Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

www2.macleans.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 123 posts

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#81

Post by technoslut »

mcantelon wrote: post #61
nirvana wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to your question is a quote from Lucas that I read in a hardback book covering the history of Pixar from around that time. He essentially said as much. Also, at that time, Industrial Light and Magic was a practical shop, they were not doing "digital filmmaking" and Lucas wasn't yet a proponent of digital filmmaking, as this really didn't exist yet. So, Pixar was very much an odd duck there, they didn't hav…

>[Google fans] want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system I love how in one breath Apple fanboys call Android a copycat and in the next claim it's so much harder to use than iOS. Which is it?

Not to argue but you can imitate something poorly. I'll leave it up to others to argue which OS is better.

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#82

Post by lotharbot »

nirvana wrote: post #78
commandar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>consumers who genuinely think they are getting iPhones. Are you delusional or just trolling? If the latter, I'd suggest a more subtle approach in the future.

Remember when ReadWriteWeb was the first hit on Google for the term "Facebook" for a few days and they got thousands of people hitting their page posting comments about how they couldn't log into google? Because they were goggling for Facebook in order to get on Facebook, and the first result was no longer Facebook for that period. That's something you'd probably never do, but for millions of people, that's how they…

> "I don't think its appropriate that you would characterize me in a derogatory way like that"

I'm not sure how you can say that with a straight face immediately after characterizing me in such a derogatory way in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2934973

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#83

Post by MostAwesomeDude »

nirvana wrote: post #75
MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, welcome to the 90s, when patents were already "bogus and a bad idea." Remember GIF? JPEG? LZW? RAR? S3TC? MP3? MPEG-2? AAC? MPEG-4? h.264? I'll understand if you've forgotten all of these. After all, when a software patent only inconveniences people making Free Software, it doesn't really count as "bogus and a bad idea," right?

I'm always at a loss as to whether I should try to parse thru these snide comments to try and figure out what the argument you're trying to make is, or if I should just ignore them. At the very least, your putting words in my mouth so I don't have to defend them.

You have implied that patents have only recently been something seen as problematic, and that patent warfare is something invented by Google and Android vendors to attack Apple. The reality, however, is that there have been several highly litigious patents in computing which have been used to threaten people. Let me expound on some of the more infamous ones.

The modern GIF format, GIF89a, used a compression algorithm called LZW. This algorithm was patented by a company named Unisys. Unisys threatened ISPs and large websites with legal action if they didn't agree to license the patent. This directly led to the creation of the PNG format as a free and open alternative.

S3TC, the S3 Texture Compression algorithm, is patented by a group of graphics vendors known as S3, and licensed to Microsoft under terms which let MS sublicense it under the name DXTC, (DirectX Texture Compression). The patent holders have been very mean about enforcement, and the patent is broadly written, so it applies to nearly every possible S3TC implementation, software or hardware. To this day, MS still makes money off of every graphics card sold, from licensing fees, and free 3D libraries, like Mesa, cannot safely ship S3TC decoders for fear of legal repercussions.

h.264 is covered by a big portfolio of patents, held by MPEG-LA (Motion Picture Experts Group Licensing Authority). They have been very proactive about getting licensing fees any time they can, and using fear tactics to suppress free codec libraries like x264. One member of MPEG-LA is Apple, by the way. That's right, Apple has been conducting patent warfare since before the conception of Android. (Since I'm expecting a [citation needed]: x264 development started in 2004 at the latest; Android was acquired by Google in 2005.)

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#84

Post by mcantelon »

nirvana wrote: post #73
mcantelon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[Google fans] want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system I love how in one breath Apple fanboys call Android a copycat and in the next claim it's so much harder to use than iOS. Which is it?

Where's the contradiction? Google didn't spend 7 years working out the kinks to get the usability right. Also, since they license to anyone, most of the hardware is crap hardware, thus the pointing accuracy is way off. Also, Apple takes a 72 pixel, roughly, finger contact area and turns it into a touch point with pixel level accuracy. That's not easy and that's not easy for Google to copy (probably because Apple hasn…

I find the notion that Android is a copycat silly, given the significant differences between Android and iOS. Apple has liberally incorporated the ideas of others throughout its history: everyone from Xerox Parc to Braun... and that's a good thing because it has helped consumer computing evolve. If Android is a copycat of iOS then iOS is a copycat of PalmOS. The real underlying issue seems to me that Apple is bitter about anyone competent daring to compete with them.

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#85

Post by panicslowly »

nirvana wrote: post #7

I really don't understand the need to denigrate Apple. It almost seems as this spawns from an instinctive respect for the significance that Apple, and Steve Jobs specifically, have actually had. Apple invented the GUI (using some ideas they licensed from Xerox), as part of a project that Steve Jobs led. The NeXT cube inspired the web to some extent and made the first browser much easier to write. Apple invented the t…

> But, what significant inventions can we credit to... the cell networks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Discoveries_and_devel...

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#86

Post by richcollins »

raganwald wrote: post #9

Somewhat related: You know how we in the startup world are constantly chanting, "It's the execution that matters, not the idea?" Well, many of the discussions around Apple seem to boil down to one person saying that Apple copied/stole the idea, or the idea was inevitable, and the other person saying "Yeah, but Apple pulled off he execution ." To the extent that all of Apple's ideas in GUIs, mobile devices, music reta…

Exactly. Apple's genius is in making technology usable, not just making technology.

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#87

Post by mkr-hn »

nirvana wrote: post #70
raganwald wrote: post #9

Somewhat related: You know how we in the startup world are constantly chanting, "It's the execution that matters, not the idea?" Well, many of the discussions around Apple seem to boil down to one person saying that Apple copied/stole the idea, or the idea was inevitable, and the other person saying "Yeah, but Apple pulled off he execution ." To the extent that all of Apple's ideas in GUIs, mobile devices, music reta…

You're right that the execution, which involves taking an idea thru the difficulty of solving all of its problems to fruition is what really matters. However, the problem is that after Apple does this, and then everyone and their dog copies it, a few years later, people pretend like it wasn't Apple who actually had the idea, developed it, solved all the problems and then brought it to market! Its as if, because there…

They exist in the same embrace-and-extend industry as every other technology company. It's just as irritating that so many people believe Apple invented the MP3 player.

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#88

Post by wheels »

nirvana wrote: post #7

I really don't understand the need to denigrate Apple. It almost seems as this spawns from an instinctive respect for the significance that Apple, and Steve Jobs specifically, have actually had. Apple invented the GUI (using some ideas they licensed from Xerox), as part of a project that Steve Jobs led. The NeXT cube inspired the web to some extent and made the first browser much easier to write. Apple invented the t…

I like my Macbook as much as the next guy, but this is way too frothy:

> Apple invented the GUI

No, they didn't. Xerox invented the GUI. You seem to be aware of Xerox's role, so I can't figure out why you'd assert that Apple making use of those ideas later would then constitute them "inventing" the GUI.

> NeXT cube inspired the web

That's stretching things, to say the least. The early web was a fairly incremental step from Gopher. Sure, Tim Berners Lee used a NeXT machine, but it's not like CERN wouldn't have had networked, GUI-based UNIX computers if it weren't for NeXT.

> Apple invented the touch UI.

Huh? Touch interfaces have been used for ages. The restaurant that I worked at in high school in the mid-90s had one on its cash register. Apple didn't even produce the first touch-screen phone.

Similarly, Google's "invention" of PageRank was pretty incremental. It was a refinement of Jon Kleinberg's idea for using link-based search ranking.

Most innovations, when looked at under a magnifying glass, turn out to be more or less incremental. Apple's had some really impressive instances of refining, marketing and popularizing. That said, most innovation is really just refinement.

Have they been the most influential company of the last decade? I think it's too early to tell, but I seriously doubt it. That's something that's clearer in the history books. We're probably looking in the wrong places completely. It seems totally plausible to me that the human genome being sequenced in the last decade will trump e.g. mobile internet in its long-term effects on society.

If any of Apple's innovations will pan out as having been truly disruptive to society, I'm pretty sure it will have been their first. Their role (along with their contemporaries, most notably Commodore) in popularizing personal computing is one of those truly game changing moments in history. My life was radically changed when my family got a computer. In contrast, when I got my first smart phone (considering the fact that my non-smart phone already had Google maps, Skype, a web browser and IMAP client) virtually nothing changed in my life.

(As a side note, there hasn't been anything that Google's done thusfar that I'd nominate for being society changing. Web search was already prevalent and the research that led to PageRank was already out there. Google Books, Street View and their work on autonomous vehicles seem like they might be some of those things in retrospect.)

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#89

Post by sbuk »

nirvana wrote: post #30
schmittz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although, important to note that while Xerox invented GUIs, they were about to trash the project before Apple stepped in and nurtured it. Speculation about what would have happened if they didn't do this is mostly meaningless, but disregarding the promulgation and popularization of GUIs in lieu of crediting only their original inventor is totally unfair.

Actually, Xerox invented some important technologies, such as the mouse and the idea of a windowed interface, but this was not the GUI. That was invented by Apple. The xerox interface was more akin to emacs multi-document mode, there was no desktop metaphor, no file/folders organization, no trash can, the menubar was a very different conceptualization, etc.

Xerox categorically did not invent the mouse. Doug Engelbart invented the mouse in the mid-to-late 1960s. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs for what is described as "The Mother of All Demos". As to the GUI, again PARC then Apple innovated on the original ideas of others. Ivan Sutherland is credited ad really being the first to develop the notion of the "GUI" - again in the late 60s - with Sketchpad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg. The Xerox interface was in fact essentially Smalltalk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk and http://homepage3.nifty.com/old_apple_world/photo/SmallTalk21...

Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.

#90

Post by wazoox »

technoslut wrote: post #81
mcantelon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[Google fans] want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system I love how in one breath Apple fanboys call Android a copycat and in the next claim it's so much harder to use than iOS. Which is it?

Not to argue but you can imitate something poorly. I'll leave it up to others to argue which OS is better.

Depends on what metrics; iOS definitely isn't the most open of the two, for instance.
Post reply on HN