Apple Never Invented Anything • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#201

Post by Thrymr » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 3:56 PM UTC

eckyptang wrote: post #157

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 probab…

People in the scientific community often "get miffed at people." They rarely sue anyone for it, however.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#202

Post by Uchikoma » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 4:00 PM UTC

pooriaazimi wrote: post #165

Uchikoma wrote: post #161

Got to love HN, if someone copies a startup pixel by pixel and business modell, hulla, the lynch mob readies it's pitchforks. If someone copies a freelancers design, website or logo, woha, people run amok. If someone copies Apples UI, hardware, apps and app market it's "Apple Never Invented Anything."

Did you even read the article?!

My comment was about the HN comments not the article. Did you even read my comment?!

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#203

Post by cromwellian » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 4:40 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #67

Peaker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

RSA encryption is pure number theory math and it was patented.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#204

Post by podperson » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 4:52 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #186

podperson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're arguing against a straw man. The idea of pinch to zoom isn't patented, it's specific tricks to the implementation, which the patent explains, that are patented.

I'm a computer graphics student with a little linear algebra background. How you would implement pinch to zoom was immediately obvious to me after seeing it.

Funny then that rival implementations turn out to miss nuances Apple dealt with in its 1.0 implementation.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/30/3279628/apple-pinch-to-zoo...

I've implemented pinch-to-zoom in a bunch of different contexts, and I agree that it's easy to do a half-assed version. AFAIK that's not what Apple patented, and you're free to implement half-assed pinch-to-zoom to your heart's content (although you may be infringing an earlier patent).

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#205

Post by pooriaazimi » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 5:52 PM UTC

pja wrote: post #198

Someone wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you know the price Apple asked is unreasonable. How exactly? I cannot find logic that $30 is reasonable, but I cannot find logic that shows $30 is unreasonable, either. Here is some food for thought: iSuppli claims the iPhone 4S contains $188 of materials ( http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone-4S-Carrie... ). That "$188 BOM" 16GB phone sells for $649 on the Apple Store. Part of the price difference…

My point was that the parent had no idea whether Apple's purported price was negotiable or not. Whether $30 is a reasonable price for use of the UI elements that Apple claimed ownership of is a completely different question.

You're absolutely right. I should've posted it as a possibility.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#206

Post by smartkids » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 6:49 PM UTC

demallien wrote: post #173

smartkids wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anecdotal evidence indeed. that's precisely the point. there is no empirical evidence behind the vast majority of comments like these. conclusions without evidence or any indication of the methods used to arrive at them. linux? are you kidding? this is exactly what i was referring to: assumptions. how did you conclude by booting an os i meant linux? a true apple fanboy. thanks for sharing.

Actually that's not anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence looks like this: "It has been my experience that XXX" The parent has made a different formulation, specifically: "Every person belonging to group Y has had experience XXX" This difference is significant, because the argument is basically stating that it is not only the experience of the person making the argument, but that the person making the argument is ex…

"this claim"

what claim? can you be specific?

the original comment referred to a market for "people like [me]" being "not large". my response was that i have not seen any evidence to support that sort of claim. but i'm not even sure i know what he meant by "people like [me]". i had to assume i knew. the problem with assumptions is they can be wrong.

and i'm not sure understand the reference to "techy people". i never mentioned such a group. i mentioned "people like the [commenter's] mom". presumably (another assumption), she's not a "techy person", whatever that is. but maybe i'm not a "techy person" either. what is the definition of "techy person" anyway? would the definition differ based on the person defining it? maybe i see no distinction between "techy" and "not techy". maybe i only see differences in how much a given person understands about what computers can do, and how to make computers do those things.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#207

Post by smartkids » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #192

smartkids wrote: post #75

The iPaq was/is a fantastic device. You could attach peripherals. Try doing that with an iPad. I could put an entire OS on a CF Card and assuming I could boot from the card, the expanded functionality is limited only by the hardware specs. They are durable. I've seen consumer electronics businesses still using them to track inventory. I wish HP would revive the iPaq. My only imagined use for an iPad is as a portable…

There's this wonderful thing called Bluetooth. Better than connecting your iPaq to via cables, you can use a BT keyboard with an iPad.

If Bluetooth isn't working for some reason, then cables would not work either, so it makes sense to remove the option to use them.

Bluetooth always works flawlessly, unlike cables.

It's also proprietary and far more secure than cables.

It's a good thing that Apple iPad can't use cables.

In fact any device that is smaller than iPad and can accept both cables _and_ Bluetooth is less useful and just plain bad.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#208

Post by recoiledsnake » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 9:27 PM UTC

czr80 wrote: post #153

recoiledsnake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Design is both how it looks and how it works. If you take the Desktop WIMP UI, and try to come up with a way to redesign it work with only touch instead of mouse and keyboard, you'd roughly be already halfway to the iOS homescreen in terms of design. Instead of clicking on a icon, you touch it and the app opens, swipe to see multiple homescreens since desktop space is limited on a phone, add in a dock at the bottom. Contrast that with Metro. So that screenshot is NOT irrelevant.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#209

Post by mdonahoe » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 10:17 PM UTC

smartkids wrote: post #98

mdonahoe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like you are not a large market, unfortunately. > There's nothing the iPad can do that my open, unlocked hardware cannot do. Your open, unlocked hardware, cannot survive two days with my mother.

I understand the comment. Of course the thought has crossed my mind. But I'm not so sure there's any evidence to support it. I actually test some of my ideas with people like your mother, and surprisingly (why should I be surprised?) they have little trouble catching on. What's really amusing is that these things that I have them doing are things that many nerds cannot themsleves do. I've got them using systems and t…

Did they fully understand the reasoning behind the techniques you taught, or was it just memorization?

I have taught my mom how to do certain things, but she has no intuition. As soon as something is slightly wrong or different, she gets stuck and can't move on. The solution is always something simple, like relaunching the app, installing an update, power cycling the computer, jiggling the usb cord, modifying the permissions on a file... but there are only so many contingency plans I can teach her.

Maybe I just suck at teaching, but I think that technical people have an incredibly curiosity and comfort with troubleshooting that people like my mom don't. We are basically playing on our computers.

With the iPad, my mom is finally playing too. She is really adept at it. Sending photos, checking facebook, downloading new apps, she was never comfortable doing any of this on the computer. Too many choices and settings and things to potentially screw up that she would be paralyzed, unable to explore and try things.

Ultimately I think the home button is the most important thing in the iOS ecosystem. If all else fails, go home and everything will be fine*.

(Unless your battery dies, or there is lint in the charging port, or your screen shatters, or you muted it, or you turned on airplane mode... it's not perfect...)

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#210

Post by arn » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 10:40 PM UTC

smartkids wrote: post #147

arn wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's precisely the point. there is no empirical evidence behind the vast majority of comments like these. Are you being purposefully vague? No empirical evidence of what ? I'll counter that there is overwhelming evidence, but I'll share specifics once I know what your claim is. :)

no empirical evidence to support the original statement he made: "the market for people like [me] is not very large" for one, what does "people like me" mean? people who can make use of non-apple hardware? what sort of uses? i don't know what he meant. i could take a guess. but then i would be making an _assumption_. and i might be dead wrong. and that's what you did in your comment. you made some assumptions. what w…

You are still being excessively vague -- for reasons which I presume you don't actually wish to debate this topic.