I thought 'we' as a tech community had moved passed this. It's been dragged through the mud time and time again.
Ars must he hurting for some ad impressions.
If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
31–40 of 138 posts
Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#32If you focus only on the single feature that is multi-touch, sure, but it's the entire package that likely pissed Jobs off. Pre-iPhone, Android's demo phones looked like a BlackBerry clone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Android_mobile_phone_platf...
Apple did not invent multitouch however they did invent how it was used to make a phone with a very specific interface that was then copied feature for feature by Google who had intimate knowledge of its design.
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Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#33> 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…
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Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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_...
Looks nothing like the iPhone and shockingly wasn't even a phone.
Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
How did you dial phone numbers on the iPaq?
Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The iPhone looks a lot like the LG Prada mentioned in the article and it predates the iPhone.
Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#38Let me put this in hacker terminology: Have you ever looked at someone else's product and said, "Well that's stupid, I could remake it in a week and it would be even better"? But even if that were true, you weren't the one who took the risk and built the damn thing.
Other people here are talking about "vision" and "innovation" and while these are certainly things Apple had in abundance, the bottom line is that Samsung's lack of vision is not what Apple is complaining about. It's all about risk: Apple took a risk, they pioneered a whole metaphor of a smartphone made of a giant touchscreen and little packaged apps. They had to convince a whole legion of consumers that their highly simplified interface was the elegant solution they needed, and that takes a lot of money and a lot of risk. Now Apple wants their day in the sun to last as long as possible, they want as much of the payoff from the risks they took as possible, and they feel entitled to a degree of exclusivity.
Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#39I'm not sure anyone is arguing the iPhone invented all these individual technologies, and if anyone is claiming that, they shouldn't be as the evidence is overwhelming to the contrary. I think the real meat of the argument is "iPhone synthesized all those individual pieces into something coherent and incredible.". It's kind of like how the Macintosh and Lisa took the ideas from PARC, perfected them, and turned them i…
Apple did when they got patents on them.
Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that looks nothing like the iPhone, while most smartphones now look a heck of a lot like an iPhone.
The iPhone looks a lot like the LG Prada mentioned in the article and it predates the iPhone.
Not in reality.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/72B08E9A-D46...