The Tim Cook memo: line by line • Hacker News Board

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#91

Post by davidw » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 10:26 AM UTC

cageface wrote: post #74

justinh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your argument that because Apple is now successful, that their walled garden approach is now flawed? I don't follow the line of reasoning there.

No it was just easy enough to dismiss it as a harmless eccentricity of a niche player. Now that they're in the driver's seat in many ways it takes on much more sinister overtones. If Apple succeeds in driving Android out of the market they will be the sole arbiter of what's allowed on the devices that mediate most users' interactions with the net. I have no problem with curated app stores or app DRM, by the way. I ju…

This is par for the course for Apple:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#92

Post by capkutay » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 10:27 AM UTC

ForrestN wrote: post #89

This is absurd and frustrating. Apple is not responsible for the broken patent system. Apple is a public company. If Apple decided to hold itself to a set of standards more stringent than its competitors, it would be hampering itself and acting against the interests of its shareholders. Complain about, and work to fix, the system. Don't expect Apple to fix it by ceding the rights it currently has to its competitors.…

Apple genuinely seems to believe that the blatant copying of iOS in Android is unethical.

Its unethical because the Android - iOS relationship can be narrowed down to one person...Eric Schmidt. He sat on the board of Apple, absorbed the process of Apple getting into the smart phone market, then emulated it at Google while he was CEO there. Although to be fair, Android innovates in some areas where iOS does not explore (running the JVM on smartphones).

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#93

Post by netcan » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 10:31 AM UTC

timmyd wrote: post #17

Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. "These are not patents on innovation, they’re patents on simple ideas and features that you didn’t even think of first but you were the first to patent." Then the magical aspect of patent law called "prior art" would com…

Most innovations are not patentable. Most notably are most business models.

Think of Groupon's business model. There's nothing specifically innovative about it: forced email list, 1 product per day, discounts. But, put together it formed a successful business model. Had they not thought of it and tested it in the marketplace all their copy-cat competitors probably would not exist today either.

At some stage someone someone invented department stores. Someone hypothesized that yuppie americans would like to eat sushi. Someone thought that doing massages in full view in malls would create a new market of people who wouldn't have gone through the book-in-advance, go behind a heavy curtain, 1 hour minimum normally associated with the trade. In Australia I would guess that this last one tripled (or more) the massage therapy market.

It's hard to talk about patents without slipping into the legalize definitions of important concepts like 'non-trivial' but I think a common sense definition is 'wouldn't have been invented otherwise.' A lot of these innovations are genuinely nontrivial by that definition.

They weren't developed in r&d labs but they are all genuinely innovative. They didn't spend huge sums on r&d but someone did the economic cousin of spending, they risked (usually personally) a lot testing them in the market. Much or most of the profits eventually went to copycats. Without the innovator most would not have existed today. They still got invented. I doubt that patenting would increase their rate of invention. I'm sure that patenting would have harmed consumers.

I'm not saying this as a general refutation of patents. I don't know what the correct laws are. I think though that any patent laws are always going to leave us with huge ugly deckfulls of by-catch. Mostly skate & sunfish. But occasionally a walrus, whale or dugong that the crew will not want others to know about.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#94

Post by eftpotrm » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 10:35 AM UTC

capkutay wrote: post #86

beedogs wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. What? No, we weren't. I had a Cingular 8125 (HTC Wizard) a year and a half before the iPhone was introduced and it was perfectly fine. Apple just added shiny icons and took away the keyboard and stylus. BFD.

Apple just added shiny icons and took away the keyboard and stylus. BFD. I actually think that is a BFD. If it had a keyboard, the whole idea of dynamic UI's would not exist. Would anyone think that angry birds is cool if we had to play it with arrow buttons on the keyboard?

Windows CE 'Pocket PC' handhelds had retracting soft keyboards 10+ years ago.

Handspring Treos were dedicated touchscreen-based phone-PDA hybrids not much later.

PalmOS had grids of icons for its screens from day one.

Apple's primary innovation wasn't technical, it was marketing. They tied a few pre-existing ideas together slightly better, made them more shiny and used the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field to convince the world it was a never-before-seen quantum leap.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#95

Post by cremnob » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 10:43 AM UTC

thomasf1 wrote: post #36

robin_reala wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While lots of MacOS was taken from Xerox’s work it wasn't’t copied, it was licensed.

Right. They managed to get a licence from Xerox to the astonishment of many of the guys working in Xerox PARC. What´s your take on the morals of this?

Uh in one case they've gotten permission and are paying to use it and in the other they're not? The morality is clear.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#96

Post by srinathvj » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 10:47 AM UTC

This is total abuse of patents and copyrights! Of course, the obvious way to do things should never be patent-able in the first place!! Someone definitely needs to re-look @ how patenting works... I think the rules have obviously become archaic... and not useful anymore. Another example of this is the Indian Judiciary... completely meaningless laws and rules all over the place. A law book to govern a nation should ideally not be over 150 Pages, but now we have one which is like 5,000 pages and its completely meaningless!! Dawh!!!

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#97

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 11:00 AM UTC

yogsototh wrote: post #43

timmyd wrote: post #17

Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. "These are not patents on innovation, they’re patents on simple ideas and features that you didn’t even think of first but you were the first to patent." Then the magical aspect of patent law called "prior art" would com…

You mentioned the difference between big and small company. When Apple had clearly stolen the look and feel of Delicious Library to make iBook. The author was a "small company". He even show some happiness that his work was used by Apple. The point is, he couldn't have sued Apple. Simply because, actually, a small company could certainly not win over a big one. The big one will use a lot of money to keep the trial as…

Funny

Apple bought the "coverflow" look from a small company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverflow

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#98

Post by vavb » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 11:01 AM UTC

To me, there are two potential benefits to all innovation:

1. to improve the standard of living for the general population (consumer/user) 2. to reap the rewards of making your ideas reality (inventor/creator)

My understanding of the patent system was to balance these two concepts - the inventor has the right to get the benefits (financial or otherwise) from their creation for a reasonable time but must in return share their idea so that it becomes public knowledge. In my view, patents aren't necessarily about protecting small businesses - the system is designed to incentivise innovation.

In theory this is fairly sound, however the potential for abuse, specifically trolling, is high. In practice, we live in arguably the most innovative time of human history.

Of course the system isn't perfect, I'm not pretending it is. It seems to work OK most of the time though. The tech advances are putting strain on a system intended for physical manufacture and so we'll probably see a reform soon. Here's hoping they don't screw it up (though they prob will).

The thing that strikes me about this article is that the patents such as pinch to zoom and double tap were NOT obvious to me at all before the iPhone existed. I'm fairly young though and I didn't really know about what the cutting edge of tech was like when the iPhone came out. I do remember how much the device amazed me when it came out though.

Now these methods of interacting with a touchscreen are so ubiquitous that I get annoyed whenever a touch screen doesn't implement multitouch, two finger scrolls etc. You probably do too.

It doesn't matter if they're obvious now - it matters if they were obvious when they were created. In that sense, I can understand where apple is coming from. After reading the 150 page leaked document where Samsung blatantly stated they would copy hundreds of features of iOS I think this situation is a bit more grey than the "Fuck Apple, I'm using a Samsung TV as a computer now" position that the author has taken. See also the Samsung store in Sydney, Aus.

My startup falls exactly within the 'obvious in hindsight' category - it's an app that can work out what emotions a child is feeling. You can bet your ass I will be patenting it everywhere we plan to sell for exactly that reason.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#99

Post by tayl0r » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 11:07 AM UTC

eftpotrm wrote: post #94

capkutay wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple just added shiny icons and took away the keyboard and stylus. BFD. I actually think that is a BFD. If it had a keyboard, the whole idea of dynamic UI's would not exist. Would anyone think that angry birds is cool if we had to play it with arrow buttons on the keyboard?

Windows CE 'Pocket PC' handhelds had retracting soft keyboards 10+ years ago. Handspring Treos were dedicated touchscreen-based phone-PDA hybrids not much later. PalmOS had grids of icons for its screens from day one. Apple's primary innovation wasn't technical, it was marketing. They tied a few pre-existing ideas together slightly better, made them more shiny and used the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field to convi…

Those prior things you speak of were absolutely terrible. I had all those devices and they sucked compared to the iPhone.

I think that those "innovations" seem simple now in hindsight, but why didn't any of the companies previously making smart phones or PDAs (Palm, Windows CE, HP, Compaq, Dell, etc) come up with something that not only the hardcore nerds would actually want to use?

I really don't think it was just marketing. Apple made a smartphone that almost everyone could pick up and enjoy using.

I definitely see both sides to this story. It sucks that Apple is killing fair (and unfair) competition but it also sucks that Samsung can just sit there and blatantly copy Apple's innovations. There needs to be a balance.

This is the best quote I've seen about the verdict:

"Samsung only found itself in trouble with the products that copied liberally from Apple. It did not help their case that they had a hundred page document describing what to copy nor the fact that Google went to them and said "do not copy Apple that blatantly"."

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#100

Post by tayl0r » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 11:13 AM UTC

justinh wrote: post #63

cageface wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should also add that this is just the last straw for me. I've been feeling increasingly uncomfortable about Apple's policies since they (temporarily) banned all languages but Obj-C from their platform. I've just had enough of their controlling, paternalistic attitude. It was one thing when they were the scrappy underdog but the idea that I need the OK of the richest company in the world to install software on my (m…

Is your argument that because Apple is now successful, that their walled garden approach is now flawed? I don't follow the line of reasoning there.

It's cool to hate Apple because elite hackers don't like closed systems, despite the fact that their walled garden is actually better for 99.9% of consumers out there.