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

arstechnica.com

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

#111

Post by huggyface »

huggyface wrote: post #62
zefhous wrote: 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 Years before the iPhone I was carrying around an iPaq. Now it isn't quite the same, most notably because the original device didn't even function as a phone. Yet I would argue that the phone part of smartphone is by far the least important part (and the only reason it is so prevalent is that carrier subsidization allows people to stomach $700 iPhones).…

It's too late for me to edit it into my post, but I should have added that the incredible improvements in embedded processors, in particular GPUs, was also heavily spurred on by the GPS industry. Those little 3D perspectives on the in-vehicle GPS are what financed the technology that made the iPhone possible.

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

#112

Post by pyre »

0x44 wrote: post #103
JoelSutherland wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book written establishes a copyright, not a patent. Bringing this back to technology with an example: Palm synthesized the smart phone and color LCD screen in ~2004. I'm pretty glad all smartphones have color screens today.

I did say I was making an analogy, not establishing a direct link between patents and copyright. Patents protect a specific method of implementing an idea, so Palm synthesizing a smart phone with a color LCD (controlled by a stylus) does not prevent Apple from protecting the synthesis of smart phone with a color LCD (controlled by fingertips). If there was no innovation in bringing multi-touch to smart phones, why wa…

  > If there was no innovation in bringing multi-touch to
  > smart phones, why wasn't everyone doing it in 2007 when
  > the iPhone was first released?
For starters, because Apple bought the company that invented multi-touch, therefore controlled the rights to the technology.

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

#113

Post by fpgeek »

wisty wrote: post #106
tcskeptic wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think the real point of contention was that Eric Schmidt was a member of the Apple board starting a year before that and as such had seen early iPhone prototypes. That in particular is what Jobs was angry about.

I can guess why that's a much bigger point of contention. Steve Jobs must have really sold the board on the viability of next-gen smart phones: "guys - our work on iPods shows us we are just about at the point where almost-PC-class processors, RAM, and hard drives can be crammed into a mobile-phone sized package, without wiping out the battery in 12 hours. You know what will happen next?" If that was the reason Googl…

But now you're mixing up the chronology.

Google had already bought Android and bet on next-gen smartphones well before Eric Schmidt joined the Apple board. And that bet was already serious and high-level. Schmidt wasn't involved in the acquisition, but Larry Page was. They were also, correctly, talking about mobile as the "next great frontier of search". If that wasn't a big deal at Google, I don't know what could be.

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

#114

Post by dedward »

jrockway wrote: post #99
YooLi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The HTC Dream didn't look anything like the iPhone either, but Jobs still says Android is a stolen product. So the question is, what did Android steal from Apple?

thats more a personal comment from Jobs...... Apple isnt charging anyone with theft.

before thi ihone, no app store no multi touch, litte integration outside of the blackberry, and smartphones and phones in general sucked by comparison. how quickly we forget how crappy what we had before was. sure, previous products had lots f features............ but they didnt blowpeoples minds, or make their companies the most valuable ever.

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

#115

Post by fpgeek »

ghshephard wrote: post #59
JoelSutherland wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a 2002 Palm Treo Phone: http://www.gsmarena.com/palm_treo_180-623.php Palm OS looks a lot like iOS when you factor in the era's technology.

I owned three Palm Treos from 2002 - 2006, including the 600 and the 700p. I _lived_ on those phones for the better part of four years - and I recall waiting for each new release. So, as a Palm "Fanboy" I can say with certainty that those devices were not even in the same product category as the iPhone. Suggesting that they looked like iOS is farcical at best. I recall struggling for the better part of a week to purc…

I lived on the Treo 650 from the day the GSM version came out to when I got my G1 (about a month after it came out). Having used that Treo 650 and many other smartphones of that era (O2 XDA, Sony-Ericsson P900, Nokia Communicator, ...) I will absolutely, unequivocally, beyond the shadow of a doubt say that the iPhone was part of the same evolutionary tree.

Did the iPhone do the things my Treo could do much, much better? Was it a great step forward? Absolutely. The iPhone was and is amazing [1]. Nevertheless, saying that the iPhone stands apart from the broader evolution of mobile devices is either ignorance or a willful misreading of the relevant history.

[1] Though I will admit to finding the idea of paying money for ringtones of music you already owned a repugnant step back.

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

#117

Post by fpgeek »

beatle wrote: post #109
zmmmmm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you focus only on the single feature that is multi-touch, sure, but it's the entire package that likely pissed Jobs off. The "entire package" of Android included a huge number of features that the iPhone did not, many of which later got incorporated into iOS. > Pre-iPhone, Android's demo phones looked like a BlackBerry clone As I understand it they had full screen touch-based prototypes as well. They were experi…

>As I understand it they had full screen touch-based prototypes as well. They were experimenting with everything. wrong.

Absolutely. Google couldn't possibly have been doing anything with full-screen touch-based smartphones. They were a software company and weren't working with anyone who'd built such a device before.

Sorry, for all that I wasn't personally a fan, I remember how amazing the O2 XDA (and its its immediate relatives) were at the time and I have to stick up for them (and HTC, of course).

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

#118

Post by wvenable »

wmf wrote: post #81
j45 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, just out of curiosity, did you own a smartphone from 96 to the early 2000's? The Treo was the original smartphone. The orignal smart phone that Blackberry copied was the Treo. Apple's spin was ditching the keyboard, but by then even the sony ericcson P800 had a full screen phone with a touch keyboard years before apple. http://www.google.ca/search?&q=sony+ericcson+p800

I owned a P800 and I consider the iPhone to be in a completely different class. Each of the individual differences is small, but when taken together the feel of using them is quite different.

To be fair, the P800 had a 150mhz processor and 16 MB of RAM and could display a whopping 4,098 colors. It came out around the same time as Windows XP SP1.

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

#119

Post by fpgeek »

wmf wrote: post #81
j45 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, just out of curiosity, did you own a smartphone from 96 to the early 2000's? The Treo was the original smartphone. The orignal smart phone that Blackberry copied was the Treo. Apple's spin was ditching the keyboard, but by then even the sony ericcson P800 had a full screen phone with a touch keyboard years before apple. http://www.google.ca/search?&q=sony+ericcson+p800

I owned a P800 and I consider the iPhone to be in a completely different class. Each of the individual differences is small, but when taken together the feel of using them is quite different.

> Each of the individual differences is small, but when taken together the feel of using them is quite different.

Fair enough, but now you're describing evolution, not revolution.

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

#120

Post by fpgeek »

dedward wrote: post #114
jrockway wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HTC Dream didn't look anything like the iPhone either, but Jobs still says Android is a stolen product. So the question is, what did Android steal from Apple?

thats more a personal comment from Jobs...... Apple isnt charging anyone with theft. before thi ihone, no app store no multi touch, litte integration outside of the blackberry, and smartphones and phones in general sucked by comparison. how quickly we forget how crappy what we had before was. sure, previous products had lots f features............ but they didnt blowpeoples minds, or make their companies the most val…

> no app store

I wonder what Andy Rubin would say about that...

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