Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Tim Cook memo: line by line

jacquesmattheij.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 309 posts

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#111

Post by ralfn »

codeka wrote: post #106
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…

> Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR Even if that were true, the problem for me is Apple didn't patent the iPhone. They patented tiny little implementation details, like pinch-to-zoom and slide-to-unlock. The iPhone was revolutionary not because of rounded rectangles and a regular grid of icons. It was revolutionary because it was…

Im with you. The jury has spoken and found Samsung guilty, but the actual legal details seem random and should not be anybody's property.

People often compare it to the Tv market or the car market. Yes, all TVs look alike. They are all ugly. Yes all cars look the same: like shiny bling to impress an ape. I dont consider the lack of choice in design in those markets a good thing.

I dont like patents, but i would love for products in all categories to look more unique. Maybe Apple should have won because of the tradedress. But not because of the patents.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#112

Post by gurkendoktor »

robbiep wrote: post #88
mappu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to consider what it might take for an actual war to occur. Samsung makes up a non-trivial share of the entire South Korean economy, one fifth of the country's exports and employing roughly one of every thirty people - if overnight they were barred from selling products internationally, at what point does the state intervene?

Imagine an apple battle tank. Would it whale on a samsung tank? Or Drone? Or would Samsung need to down an apple drone then reverse engineer it before they had equality in the war?

The fact that Samsung does actually manufacture killer robots makes your posting a little sad. (I know that it's not the entertainment division, but I still don't understand why no one cares about that part of Samsung.)

http://dvice.com/archives/2006/11/samsung-creates-machinegun...

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#113

Post by uvTwitch »

cageface wrote: post #8

I think this is an excellent occasion to relink PG's essay on Apple's behavior from 2009: http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html Maybe Apple thinks they can afford to play bull in the china chop of developer opinion right now but I'm sure I'm not the only developer that felt a little sick to his stomach firing up Xcode today. I plan to put iOS and Apple in my rear view mirror.

That apple are a bunch of assholes should have been no surprise to anybody in 2009; the obscenely smug image which they've cultivated through their marketing has always reeked of a company which is shiny on the outside, and rotten in it's core.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#114

Post by irreverentbits »

I can't help but feel as if all of the claims made regarding "real innovation" in this post grossly undervalue the strides Apple has made in UI/UX and overall product design in favor of elevating more immediately self-evident technical advances.

The strength of Apple's innovation has always been in delivering complete, cohesive products. In that regard, user interface details and interactions which seem trivial technically are hardly trivial in terms of user experience.

As a competitive entity, there's no reason for Apple not to leverage every technique at its disposal to ensure its competitive viability - and one of these techniques is using patent litigation to prevent competitors from carbon-copying its innovations.

Moral and ethical arguments should be made with regard to the integrity of the patent system itself, not a single corporation's lawful use of that system. Decrying Apple's behavior either speaks to hopeless naiveté regarding the nature of competition, or self-congratulatory moral posturing.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#115

Post by vavb »

nikic wrote: post #90
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.…

Just because you can, doesn't mean that you have to. Look at Google. That's a nice company, which keeps the patent trolling down.

Google is a nice company?!

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#116

Post by thomasf1 »

cremnob wrote: post #95
thomasf1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, my fault... What´s your take on the morals of the Samsung/Apple trial and your feelings regarding protection by software patents?

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#117

Post by veeti »

beedogs wrote: post #80
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…

> 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.

If you can not see the difference in the touchscreen UI between the Wizard (or any other pre-iPhone device) and the iPhone, you have to be blind.

Until the iPhone, touch-screen phones were slow, clunky and unresponsive. They had shitty resistive screens that were a total pain to use. (LG actually released a capacitive phone before the iPhone, but the software was the same shit we had for ages so it didn't change a thing). Even simple things like lists were scrolled by aiming for a 2px wide scrollbar and dragging it.

But then the iPhone came along with smooth and fluid graphics and animations, actually innovative and fun touch gestures like simple flicks to scroll through lists (and a 60fps smooth animation while doing so), pinch-to-zoom and so on. The experience was actually enjoyable.

The same thing happened with the iPad. Back in the early 2000's we had "tablets" with a downsized desktop OS (Windows XP). Total shit for a touch-screen device.

Even after the iPhone some competitors failed to realize what made it good. Nokia's touch screen abominations were just sad - and they're still releasing some terrible Symbian devices like the new PureView 808. The Verge's review summarizes Symbian's problems pretty well:

> THE SYMBIAN EFFECT: WHEN GREAT HARDWARE IS RENDERED USELESS BY TERRIBLE SOFTWARE

> Actions like scrolling or pinch-to-zoom feel like requests you’re filing with a clerk somewhere in a bureaucratic dystopia — to be carried out at some indeterminate time in the future. Completing this slow-motion train wreck is the only thing worse than unresponsive operation: a complete crash of the entire phone.

Apple needs to stop with their bullshit litigation but they truly did push the industry forward with touch devices. It isn't a coincidence that touch screen phones exploded after the iPhone and that people actually started caring about tablets after the iPad.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#118

Post by sofuture »

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…

eponysterical

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#119

Post by vesky »

onedev wrote: post #23
pclark wrote: post #2

I think it's bullshit that Apple did this for money.

You think Apple cares about a measly $1b? Think about it, the company itself is worth 600+ billion dollars. They did this more out of principal and to defend their products than anything else.

You're forgetting the impact this will have on it's stock, already reaching records highs since the decision was announced. So if you think it a "measly $1b" you're horribly mistaken. How about a "measly" tens of billions in overall stock growth over the next months?

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#120

Post by lancewiggs »

EricDeb wrote: post #40

How about simply having shorter tech patents? I feel having a patent length of 5 years would absolve these problems quickly. The tech industry moves too fast for 14 or 20 year patents...

And how about compulsory licensing after, say, 2 years, at reasonable terms, subject to arbitration and penalties for excessive demands.

The patent system needs to be fixed globally. Current international trade agreements are going in the wrong direction, driven by the USA negotiators who are ultimately driven by Disney, MPAA and so on.

The rest of te world would dearly like to see US citizens get involved - the TPP is a good place to start.

Post reply on HN