[roly2324]

Before he passed away Jobs wanted to eliminate Google's Android because it blatantly copied the iOS operating system of the iPhone. He is quoted as saying that he would use all of Apple's $40 billion to correct this wrong.

Yet my question is ... will he succeed???? Can Apple really shut down Android?? I for one do not think so. I'm sure some of these lawsuits won't pan out and although Apple may limit Android in some areas, I believe that OS is here to stay. I just don't know if taking on Google and completely eliminating Android is possible at this stage. Any thoughts????? Anyone thinks Jobs' claim was out of this world or is it really possible?

[olePigeon]

The look and operation of Android certainly was a blatant copy, they held nothing back especially with the icons. Almost like it came out of China, except works. Also, with Samsung and others making phones that look almost physically identical to the iPhone, coupled with Samsung's own lawyers not being able to tell the difference between the products, I think Apple may have a leg to stand on.

Keep in mind I'm not talking about rounded corners and icons in a grid. The only reason those were picked up by Apple is because it was something patentable and they could sue over it, otherwise everything else would just be trademark issues and no real money would be involved.

[mduell]

Trying to destroy Android is almost as bad an idea as using fruit juice and acupuncture for cancer.

[turtle777]

Ouch.

-t

[subego]

Had he succeded, I'm sure that would have been the best anti-trust investigation $40 billion could buy.

[freudling]

No, Apple can't eliminate Android, but Oracle, MS, and others might be able to (stolen code). Too many precedent setting cases against people fighting over look and feel stuff, which is what Jobs was really talking about. And he's right. Android is a cheap Chinese knock off of iOS. But iOS is a knock off of Symbian and the Palm OS. Remember, Symbian had an App Store years before Apple's first iPhone. And the Palm OS is a knock off of the Apple Newton OS. And the Apple Newton OS is sort of a knock off of earlier digital organizers, although very unique on its own.

And the original Mac OS is a knock off of Xerox's OS from the 70s. So who started it all? Xerox, and the guy who invented the mouse in the 60s. Before that, there were some workstations and then before that mainframes. Well before that? Charles Babbage's difference machine. Or how about Wilhelm Von Leibniz's ideas for a "computer" back in the 1700s? I mean...

But ya, look and feel stuff, I know how annoying it is for other people to copy. It's happened to me in business, and it sucks. But you won't get far legally. Memba the case Apple lost to MS in 1993 over the look and feel of the Mac OS? How Apple fought tooth and nail in the courts to stop MS from launching a Windows OS on the precedent that it was copying the look and feel of the Mac OS. They looked at it like it was their proprietary IP that could be protected. The courts reduced it to something like a steering wheel: it's not something any one person can monopolize. Sucks, and I feel bad for Apple, but imagine Apple having an outright monopoly on Windows, GUI-based software/operating systems? I think it was a brilliant decision by the judges and they showed tremendous foresight.

However, it also sucks because people can copy your creative GUI and get away with it. And as you all know, the UI today is everything.

[Spheric Harlot]

Apple PAID for the rights to use Xerox's concepts, and Xerox wasn't doing anything like what Jobs envisioned with it.

One of Apple's board members was the CEO of Google, which came out with a direct competitor to stuff Apple had been doing in secret.

Is it really surprising Jobs felt betrayed?

[chabig]

Regarding Xerox, the Mac team used ideas form the Alto as inspiration, but the execution was all theirs.

[Waragainstsleep]

Is Apple even going after Google directly? They seem to be spending their time going after the hardware makers instead.
They may not be able to kill Android completely, but if they can make maintain their market position on tablets, it will put a serious dent in Google's plans for world domination.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Apple PAID for the rights to use Xerox's concepts, and Xerox wasn't doing anything like what Jobs envisioned with it.

Then, why did Xerox sue Apple?

[Wiskedjak]

I don't think Apple can do anything about Android. Yes, Android is clearly inspired by iOS, but it's different enough that it cannot be considered a complete copy.

Never mind the number of times that Apple has done *exactly* this to smaller fish that couldn't fight back.
Just to name few off the top of my head:
- Delicious Monster
- Konfabulator
- Camera+ with the volume up shutter trigger

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Is Apple even going after Google directly? They seem to be spending their time going after the hardware makers instead.
They may not be able to kill Android completely, but if they can make maintain their market position on tablets, it will put a serious dent in Google's plans for world domination.

I think Google is too big for Apple to go after directly.

In any case, I personally like it when Apple has to deal with competition. It makes for better products.

[polendo]

Well if at the beginning of times Google indeed copied iOS they did a lousy job to say the least. I got a Motorola Android phone two years ago (with 1.5) and it was/is an unfinished product.. incomplete at best. I ended up buying a Symbian phone (Nokia) at that time.

[freudling]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Apple PAID for the rights to use Xerox's concepts, and Xerox wasn't doing anything like what Jobs envisioned with it.

One of Apple's board members was the CEO of Google, which came out with a direct competitor to stuff Apple had been doing in secret.

Is it really surprising Jobs felt betrayed?

Apple's original Mac OS is exactly the same as Xerox's: it's windows based with a bitmap screen, mouse, and keyboard. The little subtle differences don't' really matter. They look essentially the same. This paradigm didn't exist in Apple's products: they were command line based. Email, ethernet, all that born at Xerox.

Same thing with Android. Google took the multi touch paradigm and grid of icons and just copied it. But that's look and feel stuff. If they stole Apple's code, it's another matter... Oracle and MS refer.

And Jobs feeling betrayed? You're not listening or paying attention. iOS looks and feels exactly like other mobile operating systems like Symbian and the Palm OS, both of which came well before iOS.

Sony came out with the P800 smartphone in 2002 and then the P900 a few years after. Then, in 2005, expanded with their n-series phones. These latter were cutting edge at the time. MP3 players, large screens, the best mobile Web experience, video, Apps, touchscreen (use finger nail or stylus). I was living in Europe at the time these phones came out, and they worked great. I remember how many people were buying them up. Surfing Google in the office at Christmas time, I was blown away by these phones. Even today the P800 at 10 years old is not half bad.

In America, mobile phones have been way behind the times. Europe and Asia always had way more advanced phones, not the least of which because their mobile networks were much better. They've had 3G networks for over a decade, and 4G has existed in some parts of the world for years.

Apple just made a much better mobile OS than anything else out there, with better hardware, multi-touch, and a whole ecosystem tied to it. And that's why they're successful. But they're really calling the kettle black here. iOS is a grid of icons: that's not new. That's Palm. And multi-touch wasn't invented by Apple, it goes back decades, and the name IBM is associated with it.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by freudling 

iOS looks and feels exactly like other mobile operating systems like Symbian and the Palm OS, both of which came well before iOS.

"looks AND feels"!



(you know, posting this kind of complete asshattery in support of your points makes it really difficult to even WANT to bother finding out whether there's any validity to your viewpoint. Or have you seriously never used a Palm at all, and have seriously never heard of the Newton? I thought you were some sort of industry "analyst" or "expert", with "development experience". Right?)

Aaaaanyway:

What Android looked like before iPhone:


What Android looked like after iPhone:

Originally Posted by freudling 

Apple's original Mac OS is exactly the same as Xerox's: it's windows based with a bitmap screen, mouse, and keyboard. The little subtle differences don't' really matter. They look essentially the same. This paradigm didn't exist in Apple's products: they were command line based. Email, ethernet, all that born at Xerox.

Whoah there, Nellie!

Smalltalk did not have the menu-bar, nor drop-down menus, nor a clipboard for copy and paste, nor a Finder, nor drag-and-drop.

The two things it had were windows and the mouse. Operating Xerox Smalltalk was *nothing* like operating the Mac or Windows (apparently; I've never worked with it):

Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories: On Xerox, Apple and Progress

[chabig]

Originally Posted by freudling 

Apple's original Mac OS is exactly the same as Xerox's: it's windows based with a bitmap screen, mouse, and keyboard.

Are you also on the "iPad is just a rectangle" wagon? Is Windows just like a Mac because it has a bitmapped screen, mouse, and keyboard? The Xerox star interface didn't even have a menu bar. Apple took a lot of ideas from the Star but they also developed their slant on the GUI.

See GUIdebook > Articles > “The Star user interface: an overview” > Picture

[Waragainstsleep]

Apple has had to go after the handset makers because Android alone is a difficult one for them to attack in court. The overall products however are obviously "inspired" by Apple products. The above images don't just apply to Android, they apply to smartphones in general. Before iPhone, there were many different ones, none of which looked like iPhone. Afterwards, most of them look like iPhones. Same is true of tablets and the iPad. These devices are similar enough that Apple should be able to pursue some kind of punishment or compensation at the very least but legally its pretty tricky.

Its a little surprising that Apple didn't have any contracts in place that they could have used to go after Schmidt personally. He clearly passed on information he shouldn't have to Google.

If Apple wants to hurt Google now it has to go after their blood supply which is advertising which is net traffic. Everything they do is geared around better targeting ads to users. Keeping them from getting a majority share of the tablet market is one thing as tablets replace more and more desktops, laptops and netbooks in homes and offices.
The other way that springs to mind is to steal their search traffic. This line of thinking makes me wonder more about Siri. Siri does search. It might use WA and others to get its results at the moment, but if Siri (in the cloud) is learning, that suggests to me its going to be cacheing search queries and answers. Thats good targeted advertising data. Throw Siri onto the next iPads, Macs, and (perhaps best of all given the very recent rumours of SJ "cracking" HDTV) AppleTV and you start to get lots and lots of that lovely valuable data. Enough to hurt google.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

What Android looked like before iPhone:


What Android looked like after iPhone:

I don't get that "What Android looked like before iPhone" picture, since the first Android device was released a year after the iPhone, but here's what touchscreen phones in general looked like before iPhone:

[freudling]

Symbian and Palm: Grid of icons, came years before Apple's iOS. Smartphones: years before Apple's iPhone. Apple did not invent smartphones, nor a grid of icons as a smartphone OS, or even an App Store. Period.

Steve Jobs in an interview with Triumph of the Nerds: "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

Dieter Rams, famous german designer... his reply to his design being copied by Apple:

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

Tons of Apple products look like stuff Dieter designed in the 60s for Braun. Steve Jobs also was noted to love Braun design, and went to appliance shops to examine their designs to help design the Macintosh in the early 80s.

1960s Braun Products Hold the Secrets to Apple's Future

Our Interview With Dieter Rams, The Greatest Designer Alive [Video] | Co. Design

Steve Jobs admits to bootlegging music in the 60s, yet shows disdain for people pirating software and music. Talk about hypocrisy.

Calling the kettle black...

iTunes? SoundJam came before.

Palm GridPad tablet computer, decades before the iPad:

http://liquidpubs.com/blog/tablet-history-4/

[Wiskedjak]

What PalmOS looked like before iOS

[freudling]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

What PalmOS looked like before iOS

Thank you, exactly. A grid of icons, complete with Apps that you can buy. Full document and spreadsheet editing. Games. Color touchscreen.

[freudling]

Windows Phone 7? Now, whether you like it or not, that's unique.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by freudling 

Windows Phone 7? Now, whether you like it or not, that's unique.

Reminds me of airport signage.

[freudling]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Reminds me of airport signage.

Well at least it's something different than a grid of icons.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Reminds me of airport signage.

You do know that airport and public transit signage were the inspirations for the Windows Phone 7 UI?
Metro (design language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[imitchellg5]

iOS really isn't terribly innovative. It doesn't do anything new. Instead, it does everything pretty much perfectly, and in a way that makes sense to actual humans. I say that as an Android user.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by freudling 

Thank you, exactly. A grid of icons, complete with Apps that you can buy. Full document and spreadsheet editing. Games. Color touchscreen.

This is the part missing from your story. The beginning.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

iOS really isn't terribly innovative. It doesn't do anything new. Instead, it does everything pretty much perfectly, and in a way that makes sense to actual humans. I say that as an Android user.

Which has always been where Apple's true strength is. After they made the first personal computers, Apple has never really been truly innovative. Rather, Apple takes other people's O.K. ideas and turns them into exceptional things.

Except Siri. Was playing with that yesterday on a coworker's phone. Siri sucks right now and probably won't be decent until iPhone5.

[freudling]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

This is the part missing from your story. The beginning.

No this is not the part missing from my story. I mentioned the Newton. I own Newtons. I've been a big part of the Newton community for years.

I mentioned the Palm GridPad a tablet computer from 1989. There were also several personal digital organizers before and after this. One in particular that had a grid of icons, dates, calendar, documents, time zones, etc. was the Psion Series 3, released in 1991. The Newton was not first.

eBay.co.uk Guides - Which 3 Series Choosing a Psion 3, 3a, 3c or 3mx

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

iOS really isn't terribly innovative. It doesn't do anything new. Instead, it does everything pretty much perfectly, and in a way that makes sense to actual humans. I say that as an Android user.

Right, none of Apple's products are.

I never get tired of hearing these comments about how un-innovative Apple is.

It's especially visible if you look at the products of the real innovators, those that Apple just copied. Their products are SOOOOOO great, because they were SOOOOOO innovative. :rolleys:

-t

[freudling]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Right, none of Apple's products are.

I never get tired of hearing these comments about how un-innovative Apple is.

It's especially visible if you look at the products of the real innovators, those that Apple just copied. Their products are SOOOOOO great, because they were SOOOOOO innovative. :rolleys:

-t

Why is everybody on here so quick to argue with knee jerk reactions? Sure, you could say the same about me but I'm convinced people just come on here to argue. I point things out because a lot of what people post is not supported by the requisite facts, not necessarily blaming them for anything. Just an observation.

I this case, I think what he meant was, it's not some hugely different OS. Some massive departure from the Palm or Symbian OS: it's a grid of icons. Overall, the PRODUCT, like the iPhone, is very innovative. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole here. But on strictly OS alone, iOS isn't that innovative. webOS? Yes. Sure, it doesn't perform as well, but the cards and multi-tasking is totally unique and incredibly useful, as well as very much missed in iOS. Like it or hate it, WP7 has a lot of nifty features and is itself very unique. It also performs very well. Multi-tasking in iOS is horrible on the iPhone, and pitiful on the iPad. But it performs very well and has awesome Apps across both products.

What's going to define Apple is its ability to significantly evolve iOS over the next 5 years, and I'm interested to see how they do that. iOS 5 is great, but it's still the same old one trick pony grid of icons.

[lpkmckenna]

Boy, this debate is so tiresome. There is so much misinformation about past lawsuits and current lawsuits, mixed with antipathy for software patents and trademarked design, that arguing with people about it is barely worth the effort.

Apple copies ideas from other products, but they don't copy patented ideas. Apple is perfectly in the clear borrowing the notification panel from Android, for instance, because that's not patented. Apple is suing the Android handset makers for stealing patented things.

(Before anyone mentions it, Apple was successfully sued by Creative for copying the patented design of their MP3 player UI for the iPod. But Apple isn't being countered-sued for anything remotely similar right now. All of the countersuits from HTC, Samsung, or Nokia were limp attempts to claim Apple should pay more for FRAND patents, and they are all being thrown out by the courts like the tripe they are.)

Regarding the rounded rectangles and grid of icons, Apple is not claiming they have a patent on those things, or that they are the only ones allowed to use them. They are suing over trade dress, not patents, on those issues. It isn't that Samsung copied one element of the iPhone (like the rounded rectangle icons), but that they borrowed so many elements that in the aggregate, the Samsung products look too similar to the Apple products. I'm so sick of hearing "Apple has patented rounded corners" that I just wanna barf. Trade dress and patents are completely different issues.

Maybe you think patents like “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image” shouldn't exist. That's fine. But Apple was granted that patent by the patent office, and Android makers should have thought twice about whether to infringe.

It seems Samsung has gotten the message: their new Galaxy Nexus don't look anything like Apple's stuff any more.

Regarding Apple vs Microsoft, Apple tried to use copyright law (not patent law) in the "look and feel" lawsuit. Xerox tried to get involved because the radical copyright strategy could have granted Apple copyright to elements of Xerox's UI. Logically, if Apple's UI was protected by copyright, then so would Xerox's UI, so Xerox made that claim in court.

The copyright lawsuit was eventually dismissed, as the court ruled that a UI could not be protected by copyright. But that was not Apple's only suit against Microsoft: there was also a patent lawsuit, which was never decided in court, as Apple and Microsoft settled out of court shortly after Steve became CEO again. This was a huge win for Apple. No one knows exactly how much Apple got from Microsoft (besides 5 more years of Office development and a public investment), but the estimates are around 1 billion dollars.

Trade dress, patent, copyright. These distinctions matter.

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

I don't think Apple can do anything about Android. Yes, Android is clearly inspired by iOS, but it's different enough that it cannot be considered a complete copy.

Apple is suing over very specific patents. If the Android makers made touchscreen phones without infringing Apple patents, there would be no lawsuits. Apple isn't suing Microsoft, Palm (now HP), or RIM because of their touchscreen phones. This isn't about being "clearly inspired," it's about specific patents.

Never mind the number of times that Apple has done *exactly* this to smaller fish that couldn't fight back.
Just to name few off the top of my head:
- Delicious Monster
- Konfabulator
- Camera+ with the volume up shutter trigger

None of these things were patented. This fight with the Android makers is over patent infringement and confusing trade dress issues, not just copying general ideas, which is completely legitimate. Apple doesn't complain about others using WebKit, for instance.

[freudling]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Boy, this debate is so tiresome. There is so much misinformation about past lawsuits and current lawsuits, mixed with antipathy for software patents and trademarked design, that arguing with people about it is barely worth the effort.

I have to agree with you on this, although I think you're also taking aim at me as well.

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Apple copies ideas from other products, but they don't copy patented ideas. Apple is perfectly in the clear borrowing the notification panel from Android, for instance, because that's not patented. Apple is suing the Android handset makers for stealing patented things.

I don't know if I'd go this far in making such a broad generalization though. I haven't looked into it in depth, but Dieter Rams and Braun (linked to earlier), may have been able to sue Apple over the scroll wheel iPods, either through patents or trade dress. Of course, Dieter was just flattered that Apple copied them. Not many geeks in the Valley would be so forgiving...

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

(Before anyone mentions it, Apple was successfully sued by Creative for copying the patented design of their MP3 player UI for the iPod. But Apple isn't being countered-sued for anything remotely similar right now. All of the countersuits from HTC, Samsung, or Nokia were limp attempts to claim Apple should pay more for FRAND patents, and they are all being thrown out by the courts like the tripe they are.)

Good point.

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Regarding the rounded rectangles and grid of icons, Apple is not claiming they have a patent on those things, or that they are the only ones allowed to use them. They are suing over trade dress, not patents, on those issues. It isn't that Samsung copied one element of the iPhone (like the rounded rectangle icons), but that they borrowed so many elements that in the aggregate, the Samsung products look too similar to the Apple products. I'm so sick of hearing "Apple has patented rounded corners" that I just wanna barf. Trade dress and patents are completely different issues.

Nice to see someone else who understands trade dress. I learned all about it because a competitor of ours copied our logo. Although they have a different name, and a slightly different font, the trade dress - the aggregated design attributes - were just too similar when the parts were added to the whole. The test? It caused confusion.

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Maybe you think patents like “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image” shouldn't exist. That's fine. But Apple was granted that patent by the patent office, and Android makers should have thought twice about whether to infringe.

And Apple should have thought about it before Nokia did in 2004... just because you have a patent doesn't mean you're the first in the market. Sometimes patents are buried and they end up conflicting. Or patents are just stuck in one country, like in the US, but conflicting patents exist in many other parts of the world.

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Regarding Apple vs Microsoft, Apple tried to use copyright law (not patent law) in the "look and feel" lawsuit. Xerox tried to get involved because the radical copyright strategy could have granted Apple copyright to elements of Xerox's UI. Logically, if Apple's UI was protected by copyright, then so would Xerox's UI, so Xerox made that claim in court.

And this falls more under trade dress because that's a copyright and trademark issue. The thing is though, is that Apple had as solid agreement with Xerox. They let Apple have the UI, as they saw no market for what they were doing, and Apple gave them 100 k shares. The case was really found in MS's favour because MS had a favourable licensing agreement with Apple.

Ultimately, Sculley agreed to license the Macintosh's "visual displays" to Microsoft to use in software derived from Windows 1.0, and Microsoft agreed to continue developing its Mac products and promised not to release Excel (a feature-rich replacement for MultiPlan) for any other platform for two years.

Sculley had Al Eisenstat, Apple's chief counsel, draw up a contract, and the two men signed on November, 22 1985, exactly one week after Windows 1.0 was released.

Without warning, Apple filed suit against Microsoft in federal court on March 17, 1988 for violating Apple's copyrights on the "visual displays" of the Macintosh. (Apple also filed suit against HP for its NewWave environment that ran on top of Windows 2.0.)

Apple's suit included 189 contested visual displays that Apple believed violated its copyright.

Fortunately for Windows developers, Judge W. Schwarzer ruled on July 25, 1989, that 179 of the 189 disputed displays were covered by the existing license, and most of the other ten were not violations of Apple's copyright due to the merger doctrine (the merger doctrine stipulates that ideas cannot be copyrighted). In the case of Apple vs. Microsoft, many of the displays Apple contested were ideas and could not be protected by copyright.

The lawsuit was decided in Microsoft's favor on August 24, 1993.

In other words, if it weren't for that pesky opened ended licensing agreement, Apple may have been able to defend many of the visual elements it claimed MS infringed on. But it's done, and it was a precedent setting case that has informed on many a lawsuit.

[The Godfather]

Android is dead. -Steve
Ste... Too soon. Too soon ;(

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

I don't get that "What Android looked like before iPhone" picture, since the first Android device was released a year after the iPhone

It was a prototype, although this prototype was circulated AFTER the release of the iPhone.

They learned fast, though.

[Big Mac]

Maybe Jobs should have swallowed his pride and settled with Google. Android was very derivative, yes. But a key part of Apple's resurgence in the late 1990s to the mid-2000s (before the Intel transition) was based on the fact that the Internet served as a substantial equalizer of the Mac and other alternative platforms relative to Windows. Google was a big part of that. In other words, Apple definitely benefited from the ascendancy of Google.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Maybe Jobs should have swallowed his pride and settled with Google. Android was very derivative, yes. But a key part of Apple's resurgence in the late 1990s to the mid-2000s (before the Intel transition) was based on the fact that the Internet served as a substantial equalizer of the Mac and other alternative platforms relative to Windows. Google was a big part of that. In other words, Apple definitely benefited from the ascendancy of Google.

Nah. I was there at the time.

Gumdrop computers grabbing attention, the promise of OS X, and BY FAR most importantly iTunes and the iPod were the factors that made a difference.

Internet compatibility was a given: You might as well argue that using mains power from ordinary wall sockets was a substantial equalizer, so the big power companies were partly responsible for Apple's resurgence.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by freudling 

I don't know if I'd go this far in making such a broad generalization though. I haven't looked into it in depth, but Dieter Rams and Braun (linked to earlier), may have been able to sue Apple over the scroll wheel iPods, either through patents or trade dress. Of course, Dieter was just flattered that Apple copied them. Not many geeks in the Valley would be so forgiving...

[...]

Nice to see someone else who understands trade dress. I learned all about it because a competitor of ours copied our logo. Although they have a different name, and a slightly different font, the trade dress - the aggregated design attributes - were just too similar when the parts were added to the whole. The test? It caused confusion.

So you're saying that Dieter Rams (or rather Braun) might have been able to sue Apple over the iPod design, because it caused "confusion" with a transistor radio from the 1960s that had a speaker grille in place of the iPod's display, and a selection dial in place of the iPod's rotary encoder and buttons, and that hadn't been for sale in over thirty years at the time the iPod was introduced?

But that they didn't because they were flattered?

Are you for real?

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Nah. I was there at the time.

You were where exactly? Were you an Apple employee at the time? If not, I witnessed the same events you did as a devoted Mac user. (I was also selling Macs part-time in the late-'90s so I can speak from an Apple sales perspective about that era.)

The iMac and the iPod were huge contributors to Apple's modern success. Obviously and unquestionably so, much more than the web or Google. I wasn't crediting Google with being the single greatest factor making Apple successful. But there wouldn't have been an iMac without the growth of the web. I don't even know if the Mac would have survived as an independent platform for much longer but for the growth of the web, and again Google played a major part in popularizing it for the masses. Apple benefited substantially from the ascendancy of Google, as I said. And I think Jobs recognized that fact because even when he was at war with Google, Google remained the preferred platform for many Internet services in iOS.

[besson3c]

It sounds like Jobs likes to speak in hyperbole with this whole $40 billion thing. That sounds like a hyperbolic statement, and my belief is reinforced by the quote of Jobs saying that "other than search, Google products - Docs, Android are crap". For starters there is Google Maps which Apple uses in their products themselves, in many ways Google Calendar has been superior to MobileMe for years in providing an API developers can use to access calendar data (iCloud APIs also require paying to be a developer, which is bullshit). I'd argue that Google Docs has some strong merits, as does Google+. It seems like more of Google's major products have had their positives than not.

Jobs seems to have been a very emotional sort of person.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

It was a prototype, although this prototype was circulated AFTER the release of the iPhone.

They learned fast, though.

So fast, in fact, that they ended up going back in time to develop the touch-screen prototype that they used in the demo video from a good month before the prototype above was leaked.

Either that or, I dunno, they knew that hardware manufacturers were going to want to use Android for a number of different types of devices and made multiple prototypes to, you know, make sure it worked.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I wasn't crediting Google with being the single greatest factor making Apple successful. But there wouldn't have been an iMac without the growth of the web. I don't even know if the Mac would have survived as an independent platform for much longer but for the growth of the web, and again Google played a major part in popularizing it for the masses. Apple benefited substantially from the ascendancy of Google, as I said. And I think Jobs recognized that fact because even when he was at war with Google, Google remained the preferred platform for many Internet services in iOS.

The web was always going to go mainstream sooner or later, with or without Google. The iMac was designed, timed and marketed to capitalise the growth of the web. If the web hadn't been spreading like that in the late 90s, then Steve would have released something different to capitalise on something else that was happening. Thats what he did best.

Apple was already fighting one uphill war against Flash by that point. To try and wean people off Google on iOS would have been suicidal. And it probably would have meant handing more search business to Microsoft.

[freudling]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

So you're saying that Dieter Rams (or rather Braun) might have been able to sue Apple over the iPod design, because it caused "confusion" with a transistor radio from the 1960s that had a speaker grille in place of the iPod's display, and a selection dial in place of the iPod's rotary encoder and buttons, and that hadn't been for sale in over thirty years at the time the iPod was introduced?

But that they didn't because they were flattered?

Are you for real?

Spheric confused again. Industrial design is patentable. No confusion required. Prior patents can invalidate later ones. Apple was not the first with a scroll wheel yet they acted like they were.

[besson3c]

I'm starting to think that Spheric Harlot and freudling don't like each other.

I'm good at reading in between the lines like that.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Right, none of Apple's products are.

I was talking about iOS. But thanks for adding onto my words.

It's especially visible if you look at the products of the real innovators, those that Apple just copied. Their products are SOOOOOO great, because they were SOOOOOO innovative. :rolleys:

-t

You're completely taking what I said out of the context of this thread. I said iOS isn't terribly innovative. Why do I say that? Because iOS works essentially the same right now as it did in 2007. And it uses pretty much standard paradigms of UI and interaction to do what it does. The innovation of iOS comes from the fact that it's built for humans. It's just terribly sad and pathetic that being built for humans has to be an innovation in the mobile marketplace. IMO, webOS is was the most innovative mobile OS out there.

Feel free to take this all out of context again and add on to my words.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by freudling 

Spheric confused again. Industrial design is patentable. No confusion required. Prior patents can invalidate later ones. Apple was not the first with a scroll wheel yet they acted like they were.

Dieter Rams is a HUGE fan of Apple design. Watch the documentary Objectified if you want to hear him talk about Apple (and Jonathan Ive responds too).

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by freudling 

Spheric confused again. Industrial design is patentable. No confusion required. Prior patents can invalidate later ones. Apple was not the first with a scroll wheel yet they acted like they were.

As someone who once practiced Industrial Design, I can safely say that industrial designs are *not* patentable. Rather, they are, but defending a patented industrial design is nearly impossible - change a line or a curve by a few degrees and you've got a completely new design (which is why you see so many near-miss knock-off designs).

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

As someone who once practiced Industrial Design, I can safely say that industrial designs are *not* patentable. Rather, they are, but defending a patented industrial design is nearly impossible - change a line or a curve by a few degrees and you've got a completely new design (which is why you see so many near-miss knock-off designs).

Yet companies like Apple try over and over and over again to come up with these lawsuits to defend themselves.

Why not just abide by the adage that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" and just go after protecting actual source code? There will always be Chinese knockoffs and the American equivalent of aesthetics and superficial design elements (I call the appearance of a design "superficial" in relative comparison to its actual software execution)

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Why not just abide by the adage that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" and just go after protecting actual source code?

That line only really works when *you're* the one imitating. But, there's also a big difference between patenting an industrial design and patenting a software UI design. Software UI patents are much easier to protect since they are a process (processes being what patents protect); if you copy the patented process, you can be sued. Industrial designs rarely represent a process. The design of the original iPod as a whole was not patentable, though the scroll-wheel as a process of interacting with the iPod *was* patentable.