6 ms·

These patent wars don't help anyone but Apple, and directly hurts consumers. I don't think this is what anyone wants. It actually sickens me to see the law enac

by thechut 14y ago

These patent wars don't help anyone but Apple, and directly hurts consumers. I don't think this is what anyone wants. It actually sickens me to see the law enacted in this way. I really hope this comes back to bit Apple in the ass. It seems there has been a story about Apple doing something shitty everyday for the past few days, and the taste it leaves in my mouth is just getting worse and worse.

Retric 14y ago
Arguably, forcing other company's to innovate could be a Good thing. Is a rectangle with rounded edges the one and only perfect tablet shape? I don't know, but if everyone just copy's the iPad it's going to take a even longer to find out. The windows tiles may or may not be an advance, but they are clearly not a row of buttons just like the 1st gen iPhone and 2 out of every 3 smart phones that followed.
- saket123 14y ago
  >The windows tiles may or may not be an advance, but they are clearly not a row of buttons just like the 1st gen iPhone and 2 out of every 3 smart phones that followed. Well I owned three phones back in 2002-2006 which had rows to buttons and were not iPhone. I get that iPhone is a great phone but please give credit where its due. Even BB had rows of button.
  - Retric 14y ago
    I know the iPhone was not the first phone that had icon's like that, however the Black Berry and Windows phone had both buttons and a menu interface. Which IMO is better than the early iPhone style page interface when you have lot's of icons. Apple ended up improving things by adding folders, but I did notice a lot of other phones that IMO copy'd the bad design elements of the early iPhone simply because it was so popular. Edit: Not that iPhone was the first to use those elements, just that they where copying whatever the leader did. If windows phone starts to win I expect a switch to a lot of 'tile' interfaces.
- pook1e 14y ago
  Are you suggesting Apple was the first company to create a rectangular tablet with rounded edges?
  - cmelbye 14y ago
    C'mon. http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tablets-before-and-after-ipad.jpg http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tablets-befor... We can argue whether or not it's right for Apple to fight to protect this design, but let's not pretend that these tablets were developed completely independent of the iPad's design.
    - marshray 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EtchASketch10-23-2004.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EtchASketch10-23-2004.jpg Some of those earlier tablets had rounded corners. I imagine many of them would have looked much more like the modern tablets had technology been available at the time. For example, the battery, the weight, the durable glass, the display, the wireless options... all these things contributed to the ability to make a tablet without big rubber bumpers on the side of it. Yes, Apple's design is nicer looking and they should be respected for pushing forward the manufacturing technology. But we don't allow auto makers to sue each other and block the sales of entire models because curves are in fashion one year and more angular shapes in fashion the next.
- aklofas 14y ago
  You're absolutely right. The next tablet will look like this: http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/12/triangle_tablet.png http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/12/triangle_tablet.png
  - rsanchez1 14y ago
    No it will look like this: http://images.wikia.com/victorious/images/6/65/That_guys_PearPad.jpg http://images.wikia.com/victorious/images/6/65/That_guys_Pea...
flatline3 14y ago
First, I'd like to note that the article provides a very poor summary of the patents. That said, I'd like to throw this devil's argument out there as to why these patent wars help consumers: These patent wars might help consumers by allowing Apple to leverage the money they spend on R&D, giving them the traction necessary to invest further R&D, and pushing Apple's competitors to come up with new and different ideas. Apple has undeniably pushed the entire cell phone industry forward, and in the process had a tremendous impact on the software, entertainment, and game industries. If everyone is free to copy their work and compete with them on price, and Apple could lose the market position they (in theory) earned through innovation, and may not be able to get it back. At the same time, if nobody else is innovating to do things differently from Apple, all we get are clones.
- marshray 14y ago
  To the contrary, what it tells me is that Apple has lost confidence in its own ability to win on good ideas and good execution and is now being run by investors looking for quarterly returns and lawyers thinking this is actually a constructive way to "leverage the money they spend on R&D".
  - flatline3 14y ago
    Or, they're trying to prevent Windows 95 all over again.
    - smokeyj 14y ago
      Preventing Windows 95 would have been great for consumers, because competition is bad.
      - flatline3 14y ago
        Actually, it would have been good because competition is good, and Microsoft proceeded to sew up the market as a monopoly for decades, using a slew of underhanded tricks to do so, and grossly undermining the position of the primary innovator who held a far better product. It wasn't until Windows 2K that MS even began to catch up to Apple's work, and then Apple leapfrogged with the NeXT purchase.
cageface 14y ago
Agreed. I've been doing iOS dev for about a year now and I really enjoy the hardware and the APIs but I'm getting very close to the breaking point with their behavior. I'm not proud of enabling them by contributing to their ecosystem.

by thechut 14y ago

Retric 14y ago

Arguably, forcing other company's to innovate could be a Good thing. Is a rectangle with rounded edges the one and only perfect tablet shape? I don't know, but if everyone just copy's the iPad it's going to take a even longer to find out. The windows tiles may or may not be an advance, but they are clearly not a row of buttons just like the 1st gen iPhone and 2 out of every 3 smart phones that followed.

saket123 14y ago
>The windows tiles may or may not be an advance, but they are clearly not a row of buttons just like the 1st gen iPhone and 2 out of every 3 smart phones that followed. Well I owned three phones back in 2002-2006 which had rows to buttons and were not iPhone. I get that iPhone is a great phone but please give credit where its due. Even BB had rows of button.
- Retric 14y ago
  I know the iPhone was not the first phone that had icon's like that, however the Black Berry and Windows phone had both buttons and a menu interface. Which IMO is better than the early iPhone style page interface when you have lot's of icons. Apple ended up improving things by adding folders, but I did notice a lot of other phones that IMO copy'd the bad design elements of the early iPhone simply because it was so popular. Edit: Not that iPhone was the first to use those elements, just that they where copying whatever the leader did. If windows phone starts to win I expect a switch to a lot of 'tile' interfaces.
pook1e 14y ago
Are you suggesting Apple was the first company to create a rectangular tablet with rounded edges?
- cmelbye 14y ago
  C'mon. http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tablets-before-and-after-ipad.jpg http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tablets-befor... We can argue whether or not it's right for Apple to fight to protect this design, but let's not pretend that these tablets were developed completely independent of the iPad's design.
  - marshray 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EtchASketch10-23-2004.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EtchASketch10-23-2004.jpg Some of those earlier tablets had rounded corners. I imagine many of them would have looked much more like the modern tablets had technology been available at the time. For example, the battery, the weight, the durable glass, the display, the wireless options... all these things contributed to the ability to make a tablet without big rubber bumpers on the side of it. Yes, Apple's design is nicer looking and they should be respected for pushing forward the manufacturing technology. But we don't allow auto makers to sue each other and block the sales of entire models because curves are in fashion one year and more angular shapes in fashion the next.
aklofas 14y ago
You're absolutely right. The next tablet will look like this: http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/12/triangle_tablet.png http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/12/triangle_tablet.png
- rsanchez1 14y ago
  No it will look like this: http://images.wikia.com/victorious/images/6/65/That_guys_PearPad.jpg http://images.wikia.com/victorious/images/6/65/That_guys_Pea...

flatline3 14y ago

First, I'd like to note that the article provides a very poor summary of the patents. That said, I'd like to throw this devil's argument out there as to why these patent wars help consumers: These patent wars might help consumers by allowing Apple to leverage the money they spend on R&D, giving them the traction necessary to invest further R&D, and pushing Apple's competitors to come up with new and different ideas. Apple has undeniably pushed the entire cell phone industry forward, and in the process had a tremendous impact on the software, entertainment, and game industries. If everyone is free to copy their work and compete with them on price, and Apple could lose the market position they (in theory) earned through innovation, and may not be able to get it back. At the same time, if nobody else is innovating to do things differently from Apple, all we get are clones.

marshray 14y ago
To the contrary, what it tells me is that Apple has lost confidence in its own ability to win on good ideas and good execution and is now being run by investors looking for quarterly returns and lawyers thinking this is actually a constructive way to "leverage the money they spend on R&D".
- flatline3 14y ago
  Or, they're trying to prevent Windows 95 all over again.
  - smokeyj 14y ago
    Preventing Windows 95 would have been great for consumers, because competition is bad.
    - flatline3 14y ago
      Actually, it would have been good because competition is good, and Microsoft proceeded to sew up the market as a monopoly for decades, using a slew of underhanded tricks to do so, and grossly undermining the position of the primary innovator who held a far better product. It wasn't until Windows 2K that MS even began to catch up to Apple's work, and then Apple leapfrogged with the NeXT purchase.

cageface 14y ago

Agreed. I've been doing iOS dev for about a year now and I really enjoy the hardware and the APIs but I'm getting very close to the breaking point with their behavior. I'm not proud of enabling them by contributing to their ecosystem.