Palm Pre Accidently Advertises Apple In Their Own Ad

[jmmtn4aj]

What I thought was hilarious is how the non-iPhonish gestures seemed to be just random to me. The lady was all moving the dock-like thing up by grabbing it, and I just thought, "why?"

Why not? Being able to bring up the dock while in another app is a great way to provide convenient access to apps without compromising on screen real estate. Apple did this on Mac OS X by allowing the dock to auto-hide and reappear if you bring your cursor near the border (in a non-full screen app, i.e maximised Safari/Firefox), of course this method is unworkable with a smart phone, since the screen is too small making it far too easy to inadvertently bring your finger or stylus to the border. So Palm did the next best thing- allowing you to bring up the dock by dragging your finger from OFF the screen.

Come on guys, I own an iPhone 3G and think it's the best overall smartphone out right now, but let's not be daft enough to think that it's (or any future Apple product) the end-all of it's category.

 

[Mr. Giver '94]

You forgot the LG Neo, which will be pitched by Keanu Reeves. One word: Woah.

Nice...LOL

 

[kdarling]

I thought Apple had patented the crap out of the pinching multi-touch gestures?

Nope. As stated often in these threads, the pinch dates from at least as far back as 1992. I don't think you can patent gestures anyway; just the software implementation. And even attempting that is pretty sleazy, IMO.

Apple invented almost nothing on the iPhone from scratch. It's just that the common public had seen none of it before, so it's great that Apple put it out for sale.

If Palm is licensing the tech then fine. If Palm isn't paying for it, then why the hell doesn't every other touch-screen phone use the gestures?

Well, most other phones don't have multi-touch capability. That's one big reason.

For another, most mobile devices have a design goal of being easy to use one-handed. Multi-touch is no good for that. Even Apple knew this, and included the double-tap as an alternative for (un)zooming.

There are other methods of zooming that work one-handed: one way is to draw a little circle with your thumb or finger around the area you want to zoom.

 

[01jamcon]

Nope. As stated often in these threads, the pinch dates from at least as far back as 1992. I don't think you can patent gestures anyway; just the software implementation. And even attempting that is pretty sleazy, IMO.

Apple invented almost nothing on the iPhone from scratch. It's just that the common public had seen none of it before, so it's great that Apple put it out for sale.



Well, most other phones don't have multi-touch capability. That's one big reason.

For another, most mobile devices have a design goal of being easy to use one-handed. Multi-touch is no good for that. Even Apple knew this, and included the double-tap as an alternative for (un)zooming.

There are other methods of zooming that work one-handed: one way is to draw a little circle with your thumb or finger around the area you want to zoom.

Ah, thank you for informing me. And yes, when you think about it, not all of the gestures are the most natural or convenient things to do on an iPhone, however, I guess the best points are the fluidity of movement and how quickly and easily people have adapted to using the multi-touch.