Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Tim Cook memo: line by line

jacquesmattheij.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 309 posts

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#291

Post by erichocean »

timmyd wrote: post #54
danmaz74 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about the US. The patent was never granted in the first place here in the EU. So yes, I can state that it WAS obvious - at least in Europe.

And as a result Europe produces the Samwer brothers - who just copy everything from the United States and open it in Europe. I'm not arguing that patent law is perfect (per my first post) but rather that it does have a function and the original article conveys the view its entirely pointless. EU patent law has its problems as well and its a long post to discuss it - but without any protection you just get outright co…

And as a result Europe produces the Samwer brothers

Thanks for the pointer, I'd never heard of these guys. Pretty amazing...

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#292

Post by nemesisj »

wpietri wrote: post #131
buster wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you misread my comment. I was criticizing the comparison of feature phones with the iPhone not comparing iPhones with smartphones. It's a big difference. If the iPhone would have been the first smartphone you could probably call it revolutionary. But you can't. Evolution ok, Better as the competition at the time of release ok. I'll grant you that already. Still a big difference. The first iPhone didn't even s…

Yep. I was using a Palm Treo smartphone four years before the iPhone came out. A solid phone, the Internet in my pocket, email on the go, and plenty of apps. The Palm app market went back to 1997, when the PalmPilot first came out. So as far as features and utility went, the iPhone looked kinda weak to me at launch. I think the iPhone's main novelty in the market was that Apple invested heavily in consumer-friendly d…

This is a joke, right? Having used three different models of the Palm Treo and the Wince Treo, I can assure you I was desperate to use the iPhone because it just worked. Sure the Treo exceeded the original iphone on many different features, but none of them worked. The software was awful, it crashed all the time, you couldn't receive calls b/c the software would crash, none of the apps worked well, and the internet was completely unusable. It was a total nightmare.

Yes the iphone was shiny and beautiful, but it also worked! This "treo was awesome" straw man floats around alot until I actually ask them about it and then the whitewashed memories come flooding back and people step back and say, you're right, it was awful.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#293

Post by gnaffle »

powertower wrote: post #252
tayl0r wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those prior things you speak of were absolutely terrible. I had all those devices and they sucked compared to the iPhone. I think that those "innovations" seem simple now in hindsight, but why didn't any of the companies previously making smart phones or PDAs (Palm, Windows CE, HP, Compaq, Dell, etc) come up with something that not only the hardcore nerds would actually want to use? I really don't think it was just m…

> Those prior things you speak of were absolutely terrible. I had all those devices and they sucked compared to the iPhone. One of the reasons they sucked, was because they had to... They were done 2, 5, 10, 20 years before the iPhone, iPad, etc came out... When we had CPUs, screens, drives, etc, that were inferior and could not handle the same load or work that modern hardware does.

No, they didn't have to. The CPU speeds, storage and screens existed years before the iPhone launched. The iPhone did have a capacitive touch screen, but that wasn't exactly new, bleeding edge technology.

Three years earlier in 2005, the N770 had a bigger higher DPI screen than the iPhone, HTC had phones with the same CPU speed.

But none of those devices had software specially made for finger touch with a capacitive screen. They didn't suck because the technology didn't exist, they sucked because other companies didn't see further ahead than the existing, navigation button / stylus driven interfaces that had existed for 10 years prior.

If you need further proof, just look at the time it has taken Nokia, RIM and others to respond to the iPhone. It took _years_. If technology was the limiting factor, you'd think they would be just as aware of technological developments as Apple was, and have similar devices to the iPhone lined up and ready to go by 2007?

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#294

Post by ericd »

nl wrote: post #227
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way, the consumer loses, and for what? Innovation certainly isn't any better off. You have no way of knowing whether this is true. Patents could come with a host of disadvantages and drags on innovation and still be a net positive for innovation. There's just no way to know without a control group. As long as we're throwing out opinions, I find it very hard to believe that the patent system, broken though it i…

I find it very hard to believe that the patent system, broken though it is, is anything other than a HUGE net positive for innovation. I'm talking about the patent system across all industries, but I suspect the same would be true for the tech industry specifically. The Economist (hardly a bastion of the free software movement) quoted a 2008 study showing: A study in 2008 found that American public companies' total p…

That seems intuitively wrong. $4 billion across all public companies? Apple makes more than 10 times that on its patented inventions yearly...

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#295

Post by Joeri »

ericd wrote: post #294
nl wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very hard to believe that the patent system, broken though it is, is anything other than a HUGE net positive for innovation. I'm talking about the patent system across all industries, but I suspect the same would be true for the tech industry specifically. The Economist (hardly a bastion of the free software movement) quoted a 2008 study showing: A study in 2008 found that American public companies' total p…

That seems intuitively wrong. $4 billion across all public companies? Apple makes more than 10 times that on its patented inventions yearly...

But how much of that revenue would they miss out on without patents, taking crosslicensing out of the picture? I suspect very little. People buy iphones for the whole product's look and feel, not for any specific feature.

It's a myth that software must be protected through patents. Copyright and trade dress law is sufficient.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#296

Post by Joeri »

timmyd wrote: post #17

Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. "These are not patents on innovation, they’re patents on simple ideas and features that you didn’t even think of first but you were the first to patent." Then the magical aspect of patent law called "prior art" would com…

> then someone simply copies everything you have done

Copyright law prevents direct copying. If someone wanted to make an iphone clone without building on google's effort, they would have to spend hundreds of millions on software deelopment. There is no "simply" when it comes to copying technologies, unless the technology is truly trivial.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#297

Post by magoon »

beedogs wrote: post #80
timmyd wrote: post #17

Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. "These are not patents on innovation, they’re patents on simple ideas and features that you didn’t even think of first but you were the first to patent." Then the magical aspect of patent law called "prior art" would com…

> Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. What? No, we weren't. I had a Cingular 8125 (HTC Wizard) a year and a half before the iPhone was introduced and it was perfectly fine. Apple just added shiny icons and took away the keyboard and stylus. BFD.

You don't really believe the HTC Wizard was "perfectly fine" do you?

I went through so many Windows Mobile phones until I finally realized that the joke was on me. The user experience, the battery life, the apps, the bugs, the limitations imposed on operating system data and indeces, and the hardware were all horrific. I can't extract anything good from that experience, let alone say that any of those devices were "perfectly fine."

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#298

Post by hahainternet »

nemesisj wrote: post #292
wpietri wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I was using a Palm Treo smartphone four years before the iPhone came out. A solid phone, the Internet in my pocket, email on the go, and plenty of apps. The Palm app market went back to 1997, when the PalmPilot first came out. So as far as features and utility went, the iPhone looked kinda weak to me at launch. I think the iPhone's main novelty in the market was that Apple invested heavily in consumer-friendly d…

This is a joke, right? Having used three different models of the Palm Treo and the Wince Treo, I can assure you I was desperate to use the iPhone because it just worked. Sure the Treo exceeded the original iphone on many different features, but none of them worked. The software was awful, it crashed all the time, you couldn't receive calls b/c the software would crash, none of the apps worked well, and the internet w…

I like how you started this reply with a question and ended it with a statement. You've decided you know better than all other Treo owners and so now you can speak over them and overrule their decisions.

No.

This is not how civil discourse works, and for the record I owned Windows Mobile phones before the iPhone and while they were not as good as the iPhone or the HTC Dream or many competitors, they had rounded corners, a bezel, a rough multitasking framework, apps etc.

They were in every way a proto-iPhone, and the idea that the iPhone did anything but promote smartphones to the average person is hilarious.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#299

Post by hahainternet »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #274
stanleydrew wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it was not "perfectly fine." Otherwise they would have sold a hundred million of them. This is a lot like saying to a friend who sees $100 on the ground that it can't really be $100, otherwise someone would have picked it up already. Apple is a marketing powerhouse. They are brilliant at it. They hook you emotionally. They convince you that they created some device specifically for you. They really make you bel…

This is a lot like saying to a friend who sees $100 on the ground that it can't really be $100, otherwise someone would have picked it up already. (Shrug) A $100 bill lying on the ground will be picked up very quickly, by the original owner if no one else. That means that if you see $100 on the ground, chances are that it's not real. It might be a $1 or $10 bill that you've mistaken at first for $100. It might be cou…

> The chances that someone has actually misplaced a $100 bill in public, and that you are the first to come upon it, are very low indeed.

It's impressive how you try and own the very fallacy you're using. It doesn't change the result but gives the superficial impression that you've addressed the criticism.

> The fact is that there are plenty of tech companies who spend more on marketing than Apple does, and who often have better ads, as well. Each of those companies has something in common: they sell less stuff than Apple does. Therefore, your dismissal of Apple as a "marketing" company, while not necessarily wrong, must be incomplete.

Citation needed. Apple advertise their products on UK TV to a much higher rate than any other smartphone. I've only ever seen brief SGS3 and N7 adverts, I see an iPad or iPhone advert every other break.

Stop making assertions and demanding they're right. You are not.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#300

Post by hahainternet »

nirvana wrote: post #172
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't hear you. Look at the recurring pattern in this thread and elsewhere. Apple fanatic: Apple deserves a 20 year government enforced monopoly because they did it first. Everyone else stole it, and are thieves, who deserve to pay. Member of the reality-based consensus: small portable computers existed before the iPad/iPhone and every individual part that you could name (or patent) had been done before by other…

Yeah! There's nothing new in the iPhone, that Bell didn't demonstrate over a century ago! The reality is, you guys are ideologically driven- you want to get google off the hook for stealing Apples inventions, so you pretend like the patents cover features rather than implementations. Your dishonesty is shameful.

> The reality is, you guys are ideologically driven- you want to get google off the hook for stealing Apples inventions, so you pretend like the patents cover features rather than implementations.

This is Samsung vs Apple. Not Google vs Apple. Don't be so arrogant and blind.

> Your dishonesty is shameful.

Pull down notifications. Begin backpedalling.

Post reply on HN