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A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

• equalarrow 14y ago
  "Just to drive the point home: a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious.." I still don't buy it. This still misses the mark - it wasn't about a 'few' buttons, the iPhone was about none. All those pda's in the picture don't really mean anything to me. Sure, some of them had cell networking and a lot (most? all?) had wifi. But I would never consider the old pda's a mobile device. 'Mobile' to me comes from the term 'mobile phone', not 'mobile pda'. To me, this article is typical of OSNews - if it's not Linux or open source, it bad/wrong/etc. Anyway, Dan Frakes tweet wasn't talking about 'a few buttons being obvious' he said 'having no buttons/keys'. And like he said, if this was so obvious, then why wasn't everyone doing it in 2006? Howcome pda's didn't do this in the early 2000's? Because it took a visionary team of designers and execs (or just Jobs) that appreciates minimalism. No one at Compaq, HP, Microsoft's many pda OEMs would, no, could have done something like this. And don't forget the require stylus..
  • cryptoz 14y ago
    > it wasn't about a 'few' buttons, the iPhone was about none. Excuse me? Last I checked, the iPhone has at least three buttons, maybe four! Home, Volume Down, Volume Up, Power.
    • slantyyz 14y ago
      It's not a button, but if you count the mute switch, that's 5.
      • sukuriant 14y ago
        It's a dedicated hardware switch. I'd count it.
        • slantyyz 14y ago
          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.
          • nickbarnwell 14y ago
            That switch was on every single Treo device from the 270 onwards, and numerous feature phones had a hardware mute switch as well.
            • slantyyz 14y ago
              Not saying that Apple invented that feature for all phones, but if you were coming from Windows Phone, it was a giant godsend.
  • theoj 14y ago
    So what's the innovation here? Applying minimalism (an established style from the 60's) to computers and phones? Is that really worthy of patent protection? Asked another way, should I be granted a patent to apply minimalism to other objects all around me? Suitcases? Refrigerators? Etc? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism
    • cstejerean 14y ago
      Yes. There are plenty of things left that could use some simplicity and minimalism. Patent away.
      • ElliotMingee 14y ago
        Why does that warrant patent protection? The idea behind a patent is to protect innovation, however the innovative cost in that sense is negligible.
        • nirvana 14y ago
          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.
          • ElliotMingee 14y ago
            Fair point; I was too quick to comment there. I'm curious though: are you familiar with the reasoning behind the development of design patents? I've done some light research and not turned up much. It seems that trademark and copyright already provide fairly expansive coverage for non-functional IP, so I don't quite see the intent behind the design patent laws.
            • catch23 14y ago
              Here's a small article to get you going: http://www.finnegan.com/resources/articles/articlesdetail.aspx?news=74f843be-c63a-40cc-8ae0-007bc50fdd99 http://www.finnegan.com/resources/articles/articlesdetail.as... Here's a brief excerpt: "Design patent secures for their owner a fourteen-year right to exclude others from making, using, selling or importing the claimed product and, thus, allows time to build up secondary meaning necessary to acquire product design trade dress protection. Trade dress protection can last for as long as product design trade dress remains in use and continues to identify the source of goods to consumers. " And other one on infringement: "Infringement of the design patent is found when an ordinary observer, giving the attention of a purchaser, perceives the patented and the accused designs as substantially the same, in light of the prior art." In the court opinions on Gorham v White (1871): "It is not essential to identity of design that the appearance should be the same to the eye of an expert. If, in the eye of an ordinary observer, giving such attention as a purchaser usually gives, two designs are substantially the same -- if the resemblance is such as to deceive such an observer and sufficient to induce him to purchase one supposing it to be the other -- the one first patented is infringed by the other." This is why if Samsung creates a product whose design is substantially similar to Apple's, then infringement may occur. This is why the jury consists of "ordinary" people who are the right people to make the judgement call. Too many HN readers are complaining that the jurors should be technically minded because they are thinking of utility patents, and not design patents. You also fall in the same boat, but I'm guessing most HN readers don't even realize there is such thing as "design patents" and "trade dress protection". This is why lawyers are paid to do the arguing, while we sit back and yell from the sidelines.
  • dj2stein9 14y ago
    PDA's usually had a few extra buttons because navigation using a stylus was always a bits awkward. If you ever tried scolling a web page using a stylus and scrollbars in Windows Mobile you'd understand why every PDA had a D-pad and a separate home button - it was a neccessity because of the stylus. Apple was simply the first on the market with a touch-driven display, which let them drop the extra navigation buttons. It's not like nobody ever thought of having less buttons. In any case, the invention of removing buttons should not be a patentable idea. The sheer absurdity of all, of Apple's patents is an abomination and makes the US law system look like a carnival.
  • jonknee 14y ago
    The LG Prada pre-dates the iPhone and was actually the first phone to have a capacitive touch screen. It had as many buttons as the infringing Samsung devices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada ). This was noticed at the time of the iPhone launch too: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/11/iphone-and-lg-ke850-separated-at-birth/ http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/11/iphone-and-lg-ke850-separ... This is all silly though, Apple wasn't making the argument based on Samsung making a touch based phone. The arguments were on very small "inventions" like the rubber band effect and double tap to zoom. The design patent wasn't based on the fact that it was touch based, but that it looked like the iPhone (in shape and color). A weird thing to be able to patent if you ask me, but hey. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500273-37/apple-v-samsung-the-infringing-device-scorecard/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500273-37/apple-v-samsun...
    • notatoad 14y ago
      If you read the jury comments though, they made a single decision based on the overall look and feel of the device, and then applied that decision to all the arguments. Essentially, they felt like Samsung had broadly copied apple's look and feel, therefore apple deserved exclusive ownership of things like rubber band, whether they invented it or not.
      • tedunangst 14y ago
        I think that was a part of their decision. If Samsung had come forward and said, "ok, this this and this we copied, but that we didn't" I expect they would have gotten a better response. But the blanket denial killed a lot of their credibility.
    • sjwright 14y ago
      The LG Prada was a feature-phone with a nicer display. If Samsung had released the Prada in 2008, they would have been at zero risk from retaliation by Apple.
      • Nicole060 14y ago
  • nirvana 14y ago
    > if it's not Linux or open source, it bad/wrong/etc. It's ideological. There is a trend in these objections in articles like this and across hacker news. They simply ignore what was unique about the iPhone and trivialize it completely and then pretend like it was obvious all along. Notice the repeated comparisons to stylus based devices as prior art for multi-touch. They don't care about the differences, as long as it takes some sort of touch imput, they can rationalize that Apple never invented anything. I see this as an admission that they know the iPhone was revolutionary but they are making arguments from an ideological, rather than rational perspective. If the iPhone wasn't revolutionary, how did Apple go from selling no phones to the selling the most popular phone in just a few years? They say it was "marketing" and a "slick package" and the "Advantage" of charging "twice the price" --- as if charging more ever was the path to easy sales volume!
    • hazov 14y ago
      > If the iPhone wasn't revolutionary, how did Apple go from selling no phones to the selling the most popular phone in just a few years? People were just enamored with the iPod, it was a good device and people paid to see if Apple would make a good phone as well, which it did.
      • taligent 14y ago
        This makes NO sense what so ever. Apple has had plenty of failures in the past e.g. Cube G4 so it is not the case that people will just blindly "buy and try" Apple products. And the idea that ANYONE is going to spend nearly a thousand dollars and lock themselves into a year long contract just to "see if Apple would make a good phone" is plain and utter lunacy.
        • hazov 14y ago
          Don't you know how to argue without doing this type of argumentation that you so commonly uses in Apple versus Android threads? I am not a Apple or Android fan to argue how the US patent system sucks, or how Android sucks, or how Apple is evil, or how Apple is the only company that innovates, all opinions that I read here on Hacker News from people who generally know nothing about life, people just like me. I am really not into these type of discussion that you appear to be so eager to enter in HN. It's easy to come and say that I am a lunatic, so what's your opinion? Why the iPhone succeeded among the early adopters? Were they all geeks that loved Apple? What about other places that are not the United States in which there's not a Apple store in every major city, do your analysis still stands?
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    • slantyyz 14y ago
      >> Why does Apple deserve protection from being copied when it could easily be argued that they copied or took a lot of inspiration from what came before them? I don't know if they deserve protection, but the IP laws entitle them to it. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the lawsuit or the outcome, but bashing Apple for using existing law in a place like HN is misplaced energy. If we're really outraged about the outcome, we should be hitting the social media channels in large numbers and trying to influence the politicians SOPA-style to get them to change the laws.
  • nirvdrum 14y ago
    Interesting take on "mobile," which is a bit of a fuzzy term. So, I take it you don't consider the wifi-only iPad or the Nexus 7 to be mobile devices? I guess the concept of "mobile Web" has really made things murky.
  • abecedarius 14y ago
    I don't know about your iPhone, but my iPad has four buttons plus a scroll-lock switch.
• ThePherocity 14y ago
  Well, no. You can look at an LCD monitor and say "look, prior art for a tablet" but that doesn't meet the legal meaning and requirements, and nor does this for the purposes of this case. Stop making the argument about Apple vs Google. This is about patents and commercialism. So many fan comments we can't see the forest through the trees.
• arn 14y ago
  Why are PDAs suddenly that weird uncle you never talk about and only see at birthdays? Because they ultimately failed in the market. There was a reason that the Blackberry and Treo type devices became popular. They worked better than the early touchscreen devices. Those early deficiencies left manufacturers gunshy about creating more touchscreen devices. It was combination of hardware issues (resistive, single touch) and also software (graffiti, interface). It was not obvious in 2007 that such a device (full touchscreen, no physical keyboard) would succeed. The early iPhone reviews specifically addressed the keyboard issue, since this was a Blackberry world. Practically all Blackberry fans at the time were saying that the device would fail because you need a physical keyboard. (2007) http://allthingsd.com/20070626/the-iphone-is-breakthrough-handheld-computer/ http://allthingsd.com/20070626/the-iphone-is-breakthrough-ha... The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly.
  • slantyyz 14y ago
    >> It was not obvious in 2007 that such a device (full touchscreen, no physical keyboard) would succeed. Yes. All my Blackberry toting friends were pooh-poohing the notion of a virtual keyboard, and now, the loudest critics among my peers have totally jumped ship, singing a different tune. Regarding PDAs being that "weird uncle"... I've had just about every PDA form-factor going back to the clamshell Sharp Wizards (which had these weird touch panels) in the late 80s to the Newton Messagepad to Windows CE, Palm and eventually Windows Mobile. The iPhone is the first "PDA" that I actually consistently use. The way you used the core features of the phone (contacts and calendar) were vastly better than anything I used prior. Of course, I would have no problem using any "post-iOS" phone OS, which would include Windows Phone, Android and Web OS, but there really is something about the first iPhone UI that made it special. Is it as special today? Not really, but in 2007, yeah, it was pretty revolutionary.
  • qw 14y ago
    >> Why are PDAs suddenly that weird uncle you never talk about and only see at birthdays? > Because they ultimately failed in the market. I have always seen the iPhone as a hybrid product. To call it a phone with PDA functionality, or a PDA with phone capabilities is just semantics in my opinion.
• Nicole060 14y ago
  As someone who has owned a pre-iPhone phone with a touchscreen, and seen another one in the hand of a friend, no, what made the iPhone the iPhone is NOT obvious. For the love of god, my LG Prada was so shitty I had to hit a 2px scrollbar with my thumb to scroll in the contact list. I can't contain the nervous laugh whenever some ignorant who never touched the device link to wikipedia proud of their attempt at mocking Apple. Web browsing on a touchscreen is a real PITA without something like the double tap making a paragraph fit the whole screen automatically too. Like it or not but the iPhone, as a whole package, without just singling out a feature here and there, was a real innovation, a breath of fresh air that opened a new market and has been copied to death by some companies like Samsung. I hated my LG Prada but instantly loved my iPhone the day I bought one and I wasn't anything like an Apple fanboy.
  • mattmcknight 14y ago
    You are basically saying the iPhone was of higher quality- things worked better. This is true, but you can't patent quality.
    • Nicole060 14y ago
      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 on a capacitive screen.
      • voyou 14y ago
        "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.
• batista 14y ago
  >This is a very common trend in this entire debate that saddens me to no end: the iPhone is being compared to simple feature phones, while in fact, it should be compared to its true predecessor: the PDA. PDAs have always done with few buttons. So, 1) having "few" buttons + stylus 2) in a different product category 3) in devices that very few people bought or cared about, means, in Thom's reasoning, that the iPhone was obvious. Meanwhile, let's see the OSNEWS first review of the device, back in the day: (...) And it's innovative too. Everything seems to work via multi-touch, a touchscreen-based input method (...) Searching for the review, I found this gem: >This may seem like a bold statement. Apple's just released iPhone is not only very attractive as we would expect from an Apple product, but includes some impressive features and specifications. It's probably unrealistic to claim that anything currently available on the market competes with this offering. However, is it really a revolution in mobile communication devices? Maybe not if there still is something that can overshadow it, and do it very soon. The thing that would overshadow the iPhone "very soon" was OpenMoko.
  • Terretta 14y ago
    This is the best response to the current "it wasn't really innovative" fad -- going back and quoting the reviews of the time, especially from detractors and skeptics. None were saying the iPhone was just more of the same inside a shiny marketing package.
    • slantyyz 14y ago
      I think the individual pieces of the first iPhone didn't seem innovative to many. The camera was "meh" and didn't do video, the screen wasn't nearly as nice as the VGA screen on my e800, the OS didn't support 3rd party apps, where was 3G?, etc. etc. The thing was that the gestalt of the iPhone was vastly superior to any of its predecessors. They prioritized the right things -- anyone who had a Windows phone who had their phone crash during a call or forgot to quit the camera app and saw their battery die in a hour can attest to that.
      • batista 14y ago
• kristianc 14y ago
  It's interesting that all of the devices that are pictured are turned off. I remember using PDAs back in the day, and they tended to be fiddly affairs with styluses. Sure, you could use touch inputs, but touch input tended to be quite impractical, as the OS on the phone invariably tended to be a modified version of a desktop OS. [1] Ever since the mobile phone was invented, there has been experimentation with form factors. Not all PDAs looked like iPaq's or XDA's. Nokia's Communicator [2] had an iPhone esque interface, but Nokia didn't consider making it touchscreen until well after the release of the iPhone. Surely Apple's innovation - and the one which Samsung has copied - is combining the grid-based icon system (making tap targets much larger), with the few-button-large screen form factor. Because I don't remember PDAs being anywhere near as useful or usable as an iPhone. [1] http://www.uspree.com/reviews/images/stories/hp-ipaq-214-enterprise-handheld-pda.jpg http://www.uspree.com/reviews/images/stories/hp-ipaq-214-ent... [2] http://cdn101.iofferphoto.com/img3/item/116/916/389/nokia-e90-communicator-unlocked-pda-quadband-gsm-auth-23627.jpg http://cdn101.iofferphoto.com/img3/item/116/916/389/nokia-e9...
  • mattmcknight 14y ago
    I used touch on the Treo all of the time, pre-apple, and didn't do too much with a stylus. There was nothing about PalmOS that was desktop based, so your "invariably" statement is a lie. You can't patent a screen size.
  • sjwright 14y ago
    The grid based icon system isn't an innvoation, nor is it even a significant part of the iPhone product -- but it's a key part of the trade dress, which explains why Samsung were so keen to appropriate it. It allowed them to market their phone as seemingly substantially similar to the iPhone. It allowed Samsung to imply "this product is basically the same as that iPhone that everyone's raving about". Customers didn't need to think they were buying an Apple product to be misled.
• rjsamson 14y ago
  One of the big differences as far as PDAs go is that they required a stylus, and the touch was pressure sensitive. It couldn't be used just with your fingers. The iPhone's touchscreen implementation was innovative. I remember quite a lot of debate in the period between the iPhone's announcement and release about weather or not a capacitive touchscreen on a phone would provide a terrible experience. There were a lot of very smart people out there who thought it just wouldn't work (greasy fingerprints came up a lot). At the time, for Apple, putting this kind of UX out there was a huge risk, and a major innovation in the industry. They really nailed it, and in hindsight it, like many other great innovations, seems obvious, but at the time it was far from it. EDIT - here's a quote from a CNET article at the time: "11. Just how useful is the touch screen? The iPhone user interface looks elegant, innovative, and easy-to-use, but is it the best interface for a device like this? Whenever you do anything, the iPhone will command your full visual attention. "No buttons" may be sexy, but it also means you can't do anything without looking at the phone. The iPhone's iPod usability may suffer even worse from the touch screen. Have you ever tried to operate an iPod while it's in your pocket? You can do it, but it's hard. The iPhone will make blind iPod-surfing downright impossible. That said, it looks like the iPhone will eliminate accidental pocket-dialing once and for all." http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9677208-1.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9677208-1.html
• timmyd 14y ago
  This has been spoken about over and over (refer to the heated discussion yesterday which wasn't my intention - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431382 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431382). The core of the article again - looks at the concept of obviousness. Refer here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousn... - "One of the main requirements of patentability is that the invention being patented is not obvious, meaning that a "person having ordinary skill in the art" would not know how to solve the problem at which the invention is directed by using exactly the same mechanism." Predominately - "that obviousness should be determined by looking at the scope and content of the prior art; the level of ordinary skill in the art; the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art; and objective evidence of nonobviousness. In addition, the court outlined examples of factors that show "objective evidence of nonobviousness". They are: commercial success; long-felt but unsolved needs; and failure of others." See also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_35_of_the_United_States_Code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_35_of_the_United_States_C.... Again - this article is attempting to state "oh because PDA existed, that means that everything related to a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious". but again, thats untrue. I still believe - in additional the complex legal arguments - the comment below was one of greatest aspects that changed the lay-persons juror mind. Per the Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny "In those three months, Samsung was able to copy Apple's 4-year investment in the iPhone, without taking any of the risks—because they were copying the world's most successful product ... No one is trying to stop them from selling smartphones, all we're saying is: make your own. Make your own designs, make your own phones, and compete on your own innovations."
  • drats 14y ago
    This is silly, touch screen technology, faster ARM cpus and the rest make these things possible and came from elsewhere. My first computer with a GUI was 100mhz. As soon as smartphones got 600mhz+ and as soon as people get touch screens (foreshadowed endlessly in sci-fi) are you seriously suggesting that if you took a room of fresh graduates from a design school (which is a bar lower than "ordinary skill in the art" as most UI designers have years of experience) and brainstormed for an afternoon that you couldn't come up with all this? There is clear prior art on almost every aspect, it was just a new blend. And that which didn't have prior art was logical evolution (as I said in an earlier comment about phones unlocking + physical slide latch locks + touchscreen... slide to unlock, wow I don't think any designer could have thought of that /s). I'm pretty sure there were mouse-gesture plugins for a couple of browsers before the iphone, forgetting the sci-fi prior art. So you are suggesting someone with a degree in UI design with knowledge of mouse gestures and presented with the problem of making a touch interface with a mobile would not find this obvious?
• jimg2 14y ago
  Such device concepts have existed for decades in sci-fi. In the 90s, if you were thinking to the future of wireless PDAs, they always end in all glass touch screen devices. Apple wins in execution, although one I believe is based on a flawed philosophical understanding. They won the mass market, like McDonalds did for fast food but they didn't invent anything nor does it make it good for you, developers or society. A lot of different things happened, coming together at the right time for Apple to exploit this market. If any corporation put as much critical thought into product design as Steve Jobs and Apple did, I think they'd have the same result. To me, it's not about some innate genius or technology prophet, it's about thinking, being critical of everything and getting people to work their hardest at one single goal.
• w1ntermute 14y ago
  This entire trial was a farce. The jury foreman admitted that they "skipped" prior art because "It was bogging us down."[0] > "Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents," Ilagan said, "it's easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products because it was all the same. Like the trade dress, once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flatscreen with the Bezel...then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel. Seriously? > "We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable." Except the purpose of damages is to compensate the patent holder, not to punish the infringer. And let's not forget that they responded to 700 questions in 2 days. If they worked for 16 hours/day, that's 32×60/700 = 2.7 minutes/question. I find it difficult to believe that a group of highly educated patent lawyers, let alone a group of laymen, most of whom didn't even know what a patent was a month ago, could have come to an equitable decision on all the questions so quickly. The way I see it, Samsung clearly copied many aspects of their phones from the iPhone. That was obviously unethical, but whether it was illegal is much more difficult to determine, particularly when Apple itself copied many aspects of the iPhone from past innovations. I don't like to think of Apple as a pure innovator - I think of them more as an assembler. When they see a market in which all the hardware pieces are available and waiting to be put together, they do that in such a way that the final product appeals to the end-user, particularly through the design of appropriate software. For example, they entered the PMP market when hard drives and batteries were cheap/portable enough to make the iPod a reality. They entered the phone market when capacitive touchscreens were cheap/large enough - their real innovation was on the software side. I don't agree with software patents, but unfortunately that's the current state of things in the US. At the same time, there's little doubt that there was bias towards the "home team" as well, especially when the jurors live so close to Silicon Valley. I was honestly shocked that Samsung didn't overwhelmingly beat Apple in South Korea[1], although the WSJ suggests there was definitely a bias[2]. Samsung's chairman, Lee Kun-hee, has been found guilty in the past of tax evasion, bribing politicians, prosecutors, and judges, and then pardoned for it by the South Korean government. Not surprising when you consider that Samsung generates 20% of South Korea's GDP. 0: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390&repost=1 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390&#3... 1: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/23/3264434/apple-samsung-korea-lawsuit-verdict-announcement http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/23/3264434/apple-samsung-kore... 2: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444230504577613120353094642.html?mod=googlenews_wsj http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044423050457761...
• 001sky 14y ago
  Apple's execution skills enabled them to succeed using an 'obvious strategy'that others couldn't pull off. That does not mean they "invented" the idea/strategy or that it was overly "original" (e.g. the buttons). The true innovation of the iPhone was the global re-thinking of the software of iOs, and its relation to a phone. Recall, it was only 2.5G when it came out, one of the reason for "apps", was bandwidth efficiency, in addition to custon form factor. The misery of surfing flash-enabled desktop websites on 2.5G was not appealing. From there, there was the obvious need to maximize screen real-estate. hence, the elimination of the (physical) buttons. Soft keys, Icons, touch etc. were not per-se innovative in 2007. The adoption of gesture based touch is obvious to anyone who saw Jeff Han in 2006 TED (well before the launch of iPhone). That's not to say apple was not innovative independently. The form factors and underlying tech vary widely. Just some context worth considering.
• drats 14y ago
  Few buttons, PDA. Tablet with news, Knight Ridder tablet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBEtPQDQNcI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBEtPQDQNcI Icons finger sized in a grid. Well given we already had desktops, and given it's a handheld device, then it's insanely obvious to have fewer icons in a grid at finger size. Low resolution screen compared to our desktops, hey maybe we should have fullscreen as the default. Pinch to zoom, multiple sci-fi movies. Slide to unlock. Phones already had something called "unlock', and physical bolt locks already slide... So we make a visualisation of what amounts to a sliding latch when when have the touch screen, pure genius, nobody besides Apple could have thought of that, right? "Trade Dress" to stop competitors should also be entirely illegal unless there is no branding or logo on the phone, or the name is too similar or in some insanely small font. If it has "Samsung" written on it it's insane to argue that anyone would confuse these things. What if these rules applied to TVs, cars or bottles of perfume? Perhaps technically they do, but people have had such things for so long they don't think about them in that way. It's farcical that anything clearly identified as a different product on the box can be subject to such rules. Apple products are like a good classy restaurant or hotel chain. They take ingredients everyone has and put a lot of work into fit and finish, they make the customer feel special for a slightly higher price. And they have a dress code that permits only a certain crowd in there (app store approvals vs. more free entrance policy of other application stores, and by the way apt-get and various frontends to it pre-date the app store). All due respect to them for doing a good job, but Steve Jobs' entitlement complex knew no bounds and there is no moral or logical merit to their claims only a slice of legal merit on the back of stupid laws.
  • mcantelon 14y ago
    >Icons finger sized in a grid. Well given we already had desktops, and given it's a handheld device, then it's insanely obvious to have fewer icons in a grid at finger size. Low resolution screen compared to our desktops, hey maybe we should have fullscreen as the default. PalmOS had icons in a grid looking pretty much the same too.
• varelse 14y ago
  And the Atari Jaguar was both the first 64-bit videogame console and the first videogame console with a GPU. But history is written by the victors... And never mind the Atari STylus demoed in 1991... Never happened...
  • protomyth 14y ago
    Uhm, no. The Atari Jaguar was a 32-bit with a 64-bit bus to memory not 64-bit addressing or registers. It would not be counted as a 64-bit processor particularly since it used a 68000 and its GPU was 32-bit. The Amiga CD32 beat it to market by a month. I would argue the whole Atari game line based on the 400/800 should count, but others peg the Amiga as the first with a GPU. GO Corporation was formed in 1987 and can be read about in the book "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure". Atari was a little late to the game.
    • varelse 14y ago
      Incorrect but don't take my word for it: let's go look at the Tom and Jerry instruction manual at http://www.hillsoftware.com/files/atari/jaguar/jag_v8.pdf http://www.hillsoftware.com/files/atari/jaguar/jag_v8.pdf On page 50 describing the GPU instruction set, you should note right at the top the instruction LOADP which I quote is a: "64-bit memory read. The source register contains a 32-bit byte address, which must be phrase aligned. The destination register will have the low long-word loaded into it, the high long-word is available in the high-half register. This applies to external memory only." Not surprisingly, the companion instruction STOREP is described on page 56. Now let's move on to the the Blitter on page 64: "The tour de force of the Blitter is its ability to generate Gouraud shaded polygons, using Z-buffering, in sixteen bit pixel mode. A lot of the logic in the Blitter is devoted to its ability to create these pixels four at a time, and to write them at a rate limited only by the bus bandwidth" which is also a 64-bit operation. Finally, while conceptually one could argue that the Atari 800 had a GPU (if you consider 4 players and a missile to be such) did the CD32 have direct hardware-assisted support for gouraud shading, texture-mapping (and if you were remotely clever, 64-bit texture mapping), and Z-buffering as the Atari Jaguar did? I don't think so but I'm open to being corrected here. I do think that having such support supports the claim that said Atari Jaguar was the first console with a true GPU.
• dreamdu5t 14y ago
  "Intellectual property" is an oxymoron and the laws are a farce. Information is not property. Property has no objective foundation if you decouple it from tangible or economic scarcity. Samsung stole no property from Apple. Samsung was providing value to the market by responding to the market's demands that were exposed by Apple. The existence of patents distorts economic incentives to divert activity towards patentable inventions.
  • sjwright 14y ago
    It sounds like your problem is with the law, not Apple.
    • gergles 14y ago
      This is farcical reasoning. Apple chose to sue Samsung. They could have not sued them. Therefore, the problem is with Apple, who chose to be the aggressor in a bullshit rounded rectangle lawsuit.
      • veemjeem 14y ago
        I think most HN readers confuse the distinction between "utility" and "design" patents. They feel the rounded rectangle does not provide utility and therefore should not be awarded a patent. If you think rounded rectangles are crazy, you should see the patents filed by Gucci and Chanel. Trademark and copyright will not suffice for protection of design, this is why design patents exist.
      • taligent 14y ago
        Actually Apple has an obligation to defend their patents. And this idea that Apple patented rectangles is just a figment of your imagination. And a sign of your ignorance.
        • learc83 14y ago
          >Actually Apple has an obligation to defend their patents. You're confusing trademarks and patents. You have an obligation to defend trademarks because if you don't you risk dilution. This isn't the case with patents.
• epo 14y ago
  Ultimately this is a religious issue. The frothing anti-Apple hordes will never admit that Apple innovated and will always see Apple as in the wrong because, well, Apple is evil. These people then jump through logical hoops to justify their contortions. The simple truth is that Samsung copied from Apple wholesale. I for one hope the damages get tripled, not because Apple needs the money but because Samsung contributes precisely nothing of value to the market. They are like the idiot kid in class who tries to get ahead by copying the smart kid's work verbatim. Samsung are plagiarists and thieves.
• zoop 14y ago
  Palm devices used a stylus and had text input via a special language at the bottom of the screen. How is this remotely related to the Samsung/Apple patent issues at hand?
• silentscope 14y ago
  I don't want to stir up bad blood, I'm just making a point so don't kill me =). Almost every one of those devices has at least 5 buttons (up, down, left, right center). That's not simple at all. One button is simple. The touch screen on the iphone takes those away so only one is needed. It's the reason the iphone got so dominant--it worked. It's the reason Jobs realized his foray into tableting in the 90s (with development starting in 1987, the first being released in 1993!), the Newton, sucked. He killed it when he realized it wasn't working. The tech wasn't there, when it was, he moved. I know people hate apple, but they need to look at this objectively. this wasn't apples first rodeo--they helped write the book on the PDA market. They're also not suing palm or Visor or HP. Those companies didn't reiterate. Apple did. If you wanna hate, hate being judged by a jury of your peers (you probably shouldn't do that), or our current patent system. And drink some tea or something.
  • gpcz 14y ago
    Jobs was running NeXT during the development of the Newton. Steve Jobs resigned from Apple in late 1985 and became interim CEO in September 1997. He discontinued the Newton project in March 1998 to refocus the company toward profitability again.
    • silentscope 14y ago
      Well color me schooled. Still, I've always had the impression from interviews (just an impression mind you), that it was a dream of his to have a working tablet, but the tech wasn't there. He was thinking about it is the sense I got, but I could be off.
• tzm 14y ago
  PDAs were not cellular devices. Cell phones were not PDAs. The iPhone was the first to converge them.
  • johndrinkwater 14y ago
    You’re not even wrong, there were quite a few PDA+mobile phones many years before the iPhone. Sony Ericsson’s p800 & p900 series was even referred to as PDA Phones.
    • damian2000 14y ago
      I remember the O2 smartphone running some form of windows about 2005/06.
    • tzm 14y ago
      Ah, yes I remember (and forgot about) these devices. Had one myself. I also remember nearly everyone else had no idea what it was and really didn't care. They were cost prohibitive for the mass market.
  • rpeden 14y ago
    The Treo 180g was a cell phone and a PDA with a touch screen and no physical keyboard. In 2002. http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=372&pg=0 http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=372&pg=...
  • voyou 14y ago
    That's nonsense. Ericsson released a combined PDA/phone in 2000, and PalmOS based PDA/phones date back to at least 2002.
  • slantyyz 14y ago
    That's funny, because I had a couple of "pda phones" before I bought my iPhone.
• jsz0 14y ago
  Just to drive the point home: a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious - at least to the millions and millions of happy PDA users. Yet somehow they look so different you could never confuse them for an iPhone while Samsung also agrees it's obvious but many of their devices look very much like an iPhone. I think the author is unintentionally proving Apple's point.
• noonespecial 14y ago
  The first time I saw an iPhone, I thought to myself "oh, finally an Jornada that actually works". The number of buttons, layout of those buttons and placement of audio and charge jacks on the iPhone and the HP Jornada are nearly identical. The home button is in the same place. The volume buttons are on the top left side. It was a perfect match. That apple had a stack of jornadas stashed in the back that they were "improving" seemed so damn obvious, I thought that was the point of the whole iPhone schtick.
  • justincormack 14y ago
    Apple's products derive a lot from the look and feel of other products eg http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secr...
• dakimov 14y ago
  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?
• ck2 14y ago
  Jury foreman owns a patent he can now sue Apple for, seriously. This whole trial was a complete mockery, regardless which side you believed was right.
• mikecane 14y ago
  The iPhone also used the same 320x480 screen resolution of some PDAs. http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2007/06/iphone-vs-lifed.html http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2007/06/iphone-vs-...
• BenoitEssiambre 14y ago
  Also see openmoko (2006): http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Cheap-hackable-Linux-smartphone-due-soon/ http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Cheap-hackable-Linux... "The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card. Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad -- in this case, an ultra-high resolution 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 480) touchscreen. "Maps look stunning on this screen," Moss-Pultz said. The phone features an A-GPS (assisted GPS) receiver module connected to the application processor via a pair of UARTs. The commercial module has a closed design, but the API is apparently open. Similarly, the phone's quad-band GSM/GPRS module, built by FIC, runs the proprietary Nucleus OS on a Texas Instruments baseband powered by an ARM7 core. It communicates with Linux over a serial port, using standard "AT" modem commands. The Neo1973 will charge when connected to a PC via USB. It will also support USB network emulation, and will be capable of routing a connected PC to the Internet, via its GPRS data connection. [...] Moss-Pultz adds, "Applications are the ringtones of the future." [...] As for additional software components, Moss-Pultz admits, "Quite a lot is there, and quite a lot is not there. We're hoping to change this." In addition to a dialer, phonebook, media player, and application manager, the stack will likely include the Minimo browser [...] He adds, "Mobile phones are the PCs of the 21st century, in terms of processing power and broadband network access. " Looks familiar? I personally have always thought the iPhone was Apple taking the openmoko idea and running with it. EDIT: added details
  • berkut 14y ago
    Yeah. Unfortunately, the hardware was atrocious, and despite the awesome work OpenedHand (now part of Intel) did on the interface apps, it wasn't that great even back then. However, they did have a wiki page for some of the design back in 2006 showing pinch-to-zoom.
  • vvhn 14y ago
    >I personally have always thought the iPhone was Apple taking the openmoko idea and running with it. From the linked article, " Cheap, hackable Linux smartphone due soon By Linux Devices 2006-11-07 " Presumably that means this was 7th November 2006. So, in exactly 2 months ( on January 9th 2007) , Apple was able to design a prototype based on this concept, write all the software and demo it onstage ?
• DanBC 14y ago
  Grids of icons are pretty obvious too - even on portable devices. Palm Pilot had 3x4, in 1996. It's interesting to see the row of buttons at the bottom of the screen. Samsung clearly is influenced by that styling, rather than the single button on the iPhone.
• pooriaazimi 14y ago
  Turn those phones/PDAs on and we'll see how "similar" to iPhone they were. I just can't believe how some OpenSource-loving people could go soooo much astray and become total jerks who twist the facts just to prove their point.
• pinaceae 14y ago
  Ever notice how Jony Ive looks nothing like a Googler? This whole trainwreck of a discussion is fed IMHO by the big rift between common, male IT-oriented folks and the rest of the population around visuals, aestethics and yes, concepts like fashion. Sit in the cantina of any company and you can tell who is development/IT. Neckbeards? Socks in sandals? Leather cowboy hats? Attachments on their belts? Unshapely bodies? Aestethics do exist in that other group. Good code, clever algorithms, etc. Fashion too, in forms of buzzwords and technologies du jour. DjangoRailsHadoop... But visual aestethics? Nope, nada, utter incomprehension. The utter genious of Jobs was to bring the aestethics of the outer world into software and computer hardware. Design already existed in other industries, see Braun, Sony, etc but no one applied it to software. Because "nerds" didn't even understand it. See it. Grok it. These Samsung vs Apple debates show this faultline. No comprehension at all why a particular implementation of multi touch should matter, be worth something. It is all obvious, just UI, the thing you slap on top of your awesome program. Why should it matter how it LOOKS?! How can that be so important? Didn't the LG Prada looks exactly the same? Ok, it used scrollbars, but why is that different to how iOS does it? Whenever someone claims that Apple's success is just about marketing, nothing relevant in their products themselves. Whenever it's just off the shelf components they took and re-arranged, super simple and OBVIOUS, I can't help to think about blind people arguing about the uselessness of colors.
  • hammersend 14y ago
    "Ever notice how Jony Ive looks nothing like a Googler?" What the f is this shit? This guy:https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UxbxdEwXL7Y/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAHIo/BNZ0hDLhBbQ/s250-c-k/photo.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UxbxdEwXL7Y/AAAAAAAAAAI/A... is the counterpart to Jony Ive. And that goes for the rest of your head-in-your-ass bigotry.
    • veemjeem 14y ago
      Hey, be civil -- no name calling if you disagree. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • pinaceae 14y ago
• podperson 14y ago
  All those devices had a STYLUS and if the writer were being honest he might have mentioned that the original such devices were the grid and newton and that john Sculley coined the term PDA.
• stevewilhelm 14y ago
  One thing people fail to realize, any information not submitted as evidence during the trial, may not be considered by the jury in their deliberations. This includes prior knowledge or experiences of any given juror. So if these PDA's were not submitted as evidence by Samsung, they could not be taken into account when the jury decided their verdict.
• jarjoura 14y ago
  Yeah, it's obvious now, because it's so beautiful and simple. That's the magic of the iPhone, how obvious it all seems now that it's staring you in the face. I have no doubt that Samsung, Microsoft, Palm, Google, et. al, were all headed down a similar path, but no one was willing to break from the past. People wanted/begged for a physical keyboard, people wanted/begged for the fastest 3G connection, etc. Apple wasn't bound to that past and yes they had hindsight to make something compelling. Plus they had to come up with something that would immediately separate themselves from the other devices. In fact, this desire to be unique amongst all other smartphones led to these defendable iPhone traits. What Apple was defending wasn't minimalist capacitive touch devices, no, they are protecting the unique attributes that define what an iPhone experience should be. Take away the physical hardware for a minute and compare only the software of the phones. You still should tell which one is an iPhone versus something else. It's those features that Apple needs to protect. Bouncing scroll that stays glued to your fingers, etc.
• alexwolfe 14y ago
  Considering how much money was spent on both sides, I'm certain any aspect that would have helped Samsung was researched and considered. After many months of deliberation and arguments from both sides, the verdict is very clear, they are guilty. We would all like to think that this case was simple and the jury was out to lunch. The facts however don't seem to support that. It was a long case, with mountains of evidence, covering a variety of copyright issues. It's also clear from the decision and statements made by Samsung Executives that they don't feel that their appeal to this case will be successful.
• confluence 14y ago
  My dad: Apple just won right? Me: No - they just lost big time - Apple is done. Dad: Wait - What? They just won the court case and got a billion dollars to boot. Me: That doesn't matter - Samsung won. Dad: Explain. Me: As soon as you have to sue your competition to remain competitive - you're done. Apple did the same thing with Microsoft in the nineties. Furthermore, Samsung builds not only many of Apple products - it's also leading the charge with the explosive growth of Android - open systems always win in the long run. Dad: So Apple is done? Me: Yeah - I sold my Apple stock after this very short case finished up. Funny thing is - the new CEO will be blamed for the fall set up by Steve Jobs - a damn shame if you ask me.
  • taligent 14y ago
    Apple is the most successful IT company in the world and they are the most profitable in the phone industry and have the greatest market share in the tablet and music player industries. So not sure how you come up with this ludicrous idea that they can't compete. Also "open systems" always win ? Linux would like a word with you.
    • confluence 14y ago
      Don't you think I know that? I've owned their stock since 08. But the past isn't what matters - but chances for future growth. Success always comes before the fall - Apple can either stabilise or fall. They will fall. Linux won - Android is Linux. Consumer electronics are Linux. Servers are Linux. Everything runs on Linux. Microsoft is done. Google wins. I own Google now.
      • veemjeem 14y ago
        I wouldn't exactly confuse Google with Linux. They're linked because of Android, but if some company innovated on the search engine front and took Google's monopoly, Google would be in a rough spot. Linux was winning before Google arrived, and Google still would've won had they used BSD instead. Nobody cares what OS is running underneath google.com
• pippy 14y ago
  Samsung ripped off Apples design, there's no excusing this: http://i.imgur.com/qN6n9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/qN6n9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/FJkZE.png http://i.imgur.com/FJkZE.png They're clearly in the wrong here. It's not about the fundamental form factor of the devices, it's about blatant plagiarism. Apple's designs are aren't perfect, and instead of perfecting or improving the devices (which would be better for consumers), they simply didn't think about it. Shame on you Samsung.
  • electromagnetic 14y ago
    I don't think you have any understanding on the meaning of patent infringement, or unethical behaviour because you're misunderstanding the former for the latter. Resemblance is not illegal as long as it is not used to mislead someone into buying the product. No one is going to be misled into buying a Samsung instead of an iPhone, by the charger/headphones or even the phone itself. So resemblance is meaningless in this case. The rounded corners complaint is so ludicrous it baffles cognitive function. Early blackberries and other full-keyboard phones resembled the same form factor as current smart phones including the iPhone. Notably rectangular with rounded edges. The large screen with minimal buttons was so evident it was going to happen that it was in star trek decades before the normal person realized it would even be possible. Yet, I used an LCD graphics tablet as a touch screen tablet years before the iPhone or iPod touch were released. Funnily enough that graphic tab had a large screen and one button on the front. Claim infringement and samsungs wrong doing all you want, but the precursors to the iPhone were laying around everywhere. Apple was just the first to put them together. Apple has faired far better than most other technology companies introducing new devices by having a loyal user base of early adopters and advocates. I don't know a single apple fanboy who doesn't want to be first to get a brand new product, and want to talk my ear off about it. Being biggest does not make you the first to design something, nor does it make you right. I don't even know what my iPhone looks like because it's been in an otterbox since I got it due to my working outside. Given the iPhones ridiculous sales figures for cases and the purposeful design of the phones to support snap-on cases, the design is a completely moot point. Over half of people I see with an iPhone have a case on it, in fact probably more than half.
• jaimzob 14y ago
  Oh god, an OSNews article from Thom Holwerda about how "obvious" the iPhone was is now top of Hacker News? How long do I need to switch the internet off for to restore sanity?
• bpatrianakos 14y ago
  No one is trying to rewrite history. We all know about the PDA style designs of the early 2000's. Thing is, Apple's designs were still nothing like anything people had seen. The picture in the post is actually proving my own point, not the OP's. That photo also illustrates how the same design concept can be made without blatant copying. All those phones and PDAs have the big-screen-couple-button design style but still look like entirely different models of devices. Even post-iPhone devices all look different while still retaining their heritage with the exception of the Samsung devices in question. It doesn't take an expert in technology, patents, phones, or any expert at all to see that after the iPhone debuted, a lot of Samsung phones started to look a lot more iPhone-like. Everything from the materials, to the colors, to the shape, and even custom changes to the Android UI all closely mimicked the iPhone. The idea was to get regular folks confused into either thinking they were buying the iPhone or make them think they were buying the equivalent of one. Now, regular folks often do think all smartphones look alike but when you walk into a phone store those same people can tell that those phones are made by different companies. They can at least differentiate between the lookalike phones to the point where they understand they're not all the exact same phone. What Samsung tried to do is blur the lines even further to the point where those normal folks who were looking for an iPhone could potentially get confused into thinking they were buying one because of the way they pretty much cloned the iPhone. The patent system may be fucked but what Samsung was doing was wrong and patents were the best tool Apple could use to send a meaningful message and get them to stop. This case isn't all that good to argue the shortcomings of the patent system. There's too much biased information about it out there and everyone tends to just defend their camp. It turns into a Apple v. Android argument in the end. If you want to argue patents then argue patents. The fact is, Apple held patents, Samsung infringed, and justice was done. You can argue whether the patents should have been granted or not but you can't say Apple shouldnt have won because the patents should have never been granted. Too late. They already were.
• reddelicious 14y ago
  Apple does not copy. It's against their "values". Apple steals. Starting with Xerox PARC and continuing to this day. What do they steal? User interface design and code. Why do they steal? Because Apple is a _hardware_ company who aims to compete with (and now aims to control) software developers. It started with trying to compete with Microsoft and it continues to this day. To discover where Apple's interfaces come from one needs only to do the requisite research. But it seems people have an aversion to doing such research - it's work, after all - while they have little aversion to passively being the targets of Apple's high-priced marketing and advertising. It's easier just to sit back and let Apple control the show. Show us the "future", Apple. The ideas that are not new, but which others have been developing for years, that you have now stolen and claimed as your own. Interface designs that simply "did not exist" until you adopted them and slapped on the familar Apple logo. I love Apple hardware. It looks great. I'd even pay higher prices for it. In fact, I have. Many years ago. But that's as far as it goes. Apple's software and interfaces have little value to me. And when Apple tries to restrict what code I can run on their hardware, it lowers the value of the product. I lose interest, no matter how slick the hardware design. It's inflexible. And that defeats all the fun of using a computer. Apple has reached the point of diminishing returns for me. It's not worth it to buy their new stuff anymore. According to Apple fanboys, the number of other users who think this way is so small that Apple can disregard any user preferences for flexibility. This is even worse than Microsoft.
  • mcclux 14y ago
    Actually, Apple licensed Xerox's UI and compensated them with pre-IPO options.
  • damian2000 14y ago
    Disclaimer: I don't have any iOS devices. But AFAIK as a developer you can load anything you want onto your personal device including C/C++ and Ruby code. Check out the Marmalade game engine for example - pure C/C++ for iOS. Getting it published it on the app store is another matter however.
• Steko 14y ago
  Maybe all the people with slam-dunk morning after arguments should have sent them to Samsung's large, professional, highly paid and presumably competent legal staff. Or maybe these arguments are all bullshit. Would the jury really have found these to infringe the iphone design (assume they were released later)? I'm going to say, clearly, no. Right off the bat none of them have black faces with equally rounded corners. That sort of gives away the game right there. But let's imagine any one of those devices in this exhibit: http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/087-e1345854689999.png http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/087-e... http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/677-e1345854925482.png http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/677-e...
• danbmil99 14y ago
  The obvious question is, why didn't /couldn't Samsung point to this obvious prior art and get the point across to the jury? Damn I wish I had been on that jury, I would have loved infuriating everyone by hanging for a full acquittal.
• thewileyone 14y ago
  Basically, Apple got the jury that they wanted, ignorant and unwilling to understand the consequences of their decision.
• alttab 14y ago
  When I was 13 and encountered my first PDA (which is essentially a computer, even back then). I said "they should just attach a phone to this and be done with it." I WAS 13! It was most certainly obvious.