Apple Never Invented Anything • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#211

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 04, 2012, 1:51 AM UTC

mdonahoe wrote: post #209

smartkids wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 per…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#212

Post by smartkids » Tue, Sep 04, 2012, 2:20 AM UTC

arn wrote: post #210

smartkids wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and you're not answering my questions.

what are we debating? i'm happy to debate.

here's my guess: we're debating whether mdonahue's statement "people like you are not a large market, unfortunately" is true.

however as i pointed out, we haven't agreed on what "people like me" means. we cannot debate this statement until we have agreed on a definition for that. then we have to consider what is meant by a "large market". what is a "large market"? then we have to decide whether this what is assrted in his statement, if true, is "unfortunate" or not. or maybe we can skip that since it seems like just a mdonahue opinion.

is this explanation still too vague for you? i'm not sure how much more specific i can get.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#213

Post by smartkids » Tue, Sep 04, 2012, 2:31 AM UTC

mdonahoe wrote: post #209

smartkids wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 per…

Making your Mom deal with permissions? Yikes.

I think reasoning, in addition to basic instructions, is important even though some people might not care about it. By leaving it out you deny those who do care an opportunity to learn.

And to me it just seems more respectable when someone asks you to do something and tells you why you are doing it then if they just give you bare instructions. (That said, the bare instructions should be able tostand on their own. They had better work, every time.)

Moreover, providing reasoning forces you to demonstrate you know the subject matter well enough to be able to explain it.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#214

Post by jmcqk6 » Tue, Sep 04, 2012, 2:52 AM UTC

mbell wrote: post #80

cromwellian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My point is the differential in mental approach. In a classical sense, science is an act of discovery, of learning and understanding that which already exists, that which is the fundamental nature of the universe. These are things done out of a quest for knowledge and understanding. The entire concept of a patent is foreign to such an approach. Invention on the other hand is a concept rooted in taking a knowledge bas…

Science and scholarship as a whole are creative processes, just like invention is.

>Invention on the other hand is a concept rooted in taking a knowledge base and using it to create something new.

Replace "invention" with "science" and this sentence remains true.

You're drawing a distinction that doesn't exist.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#215

Post by jmcqk6 » Tue, Sep 04, 2012, 2:53 AM UTC

podperson wrote: post #65

Peaker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Tell that to the companies that have patented genetic sequences.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#216

Post by sbuk » Tue, Sep 04, 2012, 6:57 AM UTC

fkdjs wrote: post #140

csmeder wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point he was making was: once you see a master chef make mayonnaise you realize the reason you failed. You tried too hard. And now you can make mayonnaise. Tablet makers (iPaq, MS, etc) tried too hard. Apple showed them don't try too hard. And now they can make tablets too. So yes, the excellent chef can be the first to make mayonnaise, however, with out patents on mayonnaise so can everyone else now. The…

And iOS has robbed Android blind (notifications). Anyone can come out tomorrow and write their own search engine. Like Bing. Hell, Bing has even been caught red handed copying. Yet still Google makes money. Anyone remember Google suing Microsoft over that? Nope. Maybe Apple needs to find a better business model whereby they can thrive and out-innovate before their competitors do so? That's what Google has to do, is A…

I suggest that you follow your own advice. Your post is laden with cognitive bias and fallacies, and is actually a little bit offensive. Here's the thing, no matter how much you whine that Samsung/Google were innovating by copying, you are wrong. It's plagiarism plane and simple. This does not foster "fair" competition. It is not innovation. It does not offer consumers reasonable choice, it just makes the plagiarisers rich off the back of doing little intellectual work. The irony of course is that copying is hard and copying well is extremely hard. It's easier to come up with your own solutions.

Now go off and explode in a sealed room. That much bile won't be a pleasant sight.

Re: Apple Never Invented Anything

#217

Post by fkdjs » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 6:44 AM UTC

sbuk wrote: post #216

fkdjs wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And iOS has robbed Android blind (notifications). Anyone can come out tomorrow and write their own search engine. Like Bing. Hell, Bing has even been caught red handed copying. Yet still Google makes money. Anyone remember Google suing Microsoft over that? Nope. Maybe Apple needs to find a better business model whereby they can thrive and out-innovate before their competitors do so? That's what Google has to do, is A…

I suggest that you follow your own advice. Your post is laden with cognitive bias and fallacies, and is actually a little bit offensive. Here's the thing, no matter how much you whine that Samsung/Google were innovating by copying, you are wrong. It's plagiarism plane and simple. This does not foster "fair" competition. It is not innovation. It does not offer consumers reasonable choice, it just makes the plagiariser…

And you talk as if iOS didn't copy from android(notifications). That's right, Apple stole Google's innovation. I believe you ignoring this elephant in the room is a logical fallacy.