181–190 of 218 posts
Seriously, I hope everyone manages to block everybody's imports. Then lawmakers will be forced to actually overhaul the patent system. Because judging from progress so far, it seems like only a meltdown would do it.
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This whole patent thing is turning Hobbes' hypothetical "War of All Against All" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellum_omnium_contra_omnes ) into reality.
This is especially appropriate because "Solitary Poor Nasty Brutish and Short" would make a great name for an IP law firm.
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I disagree. It's more about money than innovation. The non-copy arrangement that Microsoft & Apple have led to Windows Phone which I think most would agree is the most unique and maybe the most innovative platform. Would consumers be better off if Microsoft could have puked out an iOS/Android clone instead? Arguably Windows Phone as we know it may be suffering commercially because it is a departure from the iOS/Andro…
> Would consumers be better off if Microsoft could have puked out an iOS/Android clone instead? No, and I'll tell you why: if Microsoft felt they could have made an UI that followed the new design language that is about to become canonical for smart phones, more consumers would be tempted to buy Windows Phones. If Microsoft were to make a comeback and become a dominant player it is 100% guaranteed to result in zero i…
They also brought Windows from 95 to NT, 2000 and 7, with plenty of innovation, during the time that they had the dominant operating system.
Does anybody else feel all the tech giants standing around with their patents in hand is like all the characters standing around with guns like at the end of Reservoir Dogs? "Nobody innovate or we'll shoot!" It's intriguing at first, but you can only keep it up so long before the plot line gets annoying because no one is doing anything (or innovating), or someone gets shot.
IIRC, big companies used to claim they were gathering these patents to _prevent_ this situation from happening, using a similar logic to that of hoarding nuclear weapons to mutually assured destruction. But it appears that something in the balance has changed, and I'm not really sure what. Are the lawyers just doing a bad job of agreeing on the licensing fees (i.e. penalty for having less cross-targeted bombs for a g…
Google are trying to stop software patents by actually using the ones they have? Force a meltdown?
There are a lot of 'Apple deserves this' type of comments in this thread that I'd like to address. The patent system is probably flawed (IANAL), but companies do need to have a way to defend their innovations. Apple did re-invent the smart phone in 07, and has been the design leader since then. Android has followed in their footsteps - witness the design shift from their pre-iphone roadmap which consisted of blackber…
> Further, there have been no bold re-imaginings of the smartphone in Android-land (sorry, a better notification system doesn't really qualify). That just shows how little you know about Android. To take one example, Android's Intent system is amazing. It is one of the big things that makes Android so customizable and flexible. It enables wonderful features like generic sharing (and, impressively, replacing the share…
In a perfect world Apple, Google, Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Blackberry achieve what they wanted - none of them can produce or sell mobile devices anymore in any country. Meanwhile Nokia restarts production of quality hardware and puts WebOS on them with compatibility layer allowing to use legacy iOS and Android applications, taking over the leader position... (In a Bizarro World, it's Siemens bringing back Symbian)
OMG
There are a lot of 'Apple deserves this' type of comments in this thread that I'd like to address. The patent system is probably flawed (IANAL), but companies do need to have a way to defend their innovations. Apple did re-invent the smart phone in 07, and has been the design leader since then. Android has followed in their footsteps - witness the design shift from their pre-iphone roadmap which consisted of blackber…
I'm sure there are examples of Apple following the pack. For example, an App Store is similar to apt (or other package managers) in Linux-land. Podcasts where included in iTunes after someone else invented them (I think). Apple produce Unix servers after other people were selling unix servers.
That's how the tech industry works, we all copy each other, to some degree.
Someone needs a patent on patents to stop this insanity.
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>> iOS'es most fundamental feature, notifications, was ripped off from android. I won't dispute whether notifications was ripped from Android, but calling Notifications the "most fundamental" feature of iOS is an incredibly huge stretch. If you ask 10 iPhone users what the most fundamental feature of iOS was, you'd probably get 6 or 7 different answers.
It's the centerpiece for interacting with apps. It's key. In fact, I'm betting it contributed to people confusing android with ios, it's that similar and pervasive. Before they were ripped off the biggest complaint about the iphone was it didn't have android-style notifications. There were many different knockoff apps since people disliked ios notifications so much and apple ended up hiring the lead dev from one of t…
It was the first phone browser done right, and is still arguably the best. Outside of the phone operations, I would trade away every possible feature of iOS for Safari.
Notifications is an annoying piece of crap for a lot of people including me. That isn't to say the previous generation of alerts were not worse, they were.
But I highly doubt that many people think it is THE cornerstone feature. For some, like me, it's Safari. For others, it's FaceTime, others the camera, etc.