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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

#371

Post by gridaphobe »

nirvana wrote: post #306
codeka wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that there were two jurers who were unconvinced about the prior art thing. It seems to me like what actually happened is that, rather than trying to convince those two jurers (i.e. coming to a unanimous decision), they just went with "majority rules". Of course, there's no evidence to suggest that's what they did, but equally there's no evidence to suggest that they eventually went back to that qu…

Instructions are advisory. They are meant to help jurors who are unclear of what the law says. However, they are not shackles on the jurors. Jurors are free to ignore them, and should ignore them when justice requires it. For example, Jurors have the right to find a guy not guilty when caught red handed with marijuana simply because the law is unconstitutional. They have that right and that is intentional in our syst…

The problem with your argument is that jury nullification is designed to prevent unjust punishment. In this case the jury appears to have deliberately increased Samsung's punishment.

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

#372

Post by wvenable »

rayiner wrote: post #174
drats wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly, touch screen technology, faster ARM cpus and the rest make these things possible and came from elsewhere. My first computer with a GUI was 100mhz. As soon as smartphones got 600mhz+ and as soon as people get touch screens (foreshadowed endlessly in sci-fi) are you seriously suggesting that if you took a room of fresh graduates from a design school (which is a bar lower than "ordinary skill in the art"…

Just because you can see the logical evolutionary history of a design in hindsight does not mean it's obvious. One of the considerations for "obviousness" is "failure of others." Companies failed for a decade to have usable touch-screen devices before Apple came out with the iPhone. Within just a couple of years, smartphones all went from looking like Treos to looking like iPhones. Multi-touch was a game-changer and…

> Within just a couple of years, smartphones all went from looking like Treos to looking like iPhones.

That's revisionist history right there -- every single phone from HTC going back to the original PDA/phone Pocket PC hybrids looked like iPhones. But they didn't have multitouch.

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

#373

Post by qu4z-2 »

taligent wrote: post #196
georgemcbay wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft developed the "old" Surface (now called PixelSense) at the same time Apple was working on the iPhone. Both were released in very early 2007 after years of R&D work. Both had multitouch UIs of the type you seem to think are so innovative. Both arrived at these solutions at the same time because the wide availability of capacitive touchscreens (which neither MS nor Apple invented, mind you -- capacitive and m…

Well this comment is ridiculous. If timing and marketing is all that matters for market success then Apple should NOT have been successful with iPod or iPad since they weren't the first MP3 player or tablet. And they definitely didn't have the experience of companies like Sony when it comes to marketing. You criticize others about grasp on real history when you seem so quick to ignore it yourself.

Timing may not be as simple as "first".

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

#374

Post by qu4z-2 »

nirvana wrote: post #282
corin_ wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His parentheses made you miss the rest of his sentence. > Both arrived at these solutions at the same time because the wide availability of capacitive touchscreens (...) made such UIs an obvious next step to anyone paying attention to the field. He was saying that capacitive was inspiration to both, not used by both.

Right, given the flammability of wood, fire was an obvious next step. This is nonsense. It is just rejecting innovation out of hand by claiming that it was obvious. Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.

Perhaps it wasn't obvious, but clearly it was obvious enough that MS came up with it too.

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

#375

Post by qu4z-2 »

nirvana wrote: post #294
vidarh wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote on my Palm Pilot Pro in '98 using my fingers. I preferred it to using the stylus, because it was faster and more comfortable for me. (Incidentally, when I left the job where I used the Palm at the end of '98, it was to work on developing a touch based tablet which had no stylus at all - see one of my other posts in this thread). The stylus on the Palm was optional for better precision. It was by no means nece…

The idea that the palm was a touch based UI is simply false. You needed a stylus and the UI was designed for a stylus. You could do some things with fingers and some apps were designed for finger use, where it was appropriate. The reason you needed a stylus is because the technology was not advanced enough to detect finger touches with the accuracy that the iPhone does. Even if Palm had all of the algorithms that app…

Alternatively, people are more used to writing with a pen than with their fingers.

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

#376

Post by ricardobeat »

rustynails wrote: post #173
ricardobeat wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latch is only obvious in retrospect; it involves the emulation of physical constraints that most non-engineers couldn't even describe succesfully (springy handle, locking at the end) and great resilience to unintended input. If another manufacturer had made the iPhone, you would probably unlock it by pressing a sequence of keys. That's the most obvious design.

I respectfully disagree. My thought process was 1. Passcode (alpha or numeric) 2. If I don't want a passcode, I need something else, and a single button won't do. Ok, drag something. The conclusion is obvious. You could argue that I am biased, and it would be impossible for me to counter. However, IMHO, sliding something was the obvious answer.

"drag something" was not a common interaction at the time, especially because there weren't any other products with touchscreens accurate enough for it (try to unlock a chinese %pad knockoff. they are 10x better than what existed in 2007). Remember, actually touching the screen was novelty.

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

#377

Post by DanBC »

nirvana wrote: post #334
DanBC wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone - 2007 Nintendo DS - 2004 You've shifted the goalposts from "touchscreen" to "touch screens only include things operated by fingers". The DS fits that requirement. Note that makers and sellers of touch screens don't make the distinction that you claim is obvious.

You're now claiming that Apple licensed the Nintendo DS OS and put it in the iPhone, which is so false I don't believe you believe it, and I suspect you've simply become confused about what the discussion is about. I never said there was never a screen you could get a reaction from by touching before the iPhone. Never said that at all. I said that to build the iPhone Apple couldn't just use off the shelf components,…

> I said that to build the iPhone Apple couldn't just use off the shelf components, they had to invent new ones.

They made refinements to existing technology.

> I never said there was never a screen you could get a reaction from by touching before the iPhone.

It's hard to know what you're saying - it keeps changing.

You said that "touch oriented OSs don't exist until Apple develops them" - (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435702)

People have shown many examples of touch oriented OSs developed independently of Apple, released before iPhone.

The screen existed before iPhone. The software to drive those screens existed before iPhone. Integrating that combination into an "OS" has existed before iPhone. And the idea of multi-touch surfaces was shown in a movie (where characters interacted with both big screens and small portable devices) before iPhone was released.

You may say that I have ignored the rest of your post that I quote above -

> 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.

Step away from the keyboard. Calm down. Maybe you'll realise that people don't feel the need to say "I agree with this bit" because they assume that they not talking to a rabid troll who'll accuse everyone of lying.

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

#378

Post by ChuckMcM »

kamaal wrote: post #368
ChuckMcM wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Well, if it was so obvious, why is Apple continually breaking new ground?" Herds. More specifically group thinking and risk aversion. I can't say I really admire Steve Jobs but what I completely believe was that Steve's willingness to say "my way or the highway" on very very risky decisions and directions is the entire source of Apples "innovation." This trial, and the documentation around the web about prior art, b…

I think the point most people like to make about Apple or any other company with regards to patents is a little different. Especially in case of Apple fans, most of them act like Ayn Rand fans. Though I agree that a whole lot of hard work is done to take things to the finishing line. And Apple is in fact a innovative company and deserves much credit for its success. The whole point is nothing today exists in isolatio…

Certainly Gizmodo thought they were influenced by Rams [1] but that connections seems a bit stretched at points. I don't think Apple is a slave to his style. Ive is a talented designer in his own right.

That said, its not the design per se that made Apple so successful, it was Steve Jobs giving irrevocable support to the concepts he wanted built. In any other company, like here on HN, you can make an unequivocal positive statement about something and someone else will come out to tell you how wrong you are. They can be quite persuasive and influential too, and cause you to doubt your statement and lose your commitment to it.

I've been bouncing around the periphery of Steve Jobs wake my entire career, from dealing with folks from NeXT, hiring the previous head of the Newton division, "rescuing" people from advanced development jobs, working with Apple on their NFS port, etc etc. And you hear a lot of 'Steve stories' from folks. But I have never ever heard a story where someone told him, "Steve, I don't think your idea will fly." And he responded with even an ounce of doubt. In contrast I've heard lots of stores where people people said that and Steve told them they were an idiot.

Its a rare level of fearlessness that I suspect you can really only achieve when there isn't anything anyone can do to hurt you.

You see folks like Mark Pincus pull $200M out of Zynga which nets out probably north of a $100M and even at a sub-inflation return of 1.2% is $100K/month (tax free if its from treasuries). When you've got that sort of back stop, even if everyone hates you that is ok, they can't really touch you. Then all you have to do is be like Elon and be willing to throw it all away on something you believe in and people will take you seriously.

[1] http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secr...

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

#379

Post by DanBC »

nirvana wrote: post #324
DanBC wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A poster previously in the thread has said that touch screens did not exist before Apple used them; then when presented with a bunch of touch screen devices has said that touch must only be fingers. But to address your point: multi touch OS iPhone - 2007 Minority Report - 2004 (design ideas, not working implementation)

>A poster previously in the thread has said that touch screens did not exist before Apple used them; This is a flat out lie. >said that touch must only be fingers. This is also a lie. >Minority Report - 2004 (design ideas, not working implementation) Completely different method, used cameras to sense hand positions in air, not physical screens. And even if minority report showed a PDA with a touch UI in it, it would…

Having read some of your (very many) posts (that were made after mine) it appears you're now saying that Apple does not just assemble existing parts to create iPhone - that innovation happened in software and hardware to existing stuff and that iPhone is not possible without that innovation. (I think this a fair paraphrase of the most important point you're making; please let me know if I've got it wrong, and realise that I made a mistake and that I'm not lying to distort facts).

If we limit conversation to the sentence fragment "assemble components like lego" then most people would agree that Apple does more than that. It's unfortunate that someone in this thread used that phrase; it's unfortunate that you wrote such a broad response.

So, now we discuss whether what Apple (and it doesn't need to be Apple, my view would be the same about other companies) did amounts to patentable innovation.

We're not going to agree on that bit. But for me that's fine. You think the money and research and work that Apple did, and the result, is a significantly different implementation and so is patentable. I think it's a refinement upon existing technology.

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

#380

Post by DanBC »

rayiner wrote: post #178
arrrg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the trial had a normal result given the legal framework. Sometimes trials like this might go a bit this or that way, but in general they will have results like this. My own position on this is very simple: All (yes, all) patents should be abolished. The current law is the problem, not Apple or Samsung or the Jury or the judge. I also think what Samsung did was – in part – morally reprehensible, but should hav…

For people who believe that patents should be abolished: how do you see an ARM-like company existing without patent protection? Or do you think there is no value in being able to transact in designs?

I ask for reform of the patent system, but I'm not sure how it should be reformed.

The existence of patent trolls is, surely, evidence that the system is horribly broken. Who is protected when a non-trading entity with no product is allowed to own patents and sue other companies for infringement?

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