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A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

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Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#161

Post by Nicole060 »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #103
Nicole060 wrote: post #5

As someone who has owned a pre-iPhone phone with a touchscreen, and seen another one in the hand of a friend, no, what made the iPhone the iPhone is NOT obvious. For the love of god, my LG Prada was so shitty I had to hit a 2px scrollbar with my thumb to scroll in the contact list. I can't contain the nervous laugh whenever some ignorant who never touched the device link to wikipedia proud of their attempt at mocking…

"the iPhone, as a whole package, without just singling out a feature here and there, was a real innovation, a breath of fresh air" Ah but then you admit, it's "the whole package" that is the real innovation, the individual pieces were really not that novel and a lot of them not even from Apple. Six months or a year later, as the technology became more available, most of these pieces would have crept in other smartpho…

Yeah right.

The iPhone is so obvious that your links shows a screen with scrollbars and I presume it worked the same way as it did on my godawful POS of a LG Prada : you probably had to hit the bars to scroll.

Still I admit that Openmoko had the decency to make the scrollbars bigger and give us arrow buttons widgets, which probably made it easier to use than the 2px bar of the LG Prada.

Anyway the openmoko is not a valid comparison point when we're talking about what Samsung did to Apple when they made the Galaxy S, Touchwiz (Android on samsung is not the same as vanilla Android), copied the (look) of the dock connector, AC adapter, packaging.. Openmoko doesn't have anything of the stuff that made the iPhone feel like magic.

Remember that the first Android phone didn't even support multitouch, for god's sake. And it was a year later after the release of the first iPhone. A year later and they still couldn't do anything close to it, and people call the iPhone obvious ? have some decency, please. The iPhone 3g has been released BEFORE the first android phone and it was already the second iteration of the iPhone. And the first Android phone (HTC Dream) was so far from being like the iPhone it isn't even funny. Compared to what the Galaxy S has become.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#162

Post by ElliotMingee »

nirvana wrote: post #88
ElliotMingee wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does that warrant patent protection? The idea behind a patent is to protect innovation, however the innovative cost in that sense is negligible.

You're confusing utility and design patents. They are different things and have different purposes and requirements. Really, you're not the only one, but it is shameful that at this point in time so many people still don't know what patents are, yet comment on HN.

Fair point; I was too quick to comment there. I'm curious though: are you familiar with the reasoning behind the development of design patents? I've done some light research and not turned up much. It seems that trademark and copyright already provide fairly expansive coverage for non-functional IP, so I don't quite see the intent behind the design patent laws.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#163

Post by nivla »

nirvana wrote: post #111
antidoh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them." Hmmm. I'm still using my Palm Centro phone, which used to be a Treo, which used to be a Palm PDA, which used to be a Palm Pilot. All of those have a touch oriented UI, and most if not all of them pre-date iPhone by years. So now I guess we can watch the debate about whether Newton or its competitors pre-date each other.

None of those have a touch based UI. Touch means finger touches. Very different from a stylus which is only touching one or two pixels at a time. This is very easy to sense because the stylus pushes two layers together physically and effectively is closing swithces. A touch is much difeferent, a finger is an amorphous blob over many pixels of a varying shape, and Apple had to figure out how to resolve that into a sin…

>What's next? The Mac stole from windows?

Actually Mac did borrow a few usability from Windows too.

1. Finder Sidebar: Windows Navigation pane

2. The Mac Path bar: Windows Address bar

3. Back and Forward navigation buttons in folder windows

4. Minimizing to document windows into app icon

5. Screen Sharing: Remote Desktop Connection

6. Time Machine: Backup and Restore

7. System Preferences: Control Panel

8. ActiveSync and Exchange 2007 support

9. Command-Tab: Alt-Tab

10. Terminal: Command Prompt

While most of these are so obvious and can also be called prior art, standing in Apple's shoes, its an innovation by Windows, they had it in their OS before Apple. If you find the above list funny you know that Apple tried to sue Microsoft for having a GUI. A GUI !!

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#164

Post by corin_ »

hnriot wrote: post #157
corin_ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Touch means finger touches. According to who, you? Feel free to argue around the technological improvements Apple have brought, but to argue that everything everybody has always called "touchscreen" isn't that... makes no sense. And even by your strange definition of a "touch based UI", were Apple the first company to create capacitive touch screens? Hell, I don't think they were even the first to create phones usi…

Of course touch means finger touches. Writing with a pencil or stylus isn't called touching. This is pretty basic stuff, it just seems as though you have some axe to grind with this poster and want to nit pik at semantics, but in doing to it just looks rather childish.

My overall argument was not about the terminology, but the claim that Apple invented touching with your fingers - so not sure why you picked this one point to disagree with me on if it's a childish semantic.

But if "touch means finger touches" in the tech world then what do you call devices designed to be used with a stylus? Not touchscreen? And in general English "touch" doesn't mean "with fingers" either.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#165

Post by tomjakubowski »

eropple wrote: post #124
nirvana wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those have a touch based UI. Touch means finger touches. Very different from a stylus which is only touching one or two pixels at a time. This is very easy to sense because the stylus pushes two layers together physically and effectively is closing swithces. A touch is much difeferent, a finger is an amorphous blob over many pixels of a varying shape, and Apple had to figure out how to resolve that into a sin…

None of those have a touch based UI. Touch means finger touches. This is dishonestly revisionist, given how common it was to see people thumbing through applications on Palm devices. That Palms came with styluses doesn't mean that they weren't touch-friendly in a lot of ways, and that should be taken into account.

Since I don't know, I thought I'd ask -- were Apple the first to create a multi-touch UI for a phone? That would seem to me to be the major innovation in touch UI if that's the case.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#166

Post by joezydeco »

ktizo wrote: post #131
nirvana wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them. And having seen them, other companies can't replicate them well at all because they don't do the research. Calling them a lego assembler ignores all the real innovation they do.

Bespoke touch oriented UI systems have been around for a very long time, some of them surprisingly sophisticated and innovative. A mate of mine used to do interfaces for touchscreen information kiosks, for instance.

100% agree. I used a touchscreen kiosk back in 1982 at EPCOT. It wasn't resistive, could have been capacitive, probably was infrared or surface-wave.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#167

Post by vidarh »

SimHacker wrote: post #121
nirvana wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them. And having seen them, other companies can't replicate them well at all because they don't do the research. Calling them a lego assembler ignores all the real innovation they do.

Oh bullshit. We were doing finger operated gesture user interface on the Palm in 2000 (pie menus on virtual buttons for consumer electronic IR remote control interfaces). Lots of people were using touch screens with finger gestures. The Palm included a stylus, but if the interface was designed correctly you could certainly use it with your fingers, and pie menus (self revealing gestures) worked just fine, and there i…

It didn't take much to allow using the Palm with fingers - I used to write on it with my fingers rather than the stylus because I found it more convenient and still accurate enough.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#168

Post by vvhn »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #107

Also see openmoko (2006): http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Cheap-hackable-Linux... "The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card. Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad -- in this case, an ultra-high resoluti…

>I personally have always thought the iPhone was Apple taking the openmoko idea and running with it.

From the linked article,

" Cheap, hackable Linux smartphone due soon By Linux Devices 2006-11-07 "

Presumably that means this was 7th November 2006.

So, in exactly 2 months ( on January 9th 2007) , Apple was able to design a prototype based on this concept, write all the software and demo it onstage ?

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#169

Post by vlad »

hnriot wrote: post #157
corin_ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Touch means finger touches. According to who, you? Feel free to argue around the technological improvements Apple have brought, but to argue that everything everybody has always called "touchscreen" isn't that... makes no sense. And even by your strange definition of a "touch based UI", were Apple the first company to create capacitive touch screens? Hell, I don't think they were even the first to create phones usi…

Of course touch means finger touches. Writing with a pencil or stylus isn't called touching. This is pretty basic stuff, it just seems as though you have some axe to grind with this poster and want to nit pik at semantics, but in doing to it just looks rather childish.

> Of course touch means finger touches

I'm not sure that's true. For example, in the Tablet PC space, a touch screen could mean that a screen responded to a stylus, finger, or both, but usually, just the stylus! And even before the first iPod came out in 2001, screens in PDAs were referred to as touch-screens.

Handspring Edge, 2001: "THIS WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER PHYSICAL DAMAGE TO THE SURFACE OF THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING CRACKS OR SCRATCHES ON THE LCD TOUCHSCREEN OR OUTSIDE CASING."

Treo 650, released in 2004: "Fully integrated phone and PDA with digital video and camera capabilities Integrated Bluetooth technology Vibrant 320 x 320 touchscreen display" http://www.amazon.com/Palm-Treo-650-PDA-Phone/dp/B0007NP8PW

A review of Treo 650 suggests the finger worked on large areas, 3 years before the iPhone was released, but the UI buttons in the PalmOS were unchanged from small ones created 10 years earlier for stylus-access only. (In this light, Apple's innovation was to require action buttons to be at least 40x40 pixels with enough spacing from each other in their new iPhone OS, now called iOS.) http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/palm/treo-650.html "Extensive use of touch screen allows finger access but you will need the built-in touch pen for pulling down menus and making selections."

One could argue that Apple should not be allowed to sell a phone without a keyboard since they're improving on the Treo 650's design, just like Samsung should not be allowed to sell a phone with a larger screen and multiple physical buttons since they're improving on the iPhone design.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#170

Post by stevewilhelm »

One thing people fail to realize, any information not submitted as evidence during the trial, may not be considered by the jury in their deliberations. This includes prior knowledge or experiences of any given juror.

So if these PDA's were not submitted as evidence by Samsung, they could not be taken into account when the jury decided their verdict.

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