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You make a factually-correct point but I think it's worth taking a step back and asking ourselves what do we want to happen and why? Do we want to say that if

You make a factually-correct point but I think it's worth taking a step back and asking ourselves what do we want to happen and why? Do we want to say that if a company A does something that's similar to company B's work, we shouldn't allow that to happen. Ever. I think breaks down pretty badly if you consider the case of, say, generic AIDS drugs. These "copied" drugs are saving lives and that to me is way more important than any IP-infringement issues. In the Apple vs Google case, it seems like this copying has been a good thing - we now have a lot of really great smartphones trying to out-compete each other. So it's not clear to me that if this copying was banned, this would've been good for human society as a whole. OTOH, if you consider something like Intel copying the RISC microarchitectures of the 90s and essentially driving the likes of Compaq, DEC and MIPS out of business, allowing those ideas to copied was almost definitely bad for consumers. The point is that there isn't a clear-cut right-or-wrong answer on this one. It seems like whether copying is a good thing depends more on who is copying who, and how much money each of the participants have, than on exactly what is copied.

ScottBurson 15y ago
if you consider something like Intel copying the RISC microarchitectures of the 90s and essentially driving the likes of Compaq, DEC and MIPS out of business, allowing those ideas to copied was almost definitely bad for consumers. I don't understand how you can argue this was bad for consumers when it made fast CPUs so much cheaper. Okay, it stuck us with the x86 architecture, which wasn't so great for programmers, you could argue. But how was this a problem for consumers? I think the reality is quite the contrary: if Intel hadn't done that (and BTW it wasn't just Intel), modern consumer-grade machines would be 1/10 as powerful, or less. The kind of power I now have in my laptop would be confined to $20k workstations.
- microarchitect 15y ago
  One reason it was bad was because all these other guys died. If you remember back to 2000 or so, Intel had killed all their competitors, bought Alpha and then threw it way were trying two rather briandead architectures in the P4 and the Itanium. They were able to get away with it because essentially they had no competition. AMD saved us from this with the Greyhound and x86-64 and there's no guarantee that Intel would've done anything similar if not for them. I think the reality is quite the contrary: if Intel hadn't done that (and BTW it wasn't just Intel), modern consumer-grade machines would be 1/10 as powerful, or less. The kind of power I now have in my laptop would be confined to $20k workstations. The reason you have that kind of performance increase over the last 30 years or so is because of CMOS scaling and let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this is driven by Intel. CMOS scaling was predicted by IBM's Bob Dennard back in the 70s and all we've done since then is pretty much just follow his roadmap. It's not like computers weren't getting cheaper and faster before Intel became the dominant monopoly.
TomOfTTB 15y ago
I don't disagree. I'm GLAD Google stole from Apple. My only issue is with those who deny that's what happened. That's disrespectful to the innovation represented by the iPhone.
- microarchitect 15y ago
  Part of the problem might be that it's not always clear what people mean by "stole".
- kenjackson 15y ago
  The problem is the term "stole", IMO. No one says "Apple stole the smartphone idea from Palm" or "Apple stole the idea of the MP3 player from Creative". It's just taken as a given that the current technology landscape influences what comes after it. If you develop a useful UI paradigm or technology, I may make use of it if it is fitting. The time when "stole" seems appropriate is if Google stole the design from a non-public version of the iPhone. Which maybe did happen (via Schmidt), but that's generally not what people are referring to when they use the term.

ScottBurson 15y ago

if you consider something like Intel copying the RISC microarchitectures of the 90s and essentially driving the likes of Compaq, DEC and MIPS out of business, allowing those ideas to copied was almost definitely bad for consumers. I don't understand how you can argue this was bad for consumers when it made fast CPUs so much cheaper. Okay, it stuck us with the x86 architecture, which wasn't so great for programmers, you could argue. But how was this a problem for consumers? I think the reality is quite the contrary: if Intel hadn't done that (and BTW it wasn't just Intel), modern consumer-grade machines would be 1/10 as powerful, or less. The kind of power I now have in my laptop would be confined to $20k workstations.

microarchitect 15y ago
One reason it was bad was because all these other guys died. If you remember back to 2000 or so, Intel had killed all their competitors, bought Alpha and then threw it way were trying two rather briandead architectures in the P4 and the Itanium. They were able to get away with it because essentially they had no competition. AMD saved us from this with the Greyhound and x86-64 and there's no guarantee that Intel would've done anything similar if not for them. I think the reality is quite the contrary: if Intel hadn't done that (and BTW it wasn't just Intel), modern consumer-grade machines would be 1/10 as powerful, or less. The kind of power I now have in my laptop would be confined to $20k workstations. The reason you have that kind of performance increase over the last 30 years or so is because of CMOS scaling and let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this is driven by Intel. CMOS scaling was predicted by IBM's Bob Dennard back in the 70s and all we've done since then is pretty much just follow his roadmap. It's not like computers weren't getting cheaper and faster before Intel became the dominant monopoly.

TomOfTTB 15y ago

I don't disagree. I'm GLAD Google stole from Apple. My only issue is with those who deny that's what happened. That's disrespectful to the innovation represented by the iPhone.

microarchitect 15y ago
Part of the problem might be that it's not always clear what people mean by "stole".
kenjackson 15y ago
The problem is the term "stole", IMO. No one says "Apple stole the smartphone idea from Palm" or "Apple stole the idea of the MP3 player from Creative". It's just taken as a given that the current technology landscape influences what comes after it. If you develop a useful UI paradigm or technology, I may make use of it if it is fitting. The time when "stole" seems appropriate is if Google stole the design from a non-public version of the iPhone. Which maybe did happen (via Schmidt), but that's generally not what people are referring to when they use the term.