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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

#41

Post by JoelSutherland »

jrockway wrote: post #21
wvenable wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody was making products that resembled the iPhone before Apple That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Smartphones of the day either resembled the iPhone or they resembled the blackberry but both designs were out there in number. After the iPhone was released almost everyone dropped their blackberry-like designs (except for RIM). Apple's innovation was the capaci…

Indeed. Remember the Palm Pilot? Those things eventually ended up quite advanced; I remember buying one in Japan in 2002 with a camera, keyboard, swiveling screen, and so on. The only difference was that it didn't have a 3G radio. Ah, here we are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sony-CLIE-PEG-NZ90.jpg The iPhone is a fine product. The ground it broke was making people want a PDA, not actually inventing the PDA.

Here is a 2002 Palm Treo Phone:

http://www.gsmarena.com/palm_treo_180-623.php

Palm OS looks a lot like iOS when you factor in the era's technology.

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

#42

Post by rbarooah »

Wasn't Steve Job's comment driven by his belief that Eric Schmidt used his insider knowledge of the iPhone project to inform the direction of the Android team?

It seems to me that he wasn't calling it stolen because it was a similar product - other comments of his indicate that he was was well aware that the technology would be cloned.

He was calling it stolen because he felt the time-to-market advantage had been stolen by an insider who breached his trust. I think this is what drove his animosity.

Android is obviously deeply influenced by the iPhone. The iPhone is obviously influenced by a whole load of other products (though not to quite the same extent).

What makes it 'stealing' is whether the influence was underhand or not.

We don't know whether Eric Schmidt did use inside information in breach of trust, but if he did then Jobs' position seems a lot more supportable.

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

#43

Post by jdq »

arjn wrote: post #37
YooLi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that looks nothing like the iPhone, while most smartphones now look a heck of a lot like an iPhone.

The iPhone looks a lot like the LG Prada mentioned in the article and it predates the iPhone.

You mean the non-smartphone that was announced a couple weeks before the iPhone? I forget, how was multitouch on it? And the web browser, was it any good?

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

#44

Post by iamdave »

YooLi wrote: post #34
jerhinesmith wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine didn't have "phone" capabilities, but the Compaq iPAQs resemble the iPhone. This is pretty close to the one I owned around 2002: http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2002/04/04/comparison_of_six_...

Looks nothing like the iPhone and shockingly wasn't even a phone.

I believe when people are saying the "looks like the iphone" they're referring to device where the primary input method is the screen, with less emphasis on physical buttons.

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

#45

Post by Apple-Guy »

discreteevent wrote: post #27

Bell Labs and Xerox Parc. I wonder what percentage of the contemporary computing experience wasn't invented in either of those places.

The problem is, Apple made the unfinished parc products usable, and invented drag and drop. Here from page 4 of an article:

http://obamapacman.com/2010/03/myth-copyright-theft-apple-st...

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

#46

Post by 0x44 »

angersock wrote: post #7
jbrennan wrote: post #4

I'm not sure anyone is arguing the iPhone invented all these individual technologies, and if anyone is claiming that, they shouldn't be as the evidence is overwhelming to the contrary. I think the real meat of the argument is "iPhone synthesized all those individual pieces into something coherent and incredible.". It's kind of like how the Macintosh and Lisa took the ideas from PARC, perfected them, and turned them i…

I mean, do we really want to support synthesis of other people's work as something that can be protected legally? Especially when most development nowadays is clicking cogs together anyways? This doesn't seem like a meme we should seek to perpetuate.

If the resulting synthesis is something new, why wouldn't we want to protect it legally? To make a literary analogy, any book written in an established genre necessarily synthesizes work that went before it… are these new works less worthy of legal protection because the ideas and tropes (and in the case of works synthesized from the Commons characters, setting, etc.) are things we've already seen? In the technology fields, it is common to base new innovation on that which came before. So long as the prior art is referenced in the claim for protection, aren't the useful arts strengthened by legal protection in exchange for continued disclosure of innovation, even in the case of innovations synthesized of prior development?

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

#47

Post by arjn »

Funny how the article mentions the LG Prada pre-dating the iPhone and then dismisses it. The software would of course be different but the LG Prada's physical design - full capacitive touchscree etc. - was public knowledge before the iPhone came out (and they also won a couple of awards for the design) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada

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

#48

Post by binarybits »

amartya916 wrote: post #2

By the way, a much better and more detailed commentary can be found here: http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html Bill Buxton is currently a Research Scientist at MSR and he more than knows what he's talking about.

I link to that page in my story. I tried to interview Buxton but Microsoft's PR people turned me down.

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

#49

Post by binarybits »

YooLi wrote: post #29

Poor article. Show multitouch before the iPhone, show "touchable" screens before the iPhone, conclude the iPhone was just a copy. Meanwhile all phones since the iPhone look a heck of a lot like it.

I'm pretty sure I didn't say "the iPhone was just a copy."
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