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If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

arstechnica.com

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Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#131

Post by fpgeek »

eridius wrote: post #58
infiniteburp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Remember ... Apple "advocates" always said: apple invented the gui, apple invented mp3 players, apple makes the fastest PC, apple's not the "big brother" company, etc. etc. Every claim usually turns out false. The Rep for "reality distortion field" has firm basis in trugth. We can't always take Apple's claims at face value. This article just exposed, once again, another pro-Apple fallacy: that they own mini-tabl…

Apple "advocates" never said any of those things. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you actually did read this stuff, so let me just say, you need to learn how to recognize a straw man argument when you see it.

It is a very fine line, though.

Apple "advocates", including some in this very thread, do routinely dismiss as unimportant, sucky, etc. every pre-Apple contribution in some of these categories (especially smartphones and tablets). I generally think they're trying to emphasize the importance and originality of Apple's contribution, but I can see how someone else might interpret that as saying "Apple invented X".

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#132

Post by sbuk »

binarybits wrote: post #91
sbuk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As is Hacker News apparently. It's a trollbait article that say nothing of merit or value. Frankly I'd've said the same were it a story about Android being a rip off of iOS. You 'haters' of whatever denomination are just ridiculous and it's about time you all grow the fuck up.

Did you read the article or just the headline? You can disagree with my conclusions but I think patent policy is an important topic.

How arrogant. Yes I read your opinion piece. As I said, you have said nothing new. You have added nothing to the debate except for regurgitating the same old trite arguments to drive yet another pointless flame war over a topic that is of actual important. And the net result is merely more ill-informed opinion.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#133

Post by pyre »

pyre wrote: post #112
0x44 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did say I was making an analogy, not establishing a direct link between patents and copyright. Patents protect a specific method of implementing an idea, so Palm synthesizing a smart phone with a color LCD (controlled by a stylus) does not prevent Apple from protecting the synthesis of smart phone with a color LCD (controlled by fingertips). If there was no innovation in bringing multi-touch to smart phones, why wa…

> If there was no innovation in bringing multi-touch to > smart phones, why wasn't everyone doing it in 2007 when > the iPhone was first released? For starters, because Apple bought the company that invented multi-touch, therefore controlled the rights to the technology.

Further, Apple purchased them in April 2005, a little less than two years before they announced the iPhone (Jan 2007).

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#134

Post by greggman »

dedward wrote: post #114
jrockway wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HTC Dream didn't look anything like the iPhone either, but Jobs still says Android is a stolen product. So the question is, what did Android steal from Apple?

thats more a personal comment from Jobs...... Apple isnt charging anyone with theft. before thi ihone, no app store no multi touch, litte integration outside of the blackberry, and smartphones and phones in general sucked by comparison. how quickly we forget how crappy what we had before was. sure, previous products had lots f features............ but they didnt blowpeoples minds, or make their companies the most val…

There were app stores in Japanese phones from 1999.

We're not forgetting that they sucked. We're pointing out Apple didn't invent this stuff.

Touchscreens, had those for years. Multi-touch? Lots shown in the ARS article. Here's some http://tactiva.com/demo.html. Includes pinch to zoom, 2 finger rotate objects. Also includes tactile feedback, something no tablet has introed yet AFAIK.

Apps, had those too for years. Oh look, it's instructions from 2001 on how to write apps for phones http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Cupertino/1621/

App stores? Did you ever bother to look? There's been app stores since at least 2001. None of them were that popular but they did exist.

Oh look, my WinCE box boots into a grid of icons in 2001 http://blog.greggman.com/japan/ce/dsc03224.jpg

Maps, I had 3d first person maps on my 2004 feature phone, something still missing from any iPhones I know of. They had 2d maps in 2000

Games, Yep, last 5 phones I owned before my iPhone all had downloadable games. Here's me playing mappy I just purchased from an online app store in 2001 http://blog.greggman.com/blog/what_s_this_/

Cameras? Here's pictures from my 2001 cellphone camera http://blog.greggman.com/blog/pictures_from_cell_/

Facetime? Here's Facetime on a P2101V from 2001 http://blog.greggman.com/blog/more_cellphone_madness/

Front and back cameras? 2002 http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2002/11/15/my-new-p504is.html

Airtime, i.e. TV playback? 2003 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XWLG-6qPwo

Webpage browsing? Yep. Wrote my first blog post from a phone in 2001. Maybe Apple can claim full browsing first on iPhone though I suspect people have earlier examples. I could certainly view full pages through Opera Mini before iPhone.

Music? Several of the phones I owned has music stores built in and some phones advertised how awesome a movie player they were. Synced to PC and everything.

Want an iPad? How about the Sony Airboard, 2001. Wireless internet browsing touchscreen tablet http://www.sony.jp/airboard/indexpc.html

Did Apple take all those features and make them super awesome? YES.

The point is THEY TOOK EXISTING FEATURES. They didn't invent them. They just made them way better. Awesome. It's the little details they did well. It's the sum of the parts. It's pretty hard to pick any one thing for which there is no precedence. Cut and Paste? old. Zoom under pointer? Old. Slide to Unlock? Old. Email? Old. Pages of icons? old. They brought awesome style and design but even my old B/W WinCE machine linked above I didn't need or use any of the buttons except POWER and I could use my finger to control everything else.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#135

Post by ghshephard »

fpgeek wrote: post #115
ghshephard wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I owned three Palm Treos from 2002 - 2006, including the 600 and the 700p. I _lived_ on those phones for the better part of four years - and I recall waiting for each new release. So, as a Palm "Fanboy" I can say with certainty that those devices were not even in the same product category as the iPhone. Suggesting that they looked like iOS is farcical at best. I recall struggling for the better part of a week to purc…

I lived on the Treo 650 from the day the GSM version came out to when I got my G1 (about a month after it came out). Having used that Treo 650 and many other smartphones of that era (O2 XDA, Sony-Ericsson P900, Nokia Communicator, ...) I will absolutely, unequivocally, beyond the shadow of a doubt say that the iPhone was part of the same evolutionary tree. Did the iPhone do the things my Treo could do much, much bett…

fpgeek - I guess, insofar that a Human and a chimpanzee are in the same evolutionary tree, the Palm Treo and iPhone are in the same evolutionary tree - but, (perhaps stretching the analogy a little too far) - I would suggest that would put the Palm Treo 600/650/700p in the same species as Australopithecus Afarensis (Lucy) compared to the iPhone Homo Sapien - an absolute disconnect. Do you remember what the Browser was like on that 650?

I think most people would agree that the iPhone 4S is an evolutionary upgrade over the original iPhone. Indeed, many, many of the Enhanced Browser/No Keyboard/App Store Enabled/Touch Screen smartphones today are closely related to the iPhone in a manner that that iPhone is not related to the Palm Treo - that's all I'm trying to say - that Apple did something completely new with the iPhone, rather than just iterating on a previous design.

I will _never_ forget the day I used the iPhone of a friend (I was among those who thought the concept of Apple getting into the "Phone" business was ludicrous, and was determined not to get one) - and used that browser/map. Within 48 hours I had an iPhone, and never looked back on my dear Treo.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#136

Post by mnutt »

0x44 wrote: post #104
mnutt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't the useful arts strengthened by legal protection in exchange for continued disclosure of innovation No, they're not, at least not in software. Nobody reads software patents, for two reasons. First, the majority are either non-novel or written in a way that they are not useful to others. Second, by reading patents you increase the damages in a possible infringement suit since at that point you knowingly infring…

I'm afraid you misunderstood my point, as I never mentioned software patents at all. The iPhone is a synthesis of prior research that (in 2007) encompasses advances in both hardware and software. That is the synthesis that I think advances the useful arts, and it's beneficial to society for us to provide a legal framework to protect it.

But why is it a benefit to society to protect it?

I think what I said about software patents applies to hardware patents as well, if less so. There is this idea that patents are a compromise: I file a patent, and I get a temporary monopoly on the idea. In exchange, the world gets full disclosure of my idea.

The point I'm making is that the full disclosure is worse than useless. Nobody ever says I wonder how I should implement this? Let's go check some patent filings to see if someone else has figured it out...

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#137

Post by fpgeek »

ghshephard wrote: post #135
fpgeek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived on the Treo 650 from the day the GSM version came out to when I got my G1 (about a month after it came out). Having used that Treo 650 and many other smartphones of that era (O2 XDA, Sony-Ericsson P900, Nokia Communicator, ...) I will absolutely, unequivocally, beyond the shadow of a doubt say that the iPhone was part of the same evolutionary tree. Did the iPhone do the things my Treo could do much, much bett…

fpgeek - I guess, insofar that a Human and a chimpanzee are in the same evolutionary tree, the Palm Treo and iPhone are in the same evolutionary tree - but, (perhaps stretching the analogy a little too far) - I would suggest that would put the Palm Treo 600/650/700p in the same species as Australopithecus Afarensis (Lucy) compared to the iPhone Homo Sapien - an absolute disconnect. Do you remember what the Browser wa…

I think you've proven my point more than your own.

Just because a particularly successful combination of traits looks like a giant leap doesn't mean it is (consider things like Nobel Prize winners or Olympic medalists born to "ordinary" parents). Similarly, the relationship of the iPhone to its predecessor phones is tighter than you think. Almost all of the traits that made the iPhone what it is were present in the predecessor population of smartphones.

In particular, I'd say the iPhone is what you get if you cross two specific devices and add the mutation of capacitive multi-touch (and the inevitable march of Moore's Law, of course). Those two devices are:

1. the O2 XDA (full touch screen, no keyboard, "enhanced" browser with desktop-like ambitions [even if it was Pocket IE]) 2. the Danger Hiptop (consumer focused device with similar built-in apps, centralized app download catalog / store)

Those ancestors were chosen quite carefully, of course. The manufacturer of the O2 XDA was HTC. A bunch of ex-Danger people (most notably Andy Rubin) went on to start Android. A smartphone cross in the iPhone's immediate vicinity was going to happen regardless.

Re: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

#138

Post by [deleted] »

ghshephard wrote: post #135
fpgeek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived on the Treo 650 from the day the GSM version came out to when I got my G1 (about a month after it came out). Having used that Treo 650 and many other smartphones of that era (O2 XDA, Sony-Ericsson P900, Nokia Communicator, ...) I will absolutely, unequivocally, beyond the shadow of a doubt say that the iPhone was part of the same evolutionary tree. Did the iPhone do the things my Treo could do much, much bett…

fpgeek - I guess, insofar that a Human and a chimpanzee are in the same evolutionary tree, the Palm Treo and iPhone are in the same evolutionary tree - but, (perhaps stretching the analogy a little too far) - I would suggest that would put the Palm Treo 600/650/700p in the same species as Australopithecus Afarensis (Lucy) compared to the iPhone Homo Sapien - an absolute disconnect. Do you remember what the Browser wa…

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