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iOS 8 Likely to Bring Split-Screen Multitasking to the iPad

Mockenrue said:
Responses like these underscore the point. Do we want such a litigious landscape where everything from the the broadest concepts to the smallest UI nuances can be locked down and "owned" by one company?

Stepping out from the mobile phones for a moment - do we want a landscape where Pinterest or Flipboard could lock down their innovations never to be utilized elsewhere? Or do we like it when innovators influence the design paradigms of many?
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My post underscores the point that you were spreading misinformation, no matter how much you want to move the goalposts.

I absolutely agree that we are in need of patent reform in many areas. But that goal isn't helped by uninformed rants.

Exactly. Slide to unlock shouldn't belong to anyone. Manipulating an image along a path to unlock shouldn't belong to anyone. Pull-down notification centers shouldn't belong to anyone. Split screen multitasking shouldn't belong to anyone.
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Exactly? Even though it contradicts what you actually said? 😕

Apple has an actual patent, and you claim that other companies "should" be able to use it freely. However, when Apple uses a feature that isn't patented, you call it stealing. Seems hypocritical to me.
 
I think this is important. I often find myself wanting to see two things at once, like look at a website and take notes about it, or open Facebook while seeing my calendar to tell people when I'm free. It just makes sense, if it didn't make sense then why is multi tasking such a successful thing on desktop PCs?

I don't like the concept in this video, how you have to click the + sign and then select an app from yet another menu, that's silly. I think it would work way better if you simply swiped down or something on the two apps that you want to split while in "app switcher view", and there you go.
 
kdarling said:
Apple awarded design patent for actual rounded rectangle - Ars Technica

Samsung was right. Apple DID manage to get a design patent on a rounded rectangle. Here it is. (Dashed lines don't count.)

View attachment 472206

Apple did not try to sue using the more detailed actual iPad design patent. Of course not; no other tablet had a round Home button or the same exact shape. Instead, they tried to use the above rounded rectangle which was not for any particular product.

The good news is that, along with courts all over the world, even the first set of California jurors decided that Samsung's tablets did not infringe it.



It was the 2002 Neonode.



Apple didn't give them any stock; Xerox invested in Apple with the idea of doing collaborative products they could sell in Xerox stores.

According to Xerox's lawsuit, Apple never licensed the GUI from them.

Not even Apple ever made the claim that they had gotten such a license.
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They received a design patent on a particular rounded rectangular shape. Guess what, Samsung has patented a rounded rectangle, too. The MacBook Air has a design patent. Every car has design patents. The English language isn't very good at describing designs, so it uses descriptions like "rectangle with rounded edges."

I believe the jury last year did conclude that some of Apple's design patents were infringed, though on the icons, etc. And IIRC, Judge Koh herself held up the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Samsung's attorney couldn't tell the difference.
 
I was going to keep iPad 4 but this will make me upgrade if 4 is not included. Was using cydia app for split video screen, this will be better. Can I ask for split video on larger iphone?
 
It's not like Apple didn't think of larger phones or split-screen before, those are very obvious features, but it's been harder for them because devs are not used to make flexible layouts on iOS. It's the price they pay for having made it easier for devs all those years.

iOS was initially conceived as a fixed resolution OS so that developers could expect a given screen size without worrying about other resolutions. This enabled iOS to get nice looking "pixel perfect" apps with innovative UI concepts.

This helped the Appstore flourish rapidly as it made it easier for developers, and they can use the iOS platform to quickly test concepts on millions of devices and worry about the multi-resolution support on Android later once the initial UI has been tested on the iPhone.

In Apple's business model of having a small set of device version that can be mass produced it made sense to work with fixed resolutions.

Android and Windows phones/tablet/Metro had to have flexibility in their layout from the start to support a wide variety of resolution because of their business model, which hurt their ecosystem but enabled them to do stuff like large smartphones and split-screen multitasking more easily.

Of course, there's demand for larger screen phones and surely other products like the larger iPad pro may appear in the future, we can't expect iOS to support only 3 resolutions forever (I consider retina/non-retina to be essentially the same for devs as the 2x trick make them behave like they're the same).

Apple also has the problem of not wanting to pre-announce devices, which means that developers won't be pushed to implement auto-layout until the device is released, which would mean very few native apps at launch and less than ideal backward compatibility because they can't expect legacy apps to scale properly. It's kind of a chicken and egg problem.

Maybe Apple will announce iPad split-screen multi-tasking at WWDC, and the "half-screen" resolution to target will happen to be exactly the same as the 5.5" iPhone?
 
MyopicPaideia said:
That's fair enough, but I would like to see someone guilty of this pwn'ed hard by it being illustrated in someone's signature or something 😀
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With all the "ample evidence" you'd think that that would be an easy task, but nope.... hasn't happened so far.
 
iPad Air with 1GB RAM can't handle two we pages at once


How the hell is this going to work with past models? Would need AT LEAST 2GB of RAM to run smoothly
 
kdarling said:
The good news is that, along with courts all over the world, even the first set of California jurors decided that Samsung's tablets did not infringe it.
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Apple didn't assert the patent that the figures you posted came from in the first Samsung case, so I doubt those California jurors actually decided that. 😀

It was the 2002 Neonode.
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The Neonode did not incorporate any claims from Apple's image unlock patent. However, some European courts did reject Apple's patent as an obvious extension of the slide to unlock feature of the Neonode.
 
Multitasking is a great feature on the Windows tablets, and it is one of the few reasons I haven't gotten an ipad yet.
 
iMaven said:
It only allows you to split screen with those 4 apps showing at the top? I don't see where you can split screen with any app on the iPad.
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Just like how apps have to opt into using AutoLayout and the background APIs, they'd probably need to opt into working on half the screen.

Jsameds said:
You have it the wrong way round. iDevices are used in this manner because there is no multi-user login.

Please Apple - even a main and a guest account would do, so I can at least let my mates use my iPad without the constant threat that they're going to change the language, set an alarm for 4am or change my name to C***yMcP*ssFlaps when I'm not looking.
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It'd be nice if there were better child / guest modes, if they don't add multiple account support.

roadbloc said:
Bout time. This should have happened well over 2 iOS versions ago.

...And magically, the concept of split-screen multitasking won't be too much of a complex thing for Apple fanatics.
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They couldn't have added it two versions ago, iOS 6 introduced AutoLayout, and iOS 7 is what pushed developers to actually use it, so only as of the iOS 8 timeframe could one expect a broad range of apps to be built using AutoLayout, and thus be portable to some kind of half screen mode.

AppleScruff1 said:
Let me guess, now multitasking will be a desirable feature, but before Apple had it is was a gimmick and needless feature. 😱 It's funny how that seems to be around here, isn't it?

Small tablet=no good, iPad Mini= great!
Large screen phones=too big, phablet, gimmick, etc, large screen iPhone=brilliant!
NFC=dated tech, useless, etc, NFC coming to iPhone= I can't wait!
Pono and HD music= gimmick, 256kbs sounds the same, Apple may sell HD audio content = I can't wait to hear good quality music!
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7" 16:9 tablets are a bad idea. The keyboard blocks half the screen, leaving web pages completely unusable in many cases. An 8" more square form factor was completely necessary to make a small tablet usable.

As mobile phones have gotten thinner, they can now be a bit taller and wider and still fit in a pocket. Plus, smart phones really took off with women, who can put them in their purses, offsetting the downside of a lumbering phone. Spec wise, CPUs and GPUs have improved, to the point where Apple can use the same chip (slightly different clockspeed) in their phones and their tablets. And display power draw has gone down too. All of these factors mean that a larger phone in 2014 is much more viable than 2011.

From what I've seen of how people can capture NFC from a distance, I think it's a horrible idea. For bank cards, credit cards, phones, anything. At least with Bluetooth there's an explicit pairing involved.

Possibly now with so many dock accessories and cars using Bluetooth, USB, 40 pin or Lightening connector, there's a point to high def audio. I'm not sure what the point would be with stereo headphone output. Possibly it's been held up by record label negotiations too.
 
MarkCollette said:
J
7" 16:9 tablets are a bad idea. The keyboard blocks half the screen, leaving web pages completely unusable in many cases. An 8" more square form factor was completely necessary to make a small tablet usable.

As mobile phones have gotten thinner, they can now be a bit taller and wider and still fit in a pocket. Plus, smart phones really took off with women, who can put them in their purses, offsetting the downside of a lumbering phone. Spec wise, CPUs and GPUs have improved, to the point where Apple can use the same chip (slightly different clockspeed) in their phones and their tablets. And display power draw has gone down too. All of these factors mean that a larger phone in 2014 is much more viable than 2011.

From what I've seen of how people can capture NFC from a distance, I think it's a horrible idea. For bank cards, credit cards, phones, anything. At least with Bluetooth there's an explicit pairing involved.

Possibly now with so many dock accessories and cars using Bluetooth, USB, 40 pin or Lightening connector, there's a point to high def audio. I'm not sure what the point would be with stereo headphone output. Possibly it's been held up by record label negotiations too.
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The general opinion here was that Apple would not make a smaller iPad and there were pages of reasons why it was a bad idea. Lots of pages why. Then when they did, it became the most popular iPad. It wasn't Retina, and most here stated that Retina wasn't needed and it was fine. Next, Retina was introduced to the mini, and no one could live without it.

To me the general consensus here for the past few years was that the iPhone was the perfect size and those 5" Android phones were ridiculous. Now that Apple is obviously going to make a bigger iPhone, the general opinion has changed that bigger will be better. Larger phones have been viable from other manufacturers for a few years now, and with better battery life than the iPhone currently has. Apple is just late to the game with the bigger screens, no ifs and or buts about it. 🙂

When NFC was rumored for the iPhone 5, this forum was largely in favor of it and anticipating it. When it didn't happen and I think it was Samsung? that included it, NFC became a gimmick and an outdated technology. Now that the iPhone 6 is rumored to have it, it suddenly finds favor here.

Higher quality audio has been available for a long time now. Apple just chose not to sell it on iTunes. But prior discussions here lead to the generalization that nobody could tell the difference for any quality over 256kbs and that audiophiles were crazy and couldn't tell the difference for anything above CD quality sound. I'm guessing that now HD audio will be a great idea.

Again, I am not singling out any individuals about this, just the overall forum opinion. IMO, it has swung from one end to the other on each of the items I have brought up. This isn't criticism, it's my observation. 🙂
 
Also nice to see an iOS feature that's actually unique to the iPad


The iPad has just become a bigger screen iPhone because apple has gave iOS on the iPad ZERO functional advantage with the bigger screen and with the big iPhone screens coming it's just closing the gap even more. Split screen should have been around for years but apple as usual last to arrive
 
Razeus said:
And hopefully multi user accounts.
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Under the new management, anything is possible, but if Apple respects Steve's ideology, perhaps not.

Steve's point of view was that the iPad and iPhone are 'Personal Devices'.
Adding multi-user accounts would change that. It may be convenient to some people, but to other people it wouldn't be needed. Maybe we all get pleased with new configuration options.

I do like Split-Screen Multitasking. I will probably use it every once in a while, but not all the time. Also, it may require more RAM to work properly without lags caused by memory swapping.
 
KPOM said:
They received a design patent on a particular rounded rectangular shape. Guess what, Samsung has patented a rounded rectangle, too.
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What's the Samsung design patent that only has a rounded rectangle?

I believe the jury last year did conclude that some of Apple's design patents were infringed, though on the icons, etc.
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No one's disputing that. Just the claim that there was no rounded rectangle patent.

And IIRC, Judge Koh herself held up the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Samsung's attorney couldn't tell the difference.
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Maybe she didn't have on her distance glasses. The male attorneys behind her recognized which was which.

In any case, people don't buy tablets from ten feet away.

BaldiMac said:
Apple didn't assert the patent that the figures you posted came from in the first Samsung case, so I doubt those California jurors actually decided that. 😀
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Dang, you're right. Thanks! The particular patent which Samsung was found not to infringe in the trial, was this one (with a bezel):

ipad_us_design_patent.PNG

tablet_d889_verdict.png
 
Thunderhawks said:
Correct, however over time the MacBookAir and iPad will be merged and we can use it as needed. Multi etc. or not
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I'm a strange bird... I'd love to see a merger of an MBA and iPad. I have a Surface 2 and I see the benefits of that type of flexible device.

Menneisyys2 said:
As I've already explained, "OS Experience". It runs just great on "old" hardware too. I've used it a lot on my iPad3 and found it excellent.

See https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1724497/ for more info.
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Between that and BT mouse support, it would really help me out. But first a JB for 7.1.1.
 
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