HTC Already Finished with Workaround for Patent Issue

[divinox]

You remember history incorrectly. The comparison at the time was between an Apple II and the new IBM computer. While the Apple II was inexpensive, had color and even a graphic screen and Visicalc... it did come with magic letters I B M on the box. As a non-distributed computing device, the Apple II was dominate in business and home markets. Even CP/M which was what Bill Gates knocked off to fulfill IBM's request for a computer OS for their Personal Computers wasn't all that popular.

What flipped the switch for most buyers at the time was that one box said Apple and the other said IBM. IBM was the gold standard in computing, it the box said IBM it could not be a bad buying decision, or so the thinking went.

It wasn't until chip sets for IBM knockoffs became available that the clone market erupted and price became a big deal. Since IBM had allowed Microsoft to sell the OS to other computer companies, the gates were open and the PC era began in earnest.

The Mac came to the party after it was already going strong and initially captured only a niche market in desktop publishing.

You left out the backwards engineering of BIOS, the key event in all of this. This was what enabled the flood gates (i.e. clone market) to open, and in turn make DOS (and later Wintel) the standard.

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Facinating article, I appreciate the link.

Buxton works at MSFT, obviously he can't be trusted!

 

[KnightWRX]

You left out the backwards engineering of BIOS, the key event in all of this. This was what enabled the flood gates (i.e. clone market) to open, and in turn make DOS (and later Wintel) the standard.

No to mention he's completely wrong about the "knock-off" chipsets. The reverse engineering of the BIOS was all that was required for the clone market to happen. The IBM PC used off the shelf parts, mostly Intel chips and chipsets and the architecture was documented and opened. Everything but the BIOS.

Compaq reverse engineered the BIOS and simply bought the proper components, including the CPU and chipset from Intel to make their IBM PC compatible clone.

Anyway, I'd take anything Mr. Josh says with a grain of salt, his grasp of history is often hazy like that.

 

[kasei]

If you have to ask, then no quick answer is possible. Study some business law and some marketing classes to pick up some clues.

Bravo... you take one sentence of a post, out of context and this is the best you can come up with? Bravo...

 

[divinox]

No to mention he's completely wrong about the "knock-off" chipsets. The reverse engineering of the BIOS was all that was required for the clone market to happen. The IBM PC used off the shelf parts, mostly Intel chips and chipsets and the architecture was documented and opened. Everything but the BIOS.

Compaq reverse engineered the BIOS and simply bought the proper components, including the CPU and chipset from Intel to make their IBM PC compatible clone.

Anyway, I'd take anything Mr. Josh says with a grain of salt, his grasp of history is often hazy like that.

True true. BillG surely knew what he was doing. Probably all along. No wonder he went on to become the richest man on earth.

 

[s4bones]

Stop with the childish stabs at all the companies under the sun except Apple. If you're only attack at them is for using plastic then you lead a pretty pathetic argument. The 3G & 3G used plastic, and the 4 & 4 have a huge defect rate because of the silly/pointless use of a glass back.

"huge defect"
Yeah if you constantly drop your phone and you're too stupid to buy a case realizing you have a tendency to drop your phone often...

It's like saying the sapphire glass front on my rolex is inferior to your plastic timex because when it hits the floor it shatters...right...

 

[dethmaShine]

Thank you...thats all I asked for - proof. At no point did I say the OP was wrong.

Really? You didn't know about this patent? What were you arguing about then?

lol

 

[Maury]

number. I suspect that HTC's "workaround" is to hard-code the specific data detections and tie them directly to the using applications rather than using the approach Apple patented. Alternately, they have just removed that feature altogether.

Bingo. If they have hard-coded it then it means you don't get it in other apps you download. If they put it in a library then it might still work, but I suspect the patent covers that case.

Unfortunately, I can't find any discussion of the ruling which gets down to those details, especially what the HTC "workaround" is. I suspect we will just have to wait for the dust to settle on this, and hopefully someone then will be able to put it all together and say, "This is what Apple's patent covers; this is what the infringing system looked like; this is what the workaround looks like."

Yes, everything is quite detail lite right now.

We'll see what happens when it gets to court. I suspect a flurry of similar suits against other handset companies will soon follow. If Motorola is one of these, things could get much more interesting.

The only endgame here is a licensing deal - either with every handset manufacturer out there, like MS is doing oh-so-well, or with Google. I suspect the later will be extremely unlikely. So that leaves the former, and with every one of these that gets added to the payload, Windows Mobile looks more and more interesting.

I suspect at this point that Apple would much rather go up against MS than Google, and will try to position themselves this way.

 

[Maury]

SideKick autorecognized phone numbers from text and highlighted them and if you clicked them it would dial your modem.

UPDATE: I've read the original manual, and it does not invalidate the patent. DIALLER needed to be invoked by hand by the user in order for it's recognizer to work. DIALLER would then highlight the first thing it thought was a phone number, and you could move through them with the arrow key.

So it's close, yes, but not the same. There's no automatic detection going on. The user has to invoke it. It does not invalidate the patent, sorry.

 

[divinox]

Bingo. If they have hard-coded it then it means you don't get it in other apps you download. If they put it in a library then it might still work, but I suspect the patent covers that case.



Yes, everything is quite detail lite right now.

We'll see what happens when it gets to court. I suspect a flurry of similar suits against other handset companies will soon follow. If Motorola is one of these, things could get much more interesting.

The only endgame here is a licensing deal - either with every handset manufacturer out there, like MS is doing oh-so-well, or with Google. I suspect the later will be extremely unlikely. So that leaves the former, and with every one of these that gets added to the payload, Windows Mobile looks more and more interesting.

I suspect at this point that Apple would much rather go up against MS than Google, and will try to position themselves this way.

Assuming the single application didn't rely on an external agent, they should be fine. At least if the patent is to be taken even remotely specific.

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UPDATE: I've read the original manual, and it does not invalidate the patent. DIALLER needed to be invoked by hand by the user in order for it's recognizer to work. DIALLER would then highlight the first thing it thought was a phone number, and you could move through them with the arrow key.

So it's close, yes, but not the same. There's no automatic detection going on. The user has to invoke it. It does not invalidate the patent, sorry.

If you read the patent, or were familiar with ADD, you'd know that Apple too had this approach (i.e. user-envoked action). That said, there seem to be other differences.

 

[tito2020]

When you fight over the smallets thing means u are losing money

 

[samcraig]

The real "behind the scenes" issue is that, despite Apple being #1 and having amazing sales - they are worried about competition. And there's nothing wrong with that. But these lawsuits to try and stop sales is more designed to keep competition from being able to sell their devices and gain even more marketshare than it is about Apple being worried about whether or not the user can click on a phone number and have the phone dial. The lawsuit/patents are a means to an end.

 

[hchung]

Mind pointing out where you got that notion from the article ? Seems to me he says calling anything a "clone" is rather dubious and shows an agenda on the part of the poster.
---
Android is Android. iOS is iOS. Both may sometimes take cues from each other but to say either is a clone of one another is entirely another thing. They have such different design and implementation philosophies that I wouldn't even know where posters get the idea that one is a rip off of the other and which is which in that case.

I wholeheartedly agree that everybody takes cues from each other.

But I doubt that he intended to say "calling anything a clone is rather dubious and shows an agenda on the part of the poster," because he doesn't ever say that AND appears to be very focused on disproving the "Android is a clone of iPhone" myth. That's fine, he makes a reasonable case for Android being different from iOS.

I got the notion from the article because every point he emphasizes about how Android is different from iOS, is what made Windows CE unique. Support for various form factors. Customizable by the hardware maker. Touchscreen support. Blackberry-style phone support. Maybe I'm just too old school since I've owned PDAs from the late 90s, but it almost sounds like he purposefully avoided mentioning Windows CE because it'd anger the fandroid readership. Or it could be that he's just not familiar with Windows CE?

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the similarities are uncanny. And it's not all that different from the same feeling I get that modern Linux is a half-assed attempt at trying to make GNU-licensed mashup of Solaris, NT, and MacOS. The only difference being that Linus himself makes it clear that Linux really was meant to be a clone of MINUX from the start.

At any rate, it's just an opinion.

If anything, Android is an OS, designed to be an OS rather than a vertically integrated platform and as such is agnostic to the hardware it runs on. If you want to claim that makes it a Windows CE clone... frankly I don't know what to say. That's just how OS development has been since OSes have been around.

Most definitely not. OSs being engineered to be hardware agnostic has primarily been only in the last two decades.
Prior to that, you have such examples as CP/M, DOS, Windows (pre-NT), the original MacOS, and pretty much every mainframe OS. MINUX, UNIX, and Linux all started tied to a specific hardware platform as well and only became portable much later on.

 

[KnightWRX]

I got the notion from the article because every point he emphasizes about how Android is different from iOS, is what made Windows CE unique.

Really ? Because every points he makes emphasizes how Android is hardware agnostic. That it shares that point with Windows CE doesn't make it a clone of Windows CE.



Again, is Linux just a clone of Windows because both are hardware agnostic ? Is Solaris a clone of MacOS because both are tied to a hardware platform (though less true of Solaris nowadays) ?

Of course not, hardware agnostic design does not mean a clone. How you came to that notion not only baffles me completely but makes me question your good faith in this discussion. Seems to me you're grasping at straws.

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Most definitely not. OSs being engineered to be hardware agnostic has primarily been only in the last two decades.
Prior to that, you have such examples as CP/M, DOS, Windows (pre-NT), the original MacOS, and pretty much every mainframe OS. MINUX, UNIX, and Linux all started tied to a specific hardware platform as well and only became portable much later on.

Unix was ported to different hardware platforms over 30 years ago. Linux was only initially tied to x86 because frankly I doubt that Linus alone could have done the whole porting work to different architectures in less than a year from announcement to release like he did, on a student budget.

The fact that initial release is tied to a hardware platform does not mean the underlying code isn't portable and completely agnostic from the hardware it runs on, it just means it hasn't been ported yet.

Again, why are you trying so hard to make Android a clone of something ? Android is what Android is. It has its own design, its own philosophy and it is its own platform. It doesn't have to be a clone of anything.

 

[DeathChill]

A picture from after the iPhone was released. And frankly a picture that means nothing :

http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Like_BlackBerry_Before_the_iPhone_

A good for anyone who still believes the "Android looked like Blackberry before iPhone" myth.

I don't understand what that article proves. All it says is that almost an entire year after the iPhone was unveiled that Android created a good enough prototype to show off in a video. How does that prove that they were working on it the entire time?

Apparently the Android team was focused on the more Blackberry-like phone before the iPhone was announced. Once the iPhone was announced they switched gears to completely focus on the touch screen aspect and abandoned the Blackberry-like software as it would no longer be competitive.

At first the Android team worked on two different systems. One was called the Sooner; it was based on the existing Android prototype. With a keypad sitting underneath the screen, Sooner was designed to get into the market quickly. Sooner absorbed most of the energy in Android’s early days at Google. For the long term, Rubin’s group wanted to develop a more advanced platform with a touch screen. He dubbed that version the Dream. But in January 2007, Apple’s new iPhone redefined the smart phone. With its touch screen, tightly integrated software, and sharp display, the iPhone had delivered the future ahead of schedule. Sooner became never, and Android went straight to the Dream.

 

[realitycheck69]

Apple losing to android, 700000 activations per day

 

[hchung]

Really ? Because every points he makes emphasizes how Android is hardware agnostic. That it shares that point with Windows CE doesn't make it a clone of Windows CE.



Again, is Linux just a clone of Windows because both are hardware agnostic ? Is Solaris a clone of MacOS because both are tied to a hardware platform (though less true of Solaris nowadays) ?

Of course not, hardware agnostic design does not mean a clone. How you came to that notion not only baffles me completely but makes me question your good faith in this discussion. Seems to me you're grasping at straws.

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Unix was ported to different hardware platforms over 30 years ago. Linux was only initially tied to x86 because frankly I doubt that Linus alone could have done the whole porting work to different architectures in less than a year from announcement to release like he did, on a student budget.

The fact that initial release is tied to a hardware platform does not mean the underlying code isn't portable and completely agnostic from the hardware it runs on, it just means it hasn't been ported yet.

Again, why are you trying so hard to make Android a clone of something ? Android is what Android is. It has its own design, its own philosophy and it is its own platform. It doesn't have to be a clone of anything.

*sigh* Way to twist my comment. I am not trying to make Android a clone of something. I'm also not saying an OS is a clone of another OS because they're both hardware agnostic, an obviously stupid argument.

I'm simply stating that the impression I got from the article is that if anybody was to say that some OS contributed a significant amount of architectural inspiration to Android, it'd likely be Windows CE more than iOS.

As for the question of bias, I'll easily admit that I don't think of Android highly at the moment. As an owner of many mobile devices, I find that my Nexus S is uninspiring and a poorly designed/executed product compared to most of the other devices in my collection. When ICS finally becomes available through official channels, I'll update my opinion. It is probably of no surprise to you that at the moment, I prefer using my HP Touchpad and my iPhone4. The next device I want is a Nokia Lumia 800. Previous favorites include the Motorola e815 and Motorola A4500.

As for Linux, Linus himself said, "Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(." (https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/linux/)

 

[Oletros]

Apparently the Android team was focused on the more Blackberry-like phone before the iPhone was announced. Once the iPhone was announced they switched gears to completely focus on the touch screen aspect and abandoned the Blackberry-like software as it would no longer be competitive.

Apparently if the OS is hardware agnostic they didn't have to change anything. Blackberry-like software? Can any one explain what is a Blackberry like software?

 

[rmwebs]

Really? You didn't know about this patent? What were you arguing about then?

lol

Well the patent still doesn't really confirm that Apple were the first to use it, it just confirms they were the ones who were issued the patent. For all we know there could have been a number of other companies clambering for the same patent at the same time.

My point was to simply illustrate that we've got a lot of members here who keep stating what they think are facts, when in 99% of cases, its complete rubbish. Obviously in this case the OP was in the 1% who got their facts right, and I respect that.

 

[JosephAverage]

Joey "Joe" McAverage does listen to the 24-hour news cycle on TV or radio, and when they hear about a company being found guilty by an international court, that will weigh on their mind.
_________
Owning an Android phone makes a statement, and that statement is: "Yeah, this is where I am in life. It's not where I want to be, but I'm doing my best."

I haven't been called "Joey" since I was 12 years old. I don't really care about patent law when I decide about what SmartPhone I want to own and the HTC ruling won't matter to me at all. What will make a difference is price, feature, and very importantly, available applications, either free or at a fee. Apple has a disadvantage in this area to Android. Another weak point for Apple is the lack of Flash support. Apple, however, has some other features that Android lacks. It is a tough choice, but for this Joe Average, Patent Law will not enter into the decision. That should be GOOD NEWS for Apple as the Litigious Nature of Apple when it comes to filing numerous Patent Infringement Suits for every potential or even imagined infringement is almost astronomical. Nearly as prolific as Microsoft was back in the day. Then there are the almost equal number of suits where Apple is the defendant. As I stated earlier, Patent Law is not my deciding criteria so my wife and I own an iPhone 4s, a Samsung Galaxy S, a Samsung Galaxy Plus 7.0 and an iPad2. We use them all.

The statement I make is that I am doing exactly want I choose to do.

 

[goosnarrggh]

...I suspect that HTC's "workaround" is to hard-code the specific data detections and tie them directly to the using applications rather than using the approach Apple patented...

I just cannot see any language within Claim 1 of patent '647 (the first of the claims HTC has been found to infringe), where there is any distinction made between the data detection necessarily occurring as part of a system-wide service, as opposed to incorporating the data detection as a hard-coded component of just a single application.

I could see both cases being fully encompassed by the vagueness that exists in Claim 1 of the patent document.

 

[GermanyChris]

Why to the Android/iOS threads always turn into Android suck..no iOS sucks etc..

Apparently neither suck because both platforms are selling as fast as they can be made.

 

[KnightWRX]

I'm simply stating that the impression I got from the article is that if anybody was to say that some OS contributed a significant amount of architectural inspiration to Android, it'd likely be Windows CE more than iOS.

Architectural inspiration ? WinCE uses a VM to run bytecode so as to abstract the hardware platform from user space applications ? News to me.

If anything is inspiration for Android, it's J2ME.

 

[goosnarrggh]

Architectural inspiration ? WinCE uses a VM to run bytecode so as to abstract the hardware platform from user space applications ? News to me.

The .NET Compact Framework does just that, allowing the same bytecode to run on both a desktop Windows machine and a PocketPC-based device. But until Windows Phone 7, that feature was a fairly minor subsystem which relatively few developers used. In Windows Phone 7, it is one of the only officially recognized ways to deploy apps. (Albeit, the underlying tech has been split up and now goes by several different names.)

 

[TM WAZZA]

Only if they could provide Android OS updates to their devices as quick as this

 

[juliusaugustus]

Only if they could provide Android OS updates to their devices as quick as this

Well you gotta consider the challenges of releasing updates.
Compiling the OS takes a long time even with high end workstations. HTC has to make sure their isn't any bugs with the particular build of Android they are using. Then they have to configure the Software to the hardware correctly. Then HTC has to make sure they avoid backlash from their users, because even the slightest bugs can cause people to be furious. Then they have to work with retailers and carriers to see if it works properly with their configurations. Understand? Software development doesn't happen over night. HTC doesn't make development hardware they make products so it isn't always necessary to have the latest and greatest version when what you have works with few problems. If they always released updates then you would be ranting about how they release updates too quickly and how they should hold back development if their software isn't working properly. The simple truth is that most people don't care what version of Android their device is running as long as the software works properly.