It is true. Everyone is copying apple's multitouch, which is lame on their part. come up with your own technology peeps! end of story.
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International Trade Commission Votes to Investigate Apple's Patent Complaint Against HTC
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Off Topic:
Does anyone else think the HTC logo doesn't look professional enough and doesn't fit in with what they do?
Apple's logo is... a fruit.
Seriously, LTD, you've gone way off the (ATT) map today.
Apple is an unparalleled innovator in touchscreen UIs. They've done things that no one ever thought of before! I mean, c'mon, they practically invented the idea of buttons big enough for fingers.
And no one, repeat no one... and I have many historical links to back me up... ever thought of using more than one finger before.
Heck, no one ever thought of using fingers before, period. Every device previous to the iPhone required a stylus, otherwise they could not register any touch input. Jobs pretty much said so at the iPhone debut, and I believe everything that god-like salesman says.
Apple isn't beating out the competition. I know it's going to be hard to understand since most don't care to have any perspective, but the ONLY thing Apple has on the market is the App Store.
Most developers are developing for BOTH Android and iPhone OS . . . with a trailing WebOS whose only advantage is the ease of development.
Apple doesn't have much going for it but the user base, and I am sure many are starting to feel the pinch of outdated tech.
You'll have to dig a lot further than last week or month to find HTC's innovations. While they weren't very break through, they were useful. I recall them having a slew of PDA's that had 3G connections to them. This was back when Android NOR the iPhone existed and HTC ran Windows Mobile 5 on their devices.
Apple is of course suing Google without touching them, Apple is going to attack HTC for merely using Android, not Google for ripping off of Apple.
While I agree with Apple spurring the wave of arguably better phone operating systems (since many still believe that NO ONE's OS is better regardless of the non-Apple innovations) I disagree that the smartphone industry was stagnant. HTC and Palm made smartphones before most users on these forums even knew who Apple was.
Those phones had (if you remember) far more features than the iPhone and faster hardware and better networks to run on. The biggest thing Apple gave users was a UI and OS that was fantastic. And it was fantastic.
The poster you quoted wasn't too bright though. Because I think Palm currently holds the patent for the modern day smartphone.
This is uppercase because it makes me want to scream...
APPLE IS NOT SUING OVER MULTITOUCH!!!
Erm, or conversely what exactly is Apple bringing to the table? HTC has been producing smart phones with touch input for years before the iPhone. Is Apple's innovation fewer buttons? a more difficult to access SIM card slot? Putting it in a prettier package is not patentable, and Apple is going to have a tall patent hill to climb if they want to take on decades of development in the mobile phone industry.
If Apple has a problem with Android, they probably need to be suing Google (my personal opinion of software patent bogusness aside). Apple doesn't appear to want to take on that negative PR.
I say that the smartphone market was stagnating in 2006 because, outside of RIM, the market growth had slowed to essentially nothing. The focus was almost entirely on the hardware with little effort to improve the user experience.
The iPhone was a revolution in the smartphone industry. So much so that many people didn't even recognize it as a smartphone. Today every reputable brand has changed their way of thinking to follow Apples lead with the UI being the most important feature and as a result, smartphones are quickly becoming the dominant form of cell phone.
Frankly it bothers me that people want to belittle Apple contribution in leading this revolution.
BTW - I'm suggesting that Apple owns any special IP that should prevent competition, just that their innovations are deserving of respect.
It looks like Apple will be getting some taste of their own medicine.. and that's no April Fool's.. Elan, how dare you!! 
Elan Sues to Ban Apple Multitouch Products in U.S.
Elan Sues to Ban Apple Multitouch Products in U.S.
In a sense yes. Apple's innovation is in how the user interacts with the devices. The patent fight isn't about manufacturing techniques, it's about the software and how the device interacts with the user.
You get a golf clap for playing along with 1st of April /clap
Never thought you had it in you....
It looks like Apple will be getting some taste of their own medicine.. and that's no April Fool's.. Elan, how dare you!!
Elan Sues to Ban Apple Multitouch Products in U.S.
Frankly I agree with Elan's complaint. I've read the patent filing and it is a strong case. I also agree with Nokia's complaints. And finally I agree with Apple's. They all appear to have merit. These are all separate issues and there is no need to pick sides because you favor one team.
The fact is that the legal system forces all of these companies to act this way. The must obtain the patents to gain leverage over their competitors and then they must protect them. If you want to compete in this market you must play the game.
Your opinion as to the relative merits of the legal case might carry more weight if you knew how to spell "patent."
I'm just sayin'....
I just hope that their defense is a good a their offense. We all know that defense wins championships. Everyone is going to come after apple since it seems like most things are already patented.
I agree 98.999% The Palm Centro was Palm's most successful smartphone, even more so than the Treo. Everyone had a Treo, even more had a Centro since it was $99 or less at times. Everything else is right on the money.
Apple did concentrate on the UI and left features behind. It was the move everyone wanted Palm and RIMM to make. We don't want to belittle Apple's contribution, we just want to put it back into perspective.
Agreed. It should be common knowledge that Apple didn't do too much with the features and hardware . . . it was with the UI first, then the accompanying apps second. The big THING that's going on now is that the rest of the market has now gotten it to a point where they are now pushing out phones that are arguably better than what Apple is offering. Even the app store isn't enough to keep Apple afloat.
The user/fan base can push sales of the next iPhone, but everyone is now begging Apple to catch up with the hardware side of the phone, something Apple hasn't really done too well even with CPUs.
p.s. Just reiterating, I agree with just about everything you say, good stuff.
Multitouch has been around for over a decade. Apple didn't invent multitouch, they bought it, and relabeled it.
He didn't say they invented it. He said "Apple's multitouch." As you pointed out, they bought Fingerworks, so they own whatever IP Fingerworks created.
And that's pretty much the general case with Apple stuff. They take the best of existing technology, stuff that's being ignored by the industry and maximize it's potential... then everybody tries to duplicate it and it just becomes the norm. We all used to think a fully touch screen phone was a terrible idea- remember? The iPhone came out and I said "oh, great- so if your screen cracks or freezes up, the phone is useless!" Apple showed how to make it practical and everyone else followed suit.
Apple defined the way a touch-phone should worked and people are upset that they don't want the competition to cannibalize off their success.
Who is everyone?
Palm has never sold the numbers for their entire product history Apple has sold since 2007 for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I don't even have to cite Nokia, RIM or others.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)
Go Apple! I hope they sink HTC and all other iClones out there.
(LTD FTW on April fools day.)
- Sent from my iPod Touch
Go Apple! I hope they sink HTC and all other iClones out there.
(LTD FTW on April fools day.)
- Sent from my iPod Touch