get why people try to push the "it's (only) marketing". Even if that was true, it would only mean that the other producers are so dumb that they can't even copy or improve the marketing.
(and if they can't copy even the marketing, how could they dream of copying or improving anything technical? or maybe it is also implied that marketing is harder than the technical part...?)
What? Are you putting the ecosystem earlier in time than the iPhone?
That's one way of looking at it.
Another way is, even though they had no captive audience, they managed to grow from 0 to ... top.
In fact, I think that having the "legacy" is never bad. If you keep it, you have a number of "automatic" updaters, like Windows. If you don't, you just start from 0 - like the iPhone, or Android, or WARM (Windows on ARM).
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But they chose not to have any legacy; they could have built the iPad with an Intel architecture and with the full OS X. And didn't.
And Apple doesn't seem too afraid to upset customers with changes (UI or not) as of late, does it?
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I think I understand you, but (I am sorry but) I must insist: a number of times Microsoft has nipped in the bud some competitition by announcing some vaporware, and that only killed (or slowed the appearance of) a feature.
So I have a very hard time accepting that an announcement means anything. Real artists ship, etc.
Ok, thanks for the reference; I didn't know that.
No it is bang on. In 2006ish the smart phone wave was picking up steam. Some early phones from that time that were doing really well was things like the Samsung Blackjack (WM) and Blackberry.
Since then things have changed. WM has been the only one to really drop in sells but that has been more because the manufactures who used it walk away from it to go Android (lack of legacy and could do more) so when for example one of the largest Windows Mobile manufactures drops it (HTC) and focus mostly on Android that is going to sting. Samsung another big one does the same thing.
RIM lets look at them. In 2006 if they had a quarter that sold 3-4 million it would of been unbelievable. Now they have a quarter than sold 13 million units and people are all doom and gloom. That quarter I reference had a large INCREASE over the year before but they did loss market share as the market grew faster than their sells.
The smart phone market just took off.
Something Apple is damn good at doing is catching a wave early on and adding to it in helping it grow but they rarely start a wave. The iPod was not the first Hard drive based MP3 player. It caught a growing wave and became huge but still did not start it. Apple is really good at seeing waves form and catching them at the right point were they do not have to deal with legacy baggage from the ones who started the wave so it lets them be a lot more agile at the critical point.
"Picking up steam" and "doing really well" seem kind of weasel words.
The wave had been "picking up steam" for a long time; talking about "early phones" in 2006 seems rather disingenuous. Windows Mobile, or Pocket PC, or whatever it was called on that particular year, was already on its 6.5 version. Palm had been toying with the format for years. Blackberry had been entrenched for a long time already. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Symbian, OpenMoko. Android was an alliance to create a new standardized OS or runtime or whatever, before Google took command.
So, I'd say that Apple didn't take the wave, but made it explode. Turbo-fricking-charge it. Whatever.
So, according to you, things have just moved around but the market is just as it was? Or what? Let me get that straight because I don't understand your point.
(interesting that HTC has been suffering as of lately)
It's not enough to sell, you have to do so profitably. Look at Palm/HP/WebOS.
...and left some people stranded on land, methinks. ;P
If the explanation was that simple, then all the surfers at that moment would be riding atop the big wave. No?
But the fact is that those surfing at that moment are now much worse than they were... while Apple has gone stratospheric.
I can't see how you can claim that they just took the wave at a good moment.
Just like the iPad, huh? There was a big wave of people buying tablets, and Apple entered just in the right moment. Or something.
(And the nasty wave only lets Apple ride it, that's why those 100 tablets from last year went nowhere...)
And you keep hammering on the baggage thing. Baggage can be good and bad. Again: you don't want to have any baggage? Just drop it! That's what Apple did with the iPad. In fact the iPad is an example of both angles: had the advantage of some baggage (iPhone apps), and was a show of eschewing baggage (iOS on ARM instead of OS X on Intel).
I see... I misinterpreted "announced" as "demoed" when I responded to your previous comment. I'm hesitant to give the OpenMoko project any credit on this given that it's pretty much a failure on almost every level and because pinch-to-zoom was invented in the 1980's. Announcing that you're planning to ship a phone who could potentially have a feature invented 20 years prior AND failing to ship said feature AND failing to ship a platform where it would be possible to implement said feature, counts for nothing in my opinion.
If the ideas are truly important, you should have picked a better example than the OpenMoko project. Even the ClearPad array on the Onyx is clearly a better example despite being incomplete.
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The benefit is innovation. The people here who shout that the companies should "stop fighting and go back to innovate" is assuming that it's one or the other. It isn't. That kind of comment should be reserved for patent trolls who don't actually have a product and simply want to get paid.
Without litigation, whoever innovates has little motivation to continue innovating as they're paying for the R&D of their competitors when the competitors rip off their work.
To avoid litigation, a company should pay for the features somebody else invented, cross-license so both companies benefit, or invent their own take on it. The fact that Google has very little in terms of patents associated with Android is very telling. Even if you remove Apple from the picture, the fact that Microsoft's making a ton off royalties from Android is a sign.
There's a reason Apple's lawsuits revolve around Android instead of HP/Palm and Microsoft. And it's not because Jobs wanted to crush Eric Schmidt and Andy Rubin. The reason is because webOS and WinPhone7 are actually unique and innovative. Apple, Microsoft, and Palm probably cross-licensed stuff back in the 1990s. Or at least finished all the legal battles by now, and are simply building on their old experience. The Android fans who claim Android is significantly innovative simply have no idea of past mobiles and handheld platforms.
The lack of Palm, WinCE, Newton, and Psion fanbois to defend the elder platforms and educate the masses leads to ridiculous claims like "iOS5 copies the Android notification UI." Really?! Because the Android notification UI is the combination of earlier Windows Mobile home screens with the notification star from Apple's Newton.