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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

#251

Post by eropple »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #165
eropple wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple was neither the first to create a multi-touch user interface (the first consumer multitouch device I know of was the Lemur, but I'm sure that was predated) nor the first to put it in a handheld PDA-ish device or a phone (LG beat the iPhone to market with the Prada--which, incidentally, also used very few physical buttons in favor of software buttons).

The entire argument in favor of Apple's patents is bullshit, and nirvana has a history of bad-faith fanboyism on the topic.

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

#252

Post by eropple »

nirvana wrote: post #86
corin_ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the ability to put them together, it's about deciding what to put together, when to do it, how to market it and of course a big part: what software to put on it. I'd never say " all Apple do is" about this, just that it is what they do, and they do it better than anyone else.

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.

Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.

How does the LG Prada exist in this strange world of yours, then?

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

#253

Post by reddelicious »

Apple does not copy. It's against their "values".

Apple steals. Starting with Xerox PARC and continuing to this day.

What do they steal? User interface design and code.

Why do they steal? Because Apple is a _hardware_ company who aims to compete with (and now aims to control) software developers. It started with trying to compete with Microsoft and it continues to this day.

To discover where Apple's interfaces come from one needs only to do the requisite research.

But it seems people have an aversion to doing such research - it's work, after all - while they have little aversion to passively being the targets of Apple's high-priced marketing and advertising. It's easier just to sit back and let Apple control the show. Show us the "future", Apple.

The ideas that are not new, but which others have been developing for years, that you have now stolen and claimed as your own. Interface designs that simply "did not exist" until you adopted them and slapped on the familar Apple logo.

I love Apple hardware. It looks great. I'd even pay higher prices for it. In fact, I have. Many years ago.

But that's as far as it goes. Apple's software and interfaces have little value to me. And when Apple tries to restrict what code I can run on their hardware, it lowers the value of the product. I lose interest, no matter how slick the hardware design. It's inflexible. And that defeats all the fun of using a computer. Apple has reached the point of diminishing returns for me. It's not worth it to buy their new stuff anymore.

According to Apple fanboys, the number of other users who think this way is so small that Apple can disregard any user preferences for flexibility. This is even worse than Microsoft.

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

#254

Post by dasil003 »

mbreese wrote: post #244
dasil003 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple didn't invent touch UI. Ever been to a restaurant in the last decade?

Who is saying that Apple invented the touch UI? This is a false argument. Apple's patent is on a very specific type of touch interface and the interactions with it. Apple-style multi-touch interfaces did not exist before the iPhone. And if they did, you could be damn sure that whoever did invent it would have been suing Apple left and right.

nirvana is.

In the first two paragraphs of the post to which I replied, he explicitly says that finger-based touch "is a major invention".

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

#255

Post by learc83 »

mbreese wrote: post #244
dasil003 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple didn't invent touch UI. Ever been to a restaurant in the last decade?

Who is saying that Apple invented the touch UI? This is a false argument. Apple's patent is on a very specific type of touch interface and the interactions with it. Apple-style multi-touch interfaces did not exist before the iPhone. And if they did, you could be damn sure that whoever did invent it would have been suing Apple left and right.

>Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.

Look back a few comments.

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

#256

Post by arn »

confluence wrote: post #222
arn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or that losing a key look and feel lawsuit means the competition can copy you without fear, losing your distinctiveness. I don't think its that black and white but suggesting the lawsuit, and not the lawsuit outcome, is somehow responsible for a company's lack-of-success is silly.

> losing your distinctiveness You honestly think that is why they lost? They lost because the stopped trying to compete - and just ran off to "Mommy" government screaming "Microsoft took my toy!" instead of fighting back. And I didn't sell on outcome - this was a relatively short case - I was just waiting for the market to increase my exit price - 660 - from 600 ( http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AAPL…

I don't think it comes down to a simple reason. But I certainly don't think it's because they filed a lawsuit.

You seem to be of the opinion that you can't sue and also innovate. This is obviously false. The engineers arnt being pulled from projects to work on the lawsuit.

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

#257

Post by bornhuetter »

gnaffle wrote: post #226
bornhuetter wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why didn't they do more than think about it if it was that obvious at the time that capacitive touchscreen phones would dominate the future? Because, as I said, the market wasn't ready for large capacitive touch screens. > All the biggest competitors in the mobile space had their own operating systems that were optimized for navigation buttons/softkeys moving a cursor around, and optionally a stylus. Because, as I…

So Apple brought it to market at the exact point in time that it became viable. The other companies were "waiting" as you say, so why did they wait so long? Didn't they see that the technology was about to become viable? I don't buy that theory. By the sales of the first iPhone, the market was obviously ready. Had it been "barely usable" it would have flopped completely. Capacitive touch screens use the same technolo…

> why did they wait so long? Didn't they see that the technology was about to become viable?

As I've said ad nausium, the market wasn't ready for large capacitive touch screens. The technology was too expensive.

The market currently isn't ready for "wearable technology", like Project Glass. Every competent observer knows that some form of augmented reality/wearable technology is going to become important in the next few years, but it's currently shit.

If Google or some other company gets granted patents to the obvious design decisions that come with it, it will be a disaster for the consumer in the same way as granting "pinch to zoom on a mobile device" is a disaster for current consumers.

> What I do think is that Apple was willing to bet on touchscreens and place bulk orders that made the price come down, whereas other companies happy with the status quo and unwilling to redesign their mobile operating systems to fit a new technology.

They made a good bet, and they literally made billions of dollars from it. What they don't deserve is a monopoly on basic design ideas, like "pinch to zoom" and "rounded rectangles".

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

#258

Post by arn »

confluence wrote: post #229
pazimzadeh wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean, they stopped trying to compete? Are you implying that Jony Ive and Scott Forstall are sitting on their butts right now thinking "good thing we won, we won't have to compete any more?" What evidence do you have that they've stopped competing? Anyway, maybe you should have waited until the new iPhone and iPad come out before selling your stock.

It's quite simple. If you sue your competition to win - you will lose because the reason for your success is not protecting your IP rights (which can and will be abused as soon as you succeed - relentlessly) - but by making new IP. Disney rocks not because of Mickey Mouse - it rocks because of Pixar. Google rocks not because of PageRank - but because of pushing the edge of search and AI. Tesla rocks not because of th…

Yes, if you stop innovating, then another company can innovate their way to your marketshare.

No argument there. The argument is that you see initiating a lawsuit as a sign that a company is not innovating.

A lawsuit and a company's ability to innovate are independent variables.

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

#259

Post by Natsu »

mbreese wrote: post #239
esolyt wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can read the same quote from CNET if Groklaw is the issue. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-appl... I hope you don't consider CNET biased. If anything, they are usually criticized for being Apple-biased.

The cnet article was the original source for the Groklaw quote. The juror in the quote didn't mention anything about possibly going back to the issue. We don't know if cnet didn't run that part of the quote (why would they, they get more clicks with more controversy), or if the juror just didn't mention it. We do know that he isn't quoted as saying, "oh yeah, we never got back around to it". And since they explicitly…

This is the same jury that awarded Apple $2M for a phone that, according to them, did not actually infringe upon any patents. Fortunately, the court fixed that up for them.

Given that they also have been quoted as not needing the jury instructions, actively ignored those instructions by indicating that the damages awarded were punitive rather than compensatory, and that they could have spent, at most, a few minutes on each of the hundreds of questions, it's hardly out of line to think that this verdict was rushed.

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

#260

Post by shinratdr »

w1ntermute wrote: post #16

This entire trial was a farce. The jury foreman admitted that they "skipped" prior art because "It was bogging us down."[0] > "Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents," Ilagan said, "it's easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products because it was all the same. Like the trade dress, once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flatscreen with the Bezel...then you go down the produc…

> For example, they entered the PMP market when hard drives and batteries were cheap/portable enough to make the iPod a reality.

Apple sold the original iPod for $399, which was the cost of the original 5GB drive to Apple. It was sold at a severe loss to begin with to push the technology and ramp up volume production of those drives.

> They entered the phone market when capacitive touchscreens were cheap/large enough

The iPhone's screen was far and away the biggest cost of the device. It was moving so many of them that dropped the price. You're accusing Apple of jumping at an opportunity when they see a cheap enough component. That's entirely not true, that is what their competitors do.

What they do is choose a key component for their device and drive down the price through massive volume sales that nobody else can achieve. It was true for the hard drive in the iPod, the flash memory in the Nano and the capacitive screen in the iPhone.

If you're saying they didn't invent the HD, memory or screen themselves, that's fair. But I don't think them selling the device at a loss counts as the component being "cheap enough". More like Apple believes in the technology enough that they're willing to do whatever it takes to push adoption, get scale discounts, and MAKE it cheap enough.

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