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Apple Never Invented Anything

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Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#61

Post by 001sky »

_delirium wrote: post #47
potatolicious wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "take other people's innovations and monetize them by polishing things up" The devil is in the polishing up, evidently. Your post is almost scarily indicative of the industry attitude that has allowed Apple to take over to the degree they have. Only hard, technical inventions are given any respect, and when we talk about UX we call it "polishing up", almost spitting those words out of our mouths in condescension. A…

I do think what Apple does is important, but I don't think profits are really distributed in proportion to contribution, because the final product is an accumulation of work done by different people and companies, but there's no real accounting mechanism to distribute the profits accordingly (patents are a largely failed attempt at one). The best place to be in business for profitability is to do that last 10-20% tha…

The last 20% of the work takes 80% of the Effort

--The 80/20 rule [Old saying]

Monetization does seem to be maximized at a bottleneck or stumbling block. Like bridge tolls. Or that final thing that makes the whole worth more than the sum of its parts. Apple does seem to do both.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#62

Post by lttlrck »

gnaffle wrote: post #39
w1ntermute wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten everyone's lunch up till now. No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable, not innovative. The GP is correct in stating that Apple isn't innovative - they just take other people's innovations and monetize them by…

So other companies are more interested in being innovative than profitable and have decided to not spend as much as Apple on marketing (and polish), and that's the reason why Apple is succeeding?

quite...

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#63

Post by podperson »

cromwellian wrote: post #42

One interesting point is he brought up Einstein's invention of relativity. Notice that in the scientific community, humanity has been building upon previous work for centuries with no copyright or patent protection, and nothing more than honor, citation, and shame against plagiarists. The fundamental defense made by many is that without patent protection for software, people would not put much effort into innovating.…

> But 20? It's absurd.

If pinch and zoom is such a trivial thing then invent some other thing to use instead.

The patent system by-and-large doesn't pick and choose patent durations based on the kind of patent.

Theoretical physics and patentable technology are quite different things and the comparison is not helpful. Before patents we had a guild system where people who made almost anything -- pottery, telescopes, pots and pans -- would obfuscate their techniques and if possible their products. Knowledge of key manufacturing processes was a trade secret. This is the world that we'd be in without patent protections.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#64

Post by gnaffle »

eckyptang wrote: post #40
gnaffle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess with your insight Apple could have saved lots of money by not buying FingerWorks, PA Semi etc and just launching a Newton with a color display and make it look pretty. Right? If you don't see any software innovations in iOS, you're either blinded by Apple hate or unable to see further than checkboxes on feature lists.

I don't see how you managed to draw that conclusion. I didn't mention anything about money etc. I see it more like...well: Sony have been doing this sort of shit for years. Someone invents something, Sony adds turd polish and a decent supply chain and manufacturing capacity, then takes the market share. Apple just got better at it than Sony. There is no more story. For ref, I neither hate nor like iOS devices - I've…

You said: "Apple has invented or innovated precisely bugger all there.". I was simply trying to see how unreasonable such a statement is considering the companies that Apple bought and the work those companies had done in getting stuff like multi-touch to work right.

If all Apple did was turd polishing, then they could have saved themselves a lot of effort by polishing a turd called Newton (which was also quite advanced for its time) instead of inventing an entirely new user interface.

What I was saying is that listing stuff like you did: "ARM CPU, Touch screen, Contextual media app, "Apps" button down the bottom, self contained apps" and using that as an argument to why iOS has been done before, is to be unable to see further than a check list of features.

Lots of tablets had the same checklist before the iPad, and most of them were completely unusable.

I suspect that you would be just as happy with a WM6 or Symbian device than with an iOS device, since there were no innovations in iOS?

I also don't see how this relates to Sony. They had a lot of innovations, including the Walkman, co-creating the CD, 3.5" diskettes, Video 8, DAT, MiniDisc and lots of other stuff.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#65

Post by podperson »

Peaker wrote: post #58
mbell wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One interesting point is he brought up Einstein's invention of relativity. He didn't invent, he discovered. I'm not just being pedantic, I think the approaches signified by these two words goes to the root of the differences your describing.

I believe patents apply to discoveries in the same way as inventions.

"You can patent pretty much anything under the sun that is made by man except laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas. These categories are excluded subject matter from the scope of patents."

You believe incorrectly.

http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-cant-be-p...

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#66

Post by cromwellian »

mbell wrote: post #56
cromwellian wrote: post #42

One interesting point is he brought up Einstein's invention of relativity. Notice that in the scientific community, humanity has been building upon previous work for centuries with no copyright or patent protection, and nothing more than honor, citation, and shame against plagiarists. The fundamental defense made by many is that without patent protection for software, people would not put much effort into innovating.…

> One interesting point is he brought up Einstein's invention of relativity. He didn't invent, he discovered. I'm not just being pedantic, I think the approaches signified by these two words goes to the root of the differences your describing.

Do you invent, or do you merely discover an optimum in solution space? This is really just semantics that changes nothing, regardless of what you want to call it, there is a history of people spending decades of effort to describe new math, new models, new mechanisms, all prior to patent protection.

That reforming copyright and patent laws will reduce innovation is unproven scaremongering. There are other industries that don't litigate like this, but none the less experience a wide diversity of innovation. With the exception of Nathan Myhrvold, most innovations in field of cooking have not been patented. You don't go to a restaurant and get a patented entree, the chef cooks up new and original recipes by copying and tweaking recipes of those that came before.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#67

Post by lutusp »

Peaker wrote: post #58
mbell wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One interesting point is he brought up Einstein's invention of relativity. He didn't invent, he discovered. I'm not just being pedantic, I think the approaches signified by these two words goes to the root of the differences your describing.

I believe patents apply to discoveries in the same way as inventions.

No. One can discover mathematics, but mathematics cannot be patented. One can discover an ancient civilization ... and so forth. There are many more examples, and they're not patentable.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#68

Post by lttlrck »

eckyptang wrote: post #40
gnaffle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess with your insight Apple could have saved lots of money by not buying FingerWorks, PA Semi etc and just launching a Newton with a color display and make it look pretty. Right? If you don't see any software innovations in iOS, you're either blinded by Apple hate or unable to see further than checkboxes on feature lists.

I don't see how you managed to draw that conclusion. I didn't mention anything about money etc. I see it more like...well: Sony have been doing this sort of shit for years. Someone invents something, Sony adds turd polish and a decent supply chain and manufacturing capacity, then takes the market share. Apple just got better at it than Sony. There is no more story. For ref, I neither hate nor like iOS devices - I've…

"ok but nothing special"? You clearly didn't own a 1st gen iPhone... It's oh so easy to say that now with the current market.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#69

Post by arrrg »

zizee wrote: post #45
arrrg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the first two paragraphs you seem to say that they innovate while you deny that in the last paragraph. Perfecting fit and finish is quite obviously innovation.

Perfecting fit and finish is quite obviously innovation. But is it patentable?

That’s a simple question for me. I think all patents should be abolished.
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