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

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#181

Post by cageface » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:01 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #170

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…

The idea that you need Apple's permission to install software on your mobile computer is false. You can install whatever software you want, via multiple methods. Out of the box you can install apps built using web technologies downloaded directly from the web. Apple controls what goes into the store because they want to protect users from apps that steal information. iOS does not have the malware problem that android…

This is just simply not true. Without a provisioning profile from apple you can't install anything. And putting a web link on your screen counts as an installation only in bizarro world.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#182

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:04 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #172

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't hear you. Look at the recurring pattern in this thread and elsewhere. Apple fanatic: Apple deserves a 20 year government enforced monopoly because they did it first. Everyone else stole it, and are thieves, who deserve to pay. Member of the reality-based consensus: small portable computers existed before the iPad/iPhone and every individual part that you could name (or patent) had been done before by other…

Yeah! There's nothing new in the iPhone, that Bell didn't demonstrate over a century ago! The reality is, you guys are ideologically driven- you want to get google off the hook for stealing Apples inventions, so you pretend like the patents cover features rather than implementations. Your dishonesty is shameful.

Please quote, from the relevant patent, what implementation (rather than feature) you think Google and/or Samsung stole from Apple.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#183

Post by Evbn » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:07 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #143

csallen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something makes you money doesn't mean it's inherently good or useful, and it doesn't mean it should be protected by law. Every time a company's competitors catch up to it, and every time technology makes a company's business model obsolete, they turn to the law to try to wipe the competition/technology out of existence. And, quite frankly, it's bullshit. You're right, the entire basis of patents was to…

Weren't the guys that Apple bought to get multitouch "little"? In a world where such "obvious in retrospect" designs aren't protected, why doesn't Apple just copy their work?

So they could sue competitors.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#184

Post by luriel » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:07 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #50

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.

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…

> 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 (mobile) computer just suddenly seems equally laughable and creepy to me.

It astounds me the kind of stuff Apple gets away with this days that Microsoft could have never dreamed of doing in the 90's.

Can anyone imagine if Microsoft had required its approval of applications like Netscape before allowing Windows users to install them?

Can anyone imagine if Microsoft had sued BeOS or RedHat for infringement of patents as trivial as pinch-to-zoom?

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#185

Post by nirvana » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:10 PM UTC

Off wrote: post #71

ricardobeat wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinch to zoom was unheard of on any device (mobile or not) at the time of iPhone's launch. Not surprising considering no one had multi-touch screens either.

Multi touch and Pinch to zoom was demonstrated by Jefferson Han¹ on a TED conference before the release of the iPhone. ¹: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Han

Patents cover inventions of methods and processes to accomplish something-- implementations, not the idea or the feature.

Thus pinch-to-zoom as Jeff demonstrated it, using cameras to take pictures of your hands is not the same thing as apple doing it using software to turn noisy amorphous blobs into finger points on a capacitive touch screen.

Other people can implement pinch-to-zoom because pinch-to-zoom cannot be patented.

Both Apple and Jeff Han could have patents on their very different implementations of this same feature.

Unfortunately people really seem to believe that patents cover features, and I think this is due to the deliberate spin put on the discussions by anti-patent people.

If you disagree, try reading the pinch-to-zoom patent itself.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#186

Post by nirvana » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:11 PM UTC

catwell wrote: post #133

Off wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multi touch and Pinch to zoom was demonstrated by Jefferson Han¹ on a TED conference before the release of the iPhone. ¹: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Han

Although the Han ted talk is from 2006, before the iPhone but after the patent (2005). The oldest multitouch device I know is the MERL Diamond Touch table (2001) which clearly predates everything Apple did. I am unsure whether or not somebody had implemented Pinch&Zoom on it before 2005. In 2007 I worked on a Multitouch Table project as a student ( http://digitable.imag.fr/ ). We built our own FTIR table and implemen…

Patents cover inventions of methods and processes to accomplish something-- implementations, not the idea or the feature.

Thus pinch-to-zoom as Jeff Han demonstrated it, using cameras to take pictures of your hands is not the same thing as apple doing it using software to turn noisy amorphous blobs into finger points on a capacitive touch screen.

Other people can implement pinch-to-zoom because pinch-to-zoom cannot be patented.

Both Apple and Jeff Han could have patents on their very different implementations of this same feature.

Unfortunately people really seem to believe that patents cover features, and I think this is due to the deliberate spin put on the discussions by anti-patent people.

If you disagree, try reading the pinch-to-zoom patent itself.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#187

Post by jopt » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:12 PM UTC

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.

Right. Just because you can doesn't mean you have to, but it does mean you can.

This is little more than a new round of the CSR debate.

I find it hard to fault Apple for cashing in on the ridiculous legal system.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#188

Post by Evbn » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:12 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #173

moe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no different than Amazon's One-click. You're not seriously trying to suggest that one-click is a reasonable patent, are you?

You should try reading that patent sometime before you claim it isn't reasonable. It is profoundly dishonest to characterize patents using a trivial phrase like "one-click" and then pretend like that also means that the patent is itself trivial. I know why you do it- it fits your ideology. But it doesn't fit reality.

You think Barnes and Noble copied the novel implementation of one-click, as disclosed by the patent, and didn't use bog standard database and cookie techniques?

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#189

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:14 PM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #104

buster wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading after "Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces". Clearly you are very misguided. You are comparing featurephones with smartphones (the ones with screens and stuff). Smartphones existed way before the iPhone. It makes me extremely sad that the marketing lies of Apple are taken for truth. Apple may have invented the vendor lock-in, tho…

Name one pre-iPhone smartphone that you'd be willing to pit against the iPhone. Oh, and Apple's vendor lock-in is still a damn sight better than the telco lock-in it replaced (in the US).

> Name one pre-iPhone smartphone that you'd be willing to pit against the iPhone.

The TARDIS.

Your move.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#190

Post by nirvana » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 3:15 PM UTC

onli wrote: post #81

taligent wrote: post #3

All this blog post is one person's misunderstanding of patent and copyright law. Jacques would have been better served trying to understand what trade dress means and why Apple's UI patents were about the implementation and not the idea. After all the idea of "how to let the user know they have reached the top of the scroll view" can be implemented many ways. Apples is one way. LG, Samsung and HTC all have different…

>Apple's UI patents were about the implementation and not the idea You can't patent an implementation

Patents cover inventions of methods and processes to accomplish something-- implementations, not the idea or the feature.

Thus pinch-to-zoom as Jeff Han demonstrated it, using cameras to take pictures of your hands is not the same thing as apple doing it using software to turn noisy amorphous blobs into finger points on a capacitive touch screen.

Other people can implement pinch-to-zoom because pinch-to-zoom cannot be patented.

Both Apple and Jeff Han could have patents on their very different implementations of this same feature.

Unfortunately people really seem to believe that patents cover features, and I think this is due to the deliberate spin put on the discussions by anti-patent people.

If you disagree, try reading the pinch-to-zoom patent itself.