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A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

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Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#81

Post by slantyyz »

mbell wrote: post #70
Nicole060 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was so obvious then why did it take a company that had NO history in making cell phones to make a good one with a usable touchscreen and gestures ? Nokia couldn't do it. RIM couldn't do it. Samsung couldn't do it. LG couldn't do it. (LG did make a touchscreen, and I owned one before I bought an iPhone, and it sucked hardcore) And they were on that market way before Apple. Cry me a river if it hurts your feeling…

At the time the iphone was released I had one of the early HTC touch screen + slide out keyboard phones (Tytn or something like that). I recall laughing about the first iphones. Terrible e-mail support, no MMS, my year old phone had twice the capabilities. I couldn't understand why anyone would want such an expensive phone that was so functionally handicapped. What I didn't understand at the time was that the phone w…

>> The iphone wasn't so much a matter of technological inovation as it was one of market building

I disagree. I think the iPhone was the first smartphone that worked. The killer app on the phone was that it was the first phone to have a modern mobile browser.

It was not a browser that "didn't suck", it was a damned good browser. I had an Eee at the time, and I would pick the tiny-by-comparison screen of the iPhone's browser over the Eee any day. Why? Because the smart tap-to-zoom really used the screen real estate effectively. On the Eee, I'd have to use both horizontal and vertical scrolling to read some content.

No mobile browser before the iPhone's version of Safari even came remotely close.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#82

Post by voyou »

Nicole060 wrote: post #58
mattmcknight wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are basically saying the iPhone was of higher quality- things worked better. This is true, but you can't patent quality.

Are you saying there is nothing to patent about the implementation of gestures on your touchscreen, as opposed to hitting widgets like scrollbars ? You couldn't be more wrong. And people who cite things like the people who did multitouch with an array of cameras obviously don't understand patents. Patents are not about an idea but an implementation. The earlier multitouch stuff had nothing to do with the multitouch o…

"Are you saying there is nothing to patent about the implementation of gestures on your touchscreen, as opposed to hitting widgets like scrollbar?"

Aren't touchscreen gestures just mouse gestures where a touchscreen replaces the mouse? That seems like an obvious amalgamation of two pieces of prior art.

EDIT: That doesn't mean that particular aspects of the implementation of touch gestures on iOS aren't patentable, but AFAIK that hasn't been what Apple has been suing on the basis of.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#83

Post by gnaffle »

bornhuetter wrote: post #63
Nicole060 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was so obvious then why did it take a company that had NO history in making cell phones to make a good one with a usable touchscreen and gestures ? Nokia couldn't do it. RIM couldn't do it. Samsung couldn't do it. LG couldn't do it. (LG did make a touchscreen, and I owned one before I bought an iPhone, and it sucked hardcore) And they were on that market way before Apple. Cry me a river if it hurts your feeling…

The market was waiting for capacitive touchscreens to become viable. You can't use multitouch properly on resistive screens (or non-touchscreen devices). Apple pounced as soon as capacitive screens became viable - albeit extremely expensive at the time. The first iPhone was "ahead of its time" in the sense that the market wasn't really ready for it. The first iPhone was an expensive PoS - it wasn't until the app stor…

If the market was just waiting for capacitive touchscreens to become available, why did it take all the others years to come up with anything competitive after the iPhone launched?

Why didn't they all have capacitive iPhone look-alikes ready in the lab then?

Isn't it more reasonable to assume that the mobile market would have stayed roughly as it had the previous 10 years, with incremental improvements in screens, displays etc?

Apple isn't credited with the first capacitive touchscreen phone, but I think they should be credited with making the first usable, mass market touchscreen smartphone.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#84

Post by slantyyz »

nickbarnwell wrote: post #78
slantyyz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about that switch is that in 2007, I thought it was the best invention in the world. It was a pain muting my Windows phones because you had to fiddle around with the UI to change the profile to silence the ringer.

That switch was on every single Treo device from the 270 onwards, and numerous feature phones had a hardware mute switch as well.

Not saying that Apple invented that feature for all phones, but if you were coming from Windows Phone, it was a giant godsend.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#85

Post by lotharbot »

Nicole060 wrote: post #74
bornhuetter wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market was waiting for capacitive touchscreens to become viable. You can't use multitouch properly on resistive screens (or non-touchscreen devices). Apple pounced as soon as capacitive screens became viable - albeit extremely expensive at the time. The first iPhone was "ahead of its time" in the sense that the market wasn't really ready for it. The first iPhone was an expensive PoS - it wasn't until the app stor…

Funny, I never said they invented the capacitive touchscreen, but that's apple haters for you. What they did that no one else did before is to put the right gestures, the right UI, environment to make it work. I had a LG Prada, it had a capacitive touchscreen so I obviously know Apple didn't invent it.. except the LG Prada was also behaving the same as Windows XP on a tablet. You use widgets like scrollbars instead o…

> "that's apple haters for you"

Comments like this do not add to the discussion.

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#86

Post by nirvana »

corin_ wrote: post #44
H_L wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not a putdown, but it's silly to view Apple's defining characteristic as their ability to assemble a device from available parts. If that ability is what makes them successful, then their rival phone manufacturers should be even more successful since they often use faster processors and bigger screens and more RAM than Apple.

It's not about the ability to put them together, it's about deciding what to put together, when to do it, how to market it and of course a big part: what software to put on it. I'd never say " all Apple do is" about this, just that it is what they do, and they do it better than anyone else.

Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.

And having seen them, other companies can't replicate them well at all because they don't do the research.

Calling them a lego assembler ignores all the real innovation they do.

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#87

Post by dakimov »

The fact that Samsung copies Apple is as obvious as the fact that the sky is blue. I am not sure whether it is a real problem, because Samsung is not able to even do a clone properly. The problem is that the US patent system is more than absurd, it is retarded. Will somebody in the United States ever do something with it?

Re: A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

#88

Post by nirvana »

ElliotMingee wrote: post #75
cstejerean wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. There are plenty of things left that could use some simplicity and minimalism. Patent away.

Why does that warrant patent protection? The idea behind a patent is to protect innovation, however the innovative cost in that sense is negligible.

You're confusing utility and design patents. They are different things and have different purposes and requirements.

Really, you're not the only one, but it is shameful that at this point in time so many people still don't know what patents are, yet comment on HN.

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