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If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

arstechnica.com

21–30 of 138 posts

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#21
post #9

> Jobs called Android a "stolen product," but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. This article is heartily missing the point. Android is basically a stolen product. It's a direct successor and competitor to the iPhone, and the direction of Android in it's current form has been and is extremely influenced by what Apple has been doing. Sure, the iPhone is a bunch of "stolen" technologies and id…

> Nobody was making products that resembled the iPhone before Apple That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Smartphones of the day either resembled the iPhone or they resembled the blackberry but both designs were out there in number. After the iPhone was released almost everyone dropped their blackberry-like designs (except for RIM). Apple's innovation was the capaci…

Indeed. Remember the Palm Pilot? Those things eventually ended up quite advanced; I remember buying one in Japan in 2002 with a camera, keyboard, swiveling screen, and so on. The only difference was that it didn't have a 3G radio.

Ah, here we are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sony-CLIE-PEG-NZ90.jpg

The iPhone is a fine product. The ground it broke was making people want a PDA, not actually inventing the PDA.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#22
post #9

> Jobs called Android a "stolen product," but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. This article is heartily missing the point. Android is basically a stolen product. It's a direct successor and competitor to the iPhone, and the direction of Android in it's current form has been and is extremely influenced by what Apple has been doing. Sure, the iPhone is a bunch of "stolen" technologies and id…

Well Remember ... Apple "advocates" always said: apple invented the gui, apple invented mp3 players, apple makes the fastest PC, apple's not the "big brother" company, etc. etc. Every claim usually turns out false. The Rep for "reality distortion field" has firm basis in trugth. We can't always take Apple's claims at face value. This article just exposed, once again, another pro-Apple fallacy: that they own mini-tabl…

I don't agree with this. Lets flip it the other way round and compare it with technology today. Lots of research labs have made AR Goggles and they've been featured in lots of movies / sci-fi. But lets say the google goggles are a hit and Apple starts making goggles, I believe Google can rightfully claim that Apple "copied" them.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#23
post #9

> Jobs called Android a "stolen product," but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. This article is heartily missing the point. Android is basically a stolen product. It's a direct successor and competitor to the iPhone, and the direction of Android in it's current form has been and is extremely influenced by what Apple has been doing. Sure, the iPhone is a bunch of "stolen" technologies and id…

Well Remember ... Apple "advocates" always said: apple invented the gui, apple invented mp3 players, apple makes the fastest PC, apple's not the "big brother" company, etc. etc. Every claim usually turns out false. The Rep for "reality distortion field" has firm basis in trugth. We can't always take Apple's claims at face value. This article just exposed, once again, another pro-Apple fallacy: that they own mini-tabl…

Apple "advocates" rarely, if ever, say those things.

Apple made the GUI, MP3 players, etc. usable for the general public.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody was making products that resembled the iPhone before Apple That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Smartphones of the day either resembled the iPhone or they resembled the blackberry but both designs were out there in number. After the iPhone was released almost everyone dropped their blackberry-like designs (except for RIM). Apple's innovation was the capaci…

Indeed. Remember the Palm Pilot? Those things eventually ended up quite advanced; I remember buying one in Japan in 2002 with a camera, keyboard, swiveling screen, and so on. The only difference was that it didn't have a 3G radio. Ah, here we are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sony-CLIE-PEG-NZ90.jpg The iPhone is a fine product. The ground it broke was making people want a PDA, not actually inventing the PDA.

Except that looks nothing like the iPhone, while most smartphones now look a heck of a lot like an iPhone.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody was making products that resembled the iPhone before Apple That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Smartphones of the day either resembled the iPhone or they resembled the blackberry but both designs were out there in number. After the iPhone was released almost everyone dropped their blackberry-like designs (except for RIM). Apple's innovation was the capaci…

> That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Which phones?

Even in 2001 there was the "iPaq". ARM processor, etc. Even used a similar name. No 3d chips were widespread yet, lack of white led tech meant the display sucked too much power, compact flash was tiny, had a resistive screen that was somewhat poorly calibrated, etc.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody was making products that resembled the iPhone before Apple That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Smartphones of the day either resembled the iPhone or they resembled the blackberry but both designs were out there in number. After the iPhone was released almost everyone dropped their blackberry-like designs (except for RIM). Apple's innovation was the capaci…

> That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Which phones?

Mine didn't have "phone" capabilities, but the Compaq iPAQs resemble the iPhone.

This is pretty close to the one I owned around 2002: http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2002/04/04/comparison_of_six_...

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#30
post #9

> Jobs called Android a "stolen product," but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. This article is heartily missing the point. Android is basically a stolen product. It's a direct successor and competitor to the iPhone, and the direction of Android in it's current form has been and is extremely influenced by what Apple has been doing. Sure, the iPhone is a bunch of "stolen" technologies and id…

> Nobody was making products that resembled the iPhone before Apple That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Smartphones of the day either resembled the iPhone or they resembled the blackberry but both designs were out there in number. After the iPhone was released almost everyone dropped their blackberry-like designs (except for RIM). Apple's innovation was the capaci…

"Apple's innovation was the capacitive multi-touch screen and finger-friendly interface."

Which is exactly why it resembled none of the smartphones that preceded it. That innovation was a monumental game changer.

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