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Apple Never Invented Anything

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Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#151

Post by czr80 »

guelo wrote: post #143
richardw wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a 20 year monopoly. Many Android manufacturers are paying Microsoft for their patents. What prevents them from licensing Apple's patents? I don't care which phone I use, because they're (mostly) all pretty good now. But wow, I remember the Microsoft WM5 heap that I had just before my iPhone. It was a testament to terrible UI. It had more widgets than my old Palm5 but was somehow far less usable. Not some rub…

Apple hasn't offered to license their patents, they want to kill Android. BTW, I liked my WM5 phone.

Sigh. So much misinformation, so little time...

http://allthingsd.com/20120810/breaking-apple-offered-to-lic...

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#152

Post by aisenik »

guelo wrote: post #143
richardw wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a 20 year monopoly. Many Android manufacturers are paying Microsoft for their patents. What prevents them from licensing Apple's patents? I don't care which phone I use, because they're (mostly) all pretty good now. But wow, I remember the Microsoft WM5 heap that I had just before my iPhone. It was a testament to terrible UI. It had more widgets than my old Palm5 but was somehow far less usable. Not some rub…

Apple hasn't offered to license their patents, they want to kill Android. BTW, I liked my WM5 phone.

They offered to license them to Samsung.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#153

Post by czr80 »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #41
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 wholeheartedly agree that Apple's innovative in getting technology to actually work in a user friendly way and combining them with excellent design but is that process patent worthy is the real question at hand. For example, how different is the homescreen of the iPhone from this? http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI... Compared to that, Windows Phone with Metro is much more innovative. Anot…

Design is not how it looks, design is how it works. When you truly internalise that you'll see why that screenshot is irrelevant.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#154

Post by eckyptang »

lttlrck wrote: post #68
eckyptang wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did. It wasn't that special when you've had several devices like that Treo 600, O2 XDA 2, Psion 5MX etc beforehand and spent several years developing software for such devices.

My wife had it and I went back to an S60 device (Nokia E51).

The iPhone was just prettier and substantially less functional.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#155

Post by richardw »

guelo wrote: post #143
richardw wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a 20 year monopoly. Many Android manufacturers are paying Microsoft for their patents. What prevents them from licensing Apple's patents? I don't care which phone I use, because they're (mostly) all pretty good now. But wow, I remember the Microsoft WM5 heap that I had just before my iPhone. It was a testament to terrible UI. It had more widgets than my old Palm5 but was somehow far less usable. Not some rub…

Apple hasn't offered to license their patents, they want to kill Android. BTW, I liked my WM5 phone.

> BTW, I liked my WM5 phone.

Eep. Scrolling was through the tiny scrollbar on the right, and I'm left-handed to make it even more irritating to use. Closing a window with your finger required a fingernail in the corner (or stylus, add 2 seconds). It insisted on stuffing a Start Menu in there, with careful clickery required to not make mistakes. And a Windows Explorer, with tiny expand-contract [+] thingies. I forget most of the horror.

For others who forget, these were examples of the best apps at the time. Behold the menu bar for some apps, the scroll bar, tree menus (and tree folders, requiring stylii or fingernails), [x]-to-close, the button on the bottom that says "Up". You can see the iPhone was out, and some apps were already influenced by it.

http://www.honeytechblog.com/30-best-windows-mobile-applicat...

My hardware had a slide-out keyboard. Sometimes the flip didn't flip, though, so you'd open and close it multiple times until it woke up. The phone was capable of connecting to the web, but that just generally brought misery. It could do video calls, which was theoretically pretty cool. We tried that once.

Version 5, that was. I think I'm going to put it in a fire, right now.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#156

Post by eckyptang »

gnaffle wrote: post #64
eckyptang wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 advan…

Apple didn't innovate stuff - they bought it in and stuck it together.

I would be happy with anything, but not necessarily impressed with it. A paradigm shift would be innovation but there isn't one.

I'm using a Windows Mobile 6.5 kernel based device to write this on ironically (WP7.5 Lumia 710).

Sony's ability was to take poor grade American products and package them up with Japanese reliability and quality. I'm considering their television range from the 1970-2000ish primarily. The rest of their "innovations" were turd polish over existing products: Stereobelt, 5.25" floppy disks, Panasonic U-Matic, Mitsubishi ProDigi, Canon Ion Disks...

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#157

Post by eckyptang »

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.…

Einstein didn't invent relativity - it was already there. That's why people in the scientific community rarely get miffed at people. They're not innovating or inventing - they are discovering.

There need be no software patents on the basis that software takes time to reproduce and that is your guarantee. The implementation is where the cost is. If the idea is obvious and trivial (like pinch gestures), then you probably don't deserve a head start.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#158

Post by eco »

aisenik wrote: post #152
guelo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple hasn't offered to license their patents, they want to kill Android. BTW, I liked my WM5 phone.

They offered to license them to Samsung.

For an unreasonable amount ($30-$40 per device). Looks good when they can say, "But we offered to license to them!" before they file the lawsuit.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#159

Post by eckyptang »

001sky wrote: post #52
eckyptang wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to argue with your counter example, but another example re; integration. The Richochet from the 1990s was a 28.8 version of a 3/4G usb modem. But that's not a tethered iPhone, in terms of is overall ambition and functionality. Similarly, the acorn with 8MB RAM, was not an integrated multi-media device (ipod, phone, etc), limited as it was. Let us not forget the power of the sw (youtube app, for example).[1] Lastl…

Actually the connectivity problem was 100% unsolved which is what lead to the end of the device. The supporting technology wasn't available unfortunately.

The basic idea of the NewsPAD was exactly the same though.

They decided to move into the cable/STB market after this as they could deliver the same experience with the connectivity that was already there. They did this successfully for a few years in the late 90's before they marketed themselves into a hole and gave up.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#160

Post by marbletiles »

w1ntermute wrote: post #28
potatolicious wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UI and UX are innovations. 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. "Fit and finish" is as innovative as a new algorithm, it's shocking how much of the industry still treats it as a footnote and a detail, despite the entire history of the tech world since iPhone 1 would indicate.

> 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…

Crumbs, if only Dell and Microsoft had been interested in being profitable, just think!
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