Exactly - people whine when other company's do it to Apple but cheer when Apple does it to others.
Let innovation keep people buying your products, not patents that stifle competition.
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Apple Wins Broad Patent on iPhone Multi-Touch User Interface
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Exactly - people whine when other company's do it to Apple but cheer when Apple does it to others.
Let innovation keep people buying your products, not patents that stifle competition.
Though I dont know the specifics of what's covered under the patent...it does seem rather broad for a touch UI.
I just really hope this wont affect viable competition. If they loose, so do I as an Apple customer (less competition to keep Apple proactive and innovative).
I just really hope this wont affect viable competition. If they loose, so do I as an Apple customer (less competition to keep Apple proactive and innovative).
Intersting idea, but unlikely I think. Apple is not one to "sell their secrets." They will hold on to them forever.
Kind of like how Apple copied Androids notifications (or various other App / jailbreak developers ideas). As big of a fan of Apple as I am, saying they don't borrow ideas from others is simply naive.
They simply referenced PC Magazine. And yes the patent is fairly broad, it covers more than scrolling a frame inside a window. Read the article.
It's not MR's fault... they're just repeating news on the web.
Reminds me of the big hullabaloo back when Apple got the patent on scrolling in a fixed direction. Every so-called tech blog declared that Apple had a "patent on multi-touch". Of course, they never retracted their mistake.
Hint: here's how to tell that a site is faking it. They always say, "the details are too technical for most people, so we'll just say for now that..." What that means is, it's too technical for them to understand and explain to others
Article is wrong. Read the patent claims.
Article mistakenly treats the patent text as defining what the patent covers. It does not work like that. Only the claims define infringement.
just like Android copies Expose from Mac, not to mention the multitouch interface in general.
Again this goes back to why software patents should not be allowed, by any company.
MR writing has really nose-dived recently.
This article shows both: a complete misunderstanding of IP laws AND what the consequences of the patent actually are.
Too many fanboys have read the first post, come to incorrect conclusions and lit the candles around their alter to Jobs. It will be interesting to see how robustly over companies challenge the patent as it doesn't seem to do what the OP claims.
This article shows both: a complete misunderstanding of IP laws AND what the consequences of the patent actually are.
Too many fanboys have read the first post, come to incorrect conclusions and lit the candles around their alter to Jobs. It will be interesting to see how robustly over companies challenge the patent as it doesn't seem to do what the OP claims.
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And exactly how is this considered bad? Apple will now get a cut of every single multitouch phone, whether it being Android, RIM, Windows, you name it.
What expose features does Android copy?
Let me guess, you're on about HTC's and Samsung "pinch to show all home screens" gesture? That isn't android if so, it's third party code by HTC and Samsung respectively.
While I'm an EE, I'm not involved in either displays or patents. Reading the abstract was enough for me to realize that kdarling and cmaier are right. Therefore I'm confident anyone willing to parse the obtuse legal wording can get the same gist.
Nothing to see here, move on.
Also, if PCMag consulted patent experts, maybe they should have printed why those experts claimed it was so broad. I simply don't see it.
Nothing to see here, move on.
Also, if PCMag consulted patent experts, maybe they should have printed why those experts claimed it was so broad. I simply don't see it.
Does google have a patent on the pull down? and aren't they open source so anyone can take any of their code?
i don't think your comparison is very good. apple has had drop downs in its os for a very very long time - using your finger to pull it down is a swipe feature of the iphone (again something they had long before google). apple uses this feature to pull the search window onto the screen. what's the difference if it comes from the side or the bottom or the top? so actually - isn't google copying apple??
Good with Android being sued out of existence, that opens up room for MSFT to come in with their innovative Windows Phone 7 eXperience.
Not to add fuel to the fire, but I completely agree. My curiosity being piqued, I came off an iPhone 4 and have been using an android phone for the past few days. All I've read online is how superior, farther ahead android is, the control it gives you, etc. I have to say that Apple has absolutely nothing to worry about. My first mistake was thinking I could update the phone, which came out 2 months ago, to an OS that came out 7 months ago. Yes, the phone came out MONTHS after the latest major android release (2.3) yet it is running an OS, and impossible to update. It's only one of many, many issues the OS has.. needing to have your updates filtered by both the phone manufacturers, then the carriers, is a situation that will keep most of the android userbase running an obsolete version, and a very tiny fraction running anything close to recent. A messy and frustrating situation.
What the patent is about
The patent is simply this:
Using a certain number of fingers to scroll ("translate") a page around, while using a different number of fingers to scroll an area within it... without moving the containing page.
The only place I can think of offhand where this is currently used on the iPhone or any other phone, is for scrolling a DIV or IFRAME on a web page.
(For those of you who never figured it out, you do so by using two fingers to scroll instead of just one. However, I find it very telling that Apple never put this info in its manual, but many users figured it out anyway. If that's not a definition of creating a solution that's obvious to anyone who uses touch a lot, I don't know what is.)
The patent is simply this:
Using a certain number of fingers to scroll ("translate") a page around, while using a different number of fingers to scroll an area within it... without moving the containing page.
The only place I can think of offhand where this is currently used on the iPhone or any other phone, is for scrolling a DIV or IFRAME on a web page.
(For those of you who never figured it out, you do so by using two fingers to scroll instead of just one. However, I find it very telling that Apple never put this info in its manual, but many users figured it out anyway. If that's not a definition of creating a solution that's obvious to anyone who uses touch a lot, I don't know what is.)
Google deserves to be punished for blatant IP theft. Apple should sue them out of business. Evil deserves a beatdown.
This might be a huge win for Apple, but as an Apple consumer this is terrible, for me.
Patent time frame is sensitive, it needs to be sufficiently long to ensure innovators recoup and benefit from their innovations, but sufficiently short to allow competition.
Patent timeframes need to be shortened and simply do not address how quickly technology moves in modern day.
Patent time frame is sensitive, it needs to be sufficiently long to ensure innovators recoup and benefit from their innovations, but sufficiently short to allow competition.
Patent timeframes need to be shortened and simply do not address how quickly technology moves in modern day.
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Looking at the explanations of the patent in this thread by people in the know, this "broad" patent won't be helping Apple against Google.
Maybe next time!
KingCrimson said:Google deserves to be punished for blatant IP theft. Apple should sue them out of business. Evil deserves a beatdown.
Looking at the explanations of the patent in this thread by people in the know, this "broad" patent won't be helping Apple against Google.
Maybe next time!
Folks, here's claim 1 - the other claims are essentially the same idea:
Again, the claims are quite narrow. Because:
1) it applies only to portable devices
2) it applies only to display of WEB content on these devices
3) it requires that the device respond to both one and two finger gestures (or n and m-finger gestures in other claims)
4) it requires that the one finger gesture be used to pan content
5) it requires that the two finger gesture be used to pan/scroll content within a frame of the web page
It does not cover using two fingers to zoom a web page (although it probably covers using two fingers to zoom the contents of a frame so long as the rest of the page outside the remains the same), etc. You cannot infringe if you don't do all the steps in the claim, so one-finger panning is fair game as long as you don't also have two-finger frame scrolling/zooming/panning.
Again, the claims are quite narrow. Because:
1) it applies only to portable devices
2) it applies only to display of WEB content on these devices
3) it requires that the device respond to both one and two finger gestures (or n and m-finger gestures in other claims)
4) it requires that the one finger gesture be used to pan content
5) it requires that the two finger gesture be used to pan/scroll content within a frame of the web page
It does not cover using two fingers to zoom a web page (although it probably covers using two fingers to zoom the contents of a frame so long as the rest of the page outside the remains the same), etc. You cannot infringe if you don't do all the steps in the claim, so one-finger panning is fair game as long as you don't also have two-finger frame scrolling/zooming/panning.
Hardly. The only multi-touch gesture specific to Apple that I can think of, is their three-finger handicapped zoom mode switcher.
The history of touch did not begin in 2007
To those of us developing on touchscreens for decades before Apple, they brought nothing unusual to the table. (I myself first developed on capacitive screens starting in 1992. If you went to Foxwoods and other casinos back then, you might've used my work.)
This patent needs to be struck down as obvious to anyone practiced in the art. Using multiple fingers is a time-honored way of expressing alternative actions on a multi-touch screen, as seen by pinch gestures back in the early '90s, and by the use of more than one finger to denote ctrl-Click or context actions.
(This patent reminds me of the one Apple's trying to get for imitating knob rotations with two fingers, another gesture that's been done for years.)
This is probably the most refreshing post I've ever read on this site.
No one should be allowed to patent a damn gesture. How retarded is that? That's like microsoft patenting right clicking.
How many OS' use this, though?
And, this was submitted in 2007 - I don't think they had the idea for iOS X then.