3 ms·

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 sty

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.

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.