If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by j45 » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 7:38 PM UTC

YooLi wrote: post #25

jrockway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Hi, just out of curiosity, did you own a smartphone from 96 to the early 2000's?

The Treo was the original smartphone. The orignal smart phone that Blackberry copied was the Treo.

Apple's spin was ditching the keyboard, but by then even the sony ericcson P800 had a full screen phone with a touch keyboard years before apple.

http://www.google.ca/search?&q=sony+ericcson+p800

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

#52

Post by JoelSutherland » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 7:38 PM UTC

0x44 wrote: post #46

angersock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The book written establishes a copyright, not a patent.

Bringing this back to technology with an example: Palm synthesized the smart phone and color LCD screen in ~2004. I'm pretty glad all smartphones have color screens today.

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

#53

Post by wvenable » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

nwjsmith wrote: post #20

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…

> That's blatantly false. Every smartphone I owned going back to 2003 resembled the iPhone. Which phones?

My first smartphone was a Sony Ericsson P800. Like the iPhone, it had no face buttons. It came with a stylus but the OS was much more finger friendly than many of the phones I used after. Then I "upgraded" to a few HTC phones running Windows Mobile that again were all touch screen.

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

#54

Post by mcantelon » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 7:43 PM UTC

zefhous wrote: post #9

> Jobs called Android a "stolen product," but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. This article is heartily missing the point. Android is basically a stolen product. It's a direct successor and competitor to the iPhone, and the direction of Android in it's current form has been and is extremely influenced by what Apple has been doing. Sure, the iPhone is a bunch of "stolen" technologies and id…

>Nobody was making products that resembled the iPhone before Apple, but now everyone is trying.

Palm was making touchscreen smartphones before iPhone.

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

#55

Post by wvenable » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 7:44 PM UTC

yannickt wrote: post #30

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…

"Apple's innovation was the capacitive multi-touch screen and finger-friendly interface." Which is exactly why it resembled none of the smartphones that preceded it. That innovation was a monumental game changer.

That's silly. There were more touch-screen smartphone models than non-touch screen models before the iPhone was released. If anything, Apple copied those designs and improved on them.

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

#56

Post by wvenable » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

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.

The first Windows Mobile phones were just WinMo PDAs with cellular radios in them. So while the iPaq isn't a phone it's the direct predecessor to many of them.

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

#57

Post by moylan » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 7:54 PM UTC

j45 wrote: post #51

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.

Hi, just out of curiosity, did you own a smartphone from 96 to the early 2000's? The Treo was the original smartphone. The orignal smart phone that Blackberry copied was the Treo. Apple's spin was ditching the keyboard, but by then even the sony ericcson P800 had a full screen phone with a touch keyboard years before apple. http://www.google.ca/search?&q=sony+ericcson+p800

i'd have said 1996 with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator

but it was a niche product that probably didn't appear in the u.s. much.

as a psion user i lusted after these devices. but price of mobile data put them out of my reach.

i used a psion 5 as my main computer till 99 when i wanted to start ripping cds for an mp3 player amongst other things.

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

#58

Post by eridius » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 8:05 PM UTC

infiniteburp wrote: post #18

zefhous wrote: post #9

> Jobs called Android a "stolen product," but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. This article is heartily missing the point. Android is basically a stolen product. It's a direct successor and competitor to the iPhone, and the direction of Android in it's current form has been and is extremely influenced by what Apple has been doing. Sure, the iPhone is a bunch of "stolen" technologies and id…

Well Remember ... Apple "advocates" always said: apple invented the gui, apple invented mp3 players, apple makes the fastest PC, apple's not the "big brother" company, etc. etc. Every claim usually turns out false. The Rep for "reality distortion field" has firm basis in trugth. We can't always take Apple's claims at face value. This article just exposed, once again, another pro-Apple fallacy: that they own mini-tabl…

Apple "advocates" never said any of those things. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you actually did read this stuff, so let me just say, you need to learn how to recognize a straw man argument when you see it.

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

#59

Post by ghshephard » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 8:06 PM UTC

JoelSutherland wrote: post #41

jrockway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I owned three Palm Treos from 2002 - 2006, including the 600 and the 700p. I _lived_ on those phones for the better part of four years - and I recall waiting for each new release.

So, as a Palm "Fanboy" I can say with certainty that those devices were not even in the same product category as the iPhone. Suggesting that they looked like iOS is farcical at best. I recall struggling for the better part of a week to purchase and install a "Yahtzee game" for the phone. Even after nine months on the 600, I _still_ was unable to reliably hit the proper key sequence to dial a number out of my phone book (the Cancel had the focus by default, so you would "select number, hit enter - and cancel out. Instead you had to "Select number, change focus, _then_ hit number to dial. They finally reversed it on the 700, screwing up 18 months+ of muscle memory that finally developed.

net-net - anybody who ever owned a Palm, and particularly those who used the browser, will state beyond a shadow of a doubt the iPhone and Palm had no relationship, evolutionary or otherwise, to each other.

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

#60

Post by mnutt » Thu, Feb 23, 2012, 8:09 PM UTC

0x44 wrote: post #46

angersock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

aren't the useful arts strengthened by legal protection in exchange for continued disclosure of innovation

No, they're not, at least not in software. Nobody reads software patents, for two reasons. First, the majority are either non-novel or written in a way that they are not useful to others. Second, by reading patents you increase the damages in a possible infringement suit since at that point you knowingly infringed.