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The groklaw quotes were taken out of context. As far as I can tell, there's no evidence from those quotes that they skipped prior art, so much as skipped the ta

The groklaw quotes were taken out of context. As far as I can tell, there's no evidence from those quotes that they skipped prior art, so much as skipped the task to move forward on others before circling back around to it. > 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. Really? All Apple does is pick up the legos and put them together? Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative.

corin_ 14y ago
> All Apple does it pick up the legos and put them together? That's how I think of them, and it's what I have great respect to them for. It can be worded to sound like a putdown, but in my opinion it should be considered a compliment.
- H_L 14y ago
  Maybe not a putdown, but it's silly to view Apple's defining characteristic as their ability to assemble a device from available parts. If that ability is what makes them successful, then their rival phone manufacturers should be even more successful since they often use faster processors and bigger screens and more RAM than Apple.
  - corin_ 14y ago
    It's not about the ability to put them together, it's about deciding what to put together, when to do it, how to market it and of course a big part: what software to put on it. I'd never say "all Apple do is" about this, just that it is what they do, and they do it better than anyone else.
    - nirvana 14y ago
      Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them. And having seen them, other companies can't replicate them well at all because they don't do the research. Calling them a lego assembler ignores all the real innovation they do.
      - ktizo 14y ago
        Bespoke touch oriented UI systems have been around for a very long time, some of them surprisingly sophisticated and innovative. A mate of mine used to do interfaces for touchscreen information kiosks, for instance.
        joezydeco 14y ago
        100% agree. I used a touchscreen kiosk back in 1982 at EPCOT. It wasn't resistive, could have been capacitive, probably was infrared or surface-wave.
        nirvana 14y ago
        And thus it is completely irrelevant to this discussion. You're making the "graham invented the telephone so there was nothing invented to make the cellphone" error.
        regularfry 14y ago
        Except it's not irrelevant, because the user doesn't care whether it's capacitive, infra-red, or little gnomes perched on top of the screen translating your finger movements into magic spells. Apple didn't invent capacitive screens, nor did they invent multitouch. They packaged them cleverly and used what leverage they had at the time to force the price down.
        nirvana 14y ago
        Right and Graham invented the telephone so there was no inventions going into making the cellphone.
- greedo 14y ago
  I think of Apple like a great chef. Sure other cooks can use the same ingredients, but it all matters on the ratios, the temperature, the process etc. to come up with a stunning dish. And then Apple finds new ingredients that they integrate into their cuisine.
  - schraeds 14y ago
    I find many similarities to cooking and project management. Apple's success, and the level of polish, are a testament to skills along these lines. The components maybe commoditized just like ingredients available to anyone cooking. How to treat those ingredients is what determines greatness.
- esolyt 14y ago
  Yes, they pick up hardware and put them together. Why do you consider this as an insult to Apple? I don't think anybody implied what they are doing is easy. Obviously it isn't. If it were, anybody would easily be able to create a great product.
  - nirvana 14y ago
    My comment was in reference to iOS which was not hardware and was not off the shelf. Looking at the hardware, much of the hardware in Apple devices is invented or at least designed by Apple. It is custom, not off the shelf. From the A5 to the unibody machining for the (alleged) next iPhone.
    - esolyt 14y ago
      In terms of software, I agree. iOS was revolutionary. In terms of hardware, I disagree. None of the hardware on Apple devices have been invented. The fact that they are specifically produced for Apple doesn't mean they were invented. We can't count A5 as invention because most ARM licensees design their own SoCs anyway. Samsung's Exynos isn't an invention either, it's just another ARM SoC. But if, for instance, Apple manufactured/designed a new kind of display (like Samsung's AMOLED) then that would count as inventing something hardware wise.
manveru 14y ago
Turing machine in Lego (no mindstorm). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W08poVdPTGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W08poVdPTGo Not that I'm a fan of Apple, but putting things together nicely is pretty damn valuable and innovative.
RegEx 14y ago
> Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative. It'd be disingenuous to claim that no subsets of people, on HN and elsewhere, twist reality to fit an Apple hero narrative. Looks like people just have different points of view.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
Have you read the jury Forman's own patent? It seems like he's got elite skills in the ignoring prior art department.
jasonlotito 14y ago
> As far as I can tell, there's no evidence from those quotes that they skipped prior art, Except the actual quotes. > so much as skipped the task to move forward on others before circling back around to it. So they skipped it. Whether they came back to it is somewhat pointless. That they skipped an earlier question means that later questions were based on uninformed assumptions about patents. > Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative. As opposed to what, suggesting in one sentence that they didn't skip the question, and then saying they did skip it but came back later, as if they are fundamentally the same? They aren't. Even the juror's admit that the ordering of questions was important to their verdict. Suggesting otherwise is silly.
- flatline3 14y ago
  You're inventing a false narrative, whole cloth.
  - KirinDave 14y ago
    They said exactly what was claimed. Grep for for "bogged" and read again. Then again, maybe that's not what he meant to say. Because as read, these quotes suggest some pretty absurd things.
    - flatline3 14y ago
      That would be because they're selectively quoted, out of context, by a biased party.
      - jasonlotito 14y ago
        What part is out of context? The fact that they skipped the question? The fact that you admitted they did as well? They said they skipped the question. They skipped the question. The contention was they skipped the question. You disagreed, and then agreed. You are acting the part of a troll, and being purposefully obtuse, and dishonest.
      - 14y ago
brc 14y ago
>Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative. Makes a change from all the Microsoft bashing. Hard to fit a $ into Apple, though. A$$le maybe? Apple might not have discovered or invented everything (macintosh GUI case in point). But Jobs and Apple in general have a habit of discovering useful technologies and commercialising them. It's a hindcasting mistake to say 'oh, well it was obvious that GUIs or iPhone style screens were always going to happen'. Well, if it was so obvious, why is Apple continually breaking new ground? The answer is that there are literally millions of good ideas that don't go anywhere. To pick some out, commercialise them, make them work and deliver for an affordable price. Well, that's innovation. Egads. I sound like an Apple fanboi. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. But I'm tired of seeing the army of cutters heading for Apples tall poppy.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  "Well, if it was so obvious, why is Apple continually breaking new ground?" Herds. More specifically group thinking and risk aversion. I can't say I really admire Steve Jobs but what I completely believe was that Steve's willingness to say "my way or the highway" on very very risky decisions and directions is the entire source of Apples "innovation." This trial, and the documentation around the web about prior art, brought that into absolutely stark relief. I claim that any competent design and engineering group that was asked to make a 'smartphone' with the requirements Steve laid out for it, would have come up with something very much like the iPhone. However, there was no CEO in the world except Steve who had the balls to invest the company into those requirements. Look at Tesla (the car company) and Elon Musk. GM could have made the car that Tesla built on the assembly line they used to build the EV1 but they didn't have the balls to commit to it. If you watch the Bloomberg video [1] it is absolutely clear that one of two things was going to happen, either Tesla was going to ship a car, or Elon was going to go broke. And in being so committed to his own vision of what needed to be done, he dragged a bunch of naysayers along. Palm had proven people would buy a PDA with 'apps' and carry it around. RIM had proven that people would pay to have a phone they could send and receive email from. None of the 'big' players (Sony, Ericsson, Nokia, RIM, Palm) was ready to commit to making a phone where "phoneness" was a peer of "PDAness." So there were tenative steps pushed out there that were evolutionary on the existing products. A blackberry with some Palm features, Sony's phone with the touch screen, all that stuff you see that existed prior to the iPhone. And one of the things you get when you are tentative, is timidity. A general sense that this can't possibly work, or that the chance of it working is really low. And people trying to protect their careers or their reputations won't say "We do it this way or else." They are not fearless. And for good reason, they've got kids that will go to college, spouses who expect steady employment, a 401k, a retirement plan. It is a really really hard conversation to have with your boss to say "I want to spend $100M on developing a product that you have to take my word for it will be awesome." The answer is, almost always, "Why the f*ck should I do that?" But Steve (and through him Apple) did just that. Just like Musk put into production a $100,000 all electric sports car. And when Apple proved that it wasn't a stupid idea to make a portable computer that made phone calls, the rest of the world was now free to act without fear that the idea was stupid, after all Apple made it work right? And sticking as close to the Apple 'formula' as possible was the safe bet. That is why I don't think Apple will do it again, I don't think Tim Cook is able to make that kind of leap. Elon can, but he's already running two other companies. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184-elon-musk-profiled-bloomberg-risk-takers.html http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184-elon-musk-profiled-b...
chacham15 14y ago
I think that you and jasonlotito are talking past one another. Lets assume that the following are the questions: 1. Looking at prior art, did Apple create original Patents X, Y, Z? 2. Did Samsung violate Patent X, Y, Z? 3. Which phones violate the patent? 4. How much money should Apple get for each violation? If you instead answer the questions as follows: 1. Samsung violated Patents Y and Z 2. Phones X, Y, Z violate patents Y and Z 3. Apple should get $X, $Y, and $Z for each phone. 4. The prior art does indicate that Apple did not create an original product. The ordering of those answers leaves out important information for the decision on previous questions. In this case most importantly: that the prior art has a bearing on whether or not Samsung actually violated Apples patents. >"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down." ... "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 This is the evidence to support that conclusion. From: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390
tomkin 14y ago
> Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative. They are just as guilty as any other hardware/software manufacturer which tries to stifle human progress in the name of ego. Let me provide my perspective, as flawed as it may be. In 2006, Nintendo released the Wii. To those who don't know, it, for better or worse (re)introduced motion within the context of video games. Immediately, Microsoft (Xbox) and Sony (PlayStation) criticized the Wii's motion controls – deeming them "childish" and "not what gamers want". Today, we know how that story played out. We have PS3 Move and Xbox Kinect. At the time, I had hoped and dreamed that Nintendo would sue and strike back at Sony and Microsoft (not sure if they had the grounds to, mind you). I didn't want Microsoft and Sony to benefit from Nintendo's genius, especially after they essentially deemed motion control as a ludicrous novelty. Today, Microsoft Kinect is making all sorts of cool innovations possible – not Nintendo. But in 2009, I would have been happy to hear that Microsoft would have no right to create Kinect. What a lousy outcome that would have been. Kinect, as a technology, is a benefit to a collective of people – and I was a dink to believe another outcome would have been better. Chalk it up to being a Nintendo fanboy. Today I'd be incredibly angry if Nintendo had the power to overturn, punish or fracture the Kinect technology. And watching Apple fanboys defend a system that essentially holds us all back is incredibly painful to watch. Apple has created a contemporary masterpiece and it is now the baseline for which all better technology evolves. What happens if you get your way and no one can build in the direction that is proven to work? Stagnation. Thanks for that.
- flatline3 14y ago
  Microsoft and Sony didn't copy Nintendo outright. Stagnation. That's what you get when people duplicate ideas instead of leading with their own.
  - tomkin 14y ago
    > Stagnation. That's what you get when people duplicate ideas instead of leading with their own. Right. So the guy who invented the cell phone shouldn't have "copied" the guy who invented the cordless phone. Oh, and the guy who invented the touch screen phone shouldn't be able to make it because the guy who invented the cell phone (which can't exist because of the guy who made the cordless phone says "No") doesn't want someone to make a touchscreen phone. That's stagnation and that's what you're promoting here. You're just splitting hairs by narrowing the focus to rounded corners, # of buttons, etc. Truth be told, there are no original inventions here. Apple's products are evolutions of previous hardware created by others – let's not forget that.

corin_ 14y ago

> All Apple does it pick up the legos and put them together? That's how I think of them, and it's what I have great respect to them for. It can be worded to sound like a putdown, but in my opinion it should be considered a compliment.

H_L 14y ago
Maybe not a putdown, but it's silly to view Apple's defining characteristic as their ability to assemble a device from available parts. If that ability is what makes them successful, then their rival phone manufacturers should be even more successful since they often use faster processors and bigger screens and more RAM than Apple.
- corin_ 14y ago
  It's not about the ability to put them together, it's about deciding what to put together, when to do it, how to market it and of course a big part: what software to put on it. I'd never say "all Apple do is" about this, just that it is what they do, and they do it better than anyone else.
  - nirvana 14y ago
    Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them. And having seen them, other companies can't replicate them well at all because they don't do the research. Calling them a lego assembler ignores all the real innovation they do.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      Bespoke touch oriented UI systems have been around for a very long time, some of them surprisingly sophisticated and innovative. A mate of mine used to do interfaces for touchscreen information kiosks, for instance.
      - joezydeco 14y ago
        100% agree. I used a touchscreen kiosk back in 1982 at EPCOT. It wasn't resistive, could have been capacitive, probably was infrared or surface-wave.
        nirvana 14y ago
        And thus it is completely irrelevant to this discussion. You're making the "graham invented the telephone so there was nothing invented to make the cellphone" error.
        regularfry 14y ago
        Except it's not irrelevant, because the user doesn't care whether it's capacitive, infra-red, or little gnomes perched on top of the screen translating your finger movements into magic spells. Apple didn't invent capacitive screens, nor did they invent multitouch. They packaged them cleverly and used what leverage they had at the time to force the price down.
      - nirvana 14y ago
        Right and Graham invented the telephone so there was no inventions going into making the cellphone.
greedo 14y ago
I think of Apple like a great chef. Sure other cooks can use the same ingredients, but it all matters on the ratios, the temperature, the process etc. to come up with a stunning dish. And then Apple finds new ingredients that they integrate into their cuisine.
- schraeds 14y ago
  I find many similarities to cooking and project management. Apple's success, and the level of polish, are a testament to skills along these lines. The components maybe commoditized just like ingredients available to anyone cooking. How to treat those ingredients is what determines greatness.
esolyt 14y ago
Yes, they pick up hardware and put them together. Why do you consider this as an insult to Apple? I don't think anybody implied what they are doing is easy. Obviously it isn't. If it were, anybody would easily be able to create a great product.
- nirvana 14y ago
  My comment was in reference to iOS which was not hardware and was not off the shelf. Looking at the hardware, much of the hardware in Apple devices is invented or at least designed by Apple. It is custom, not off the shelf. From the A5 to the unibody machining for the (alleged) next iPhone.
  - esolyt 14y ago
    In terms of software, I agree. iOS was revolutionary. In terms of hardware, I disagree. None of the hardware on Apple devices have been invented. The fact that they are specifically produced for Apple doesn't mean they were invented. We can't count A5 as invention because most ARM licensees design their own SoCs anyway. Samsung's Exynos isn't an invention either, it's just another ARM SoC. But if, for instance, Apple manufactured/designed a new kind of display (like Samsung's AMOLED) then that would count as inventing something hardware wise.

manveru 14y ago

Turing machine in Lego (no mindstorm). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W08poVdPTGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W08poVdPTGo Not that I'm a fan of Apple, but putting things together nicely is pretty damn valuable and innovative.

RegEx 14y ago

> Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative. It'd be disingenuous to claim that no subsets of people, on HN and elsewhere, twist reality to fit an Apple hero narrative. Looks like people just have different points of view.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago

Have you read the jury Forman's own patent? It seems like he's got elite skills in the ignoring prior art department.

jasonlotito 14y ago

> As far as I can tell, there's no evidence from those quotes that they skipped prior art, Except the actual quotes. > so much as skipped the task to move forward on others before circling back around to it. So they skipped it. Whether they came back to it is somewhat pointless. That they skipped an earlier question means that later questions were based on uninformed assumptions about patents. > Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative. As opposed to what, suggesting in one sentence that they didn't skip the question, and then saying they did skip it but came back later, as if they are fundamentally the same? They aren't. Even the juror's admit that the ordering of questions was important to their verdict. Suggesting otherwise is silly.

flatline3 14y ago
You're inventing a false narrative, whole cloth.
- KirinDave 14y ago
  They said exactly what was claimed. Grep for for "bogged" and read again. Then again, maybe that's not what he meant to say. Because as read, these quotes suggest some pretty absurd things.
  - flatline3 14y ago
    That would be because they're selectively quoted, out of context, by a biased party.
    - jasonlotito 14y ago
      What part is out of context? The fact that they skipped the question? The fact that you admitted they did as well? They said they skipped the question. They skipped the question. The contention was they skipped the question. You disagreed, and then agreed. You are acting the part of a troll, and being purposefully obtuse, and dishonest.
    - 14y ago

brc 14y ago

>Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative. Makes a change from all the Microsoft bashing. Hard to fit a $ into Apple, though. A$$le maybe? Apple might not have discovered or invented everything (macintosh GUI case in point). But Jobs and Apple in general have a habit of discovering useful technologies and commercialising them. It's a hindcasting mistake to say 'oh, well it was obvious that GUIs or iPhone style screens were always going to happen'. Well, if it was so obvious, why is Apple continually breaking new ground? The answer is that there are literally millions of good ideas that don't go anywhere. To pick some out, commercialise them, make them work and deliver for an affordable price. Well, that's innovation. Egads. I sound like an Apple fanboi. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. But I'm tired of seeing the army of cutters heading for Apples tall poppy.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
"Well, if it was so obvious, why is Apple continually breaking new ground?" Herds. More specifically group thinking and risk aversion. I can't say I really admire Steve Jobs but what I completely believe was that Steve's willingness to say "my way or the highway" on very very risky decisions and directions is the entire source of Apples "innovation." This trial, and the documentation around the web about prior art, brought that into absolutely stark relief. I claim that any competent design and engineering group that was asked to make a 'smartphone' with the requirements Steve laid out for it, would have come up with something very much like the iPhone. However, there was no CEO in the world except Steve who had the balls to invest the company into those requirements. Look at Tesla (the car company) and Elon Musk. GM could have made the car that Tesla built on the assembly line they used to build the EV1 but they didn't have the balls to commit to it. If you watch the Bloomberg video [1] it is absolutely clear that one of two things was going to happen, either Tesla was going to ship a car, or Elon was going to go broke. And in being so committed to his own vision of what needed to be done, he dragged a bunch of naysayers along. Palm had proven people would buy a PDA with 'apps' and carry it around. RIM had proven that people would pay to have a phone they could send and receive email from. None of the 'big' players (Sony, Ericsson, Nokia, RIM, Palm) was ready to commit to making a phone where "phoneness" was a peer of "PDAness." So there were tenative steps pushed out there that were evolutionary on the existing products. A blackberry with some Palm features, Sony's phone with the touch screen, all that stuff you see that existed prior to the iPhone. And one of the things you get when you are tentative, is timidity. A general sense that this can't possibly work, or that the chance of it working is really low. And people trying to protect their careers or their reputations won't say "We do it this way or else." They are not fearless. And for good reason, they've got kids that will go to college, spouses who expect steady employment, a 401k, a retirement plan. It is a really really hard conversation to have with your boss to say "I want to spend $100M on developing a product that you have to take my word for it will be awesome." The answer is, almost always, "Why the f*ck should I do that?" But Steve (and through him Apple) did just that. Just like Musk put into production a $100,000 all electric sports car. And when Apple proved that it wasn't a stupid idea to make a portable computer that made phone calls, the rest of the world was now free to act without fear that the idea was stupid, after all Apple made it work right? And sticking as close to the Apple 'formula' as possible was the safe bet. That is why I don't think Apple will do it again, I don't think Tim Cook is able to make that kind of leap. Elon can, but he's already running two other companies. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184-elon-musk-profiled-bloomberg-risk-takers.html http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184-elon-musk-profiled-b...

chacham15 14y ago

I think that you and jasonlotito are talking past one another. Lets assume that the following are the questions: 1. Looking at prior art, did Apple create original Patents X, Y, Z? 2. Did Samsung violate Patent X, Y, Z? 3. Which phones violate the patent? 4. How much money should Apple get for each violation? If you instead answer the questions as follows: 1. Samsung violated Patents Y and Z 2. Phones X, Y, Z violate patents Y and Z 3. Apple should get $X, $Y, and $Z for each phone. 4. The prior art does indicate that Apple did not create an original product. The ordering of those answers leaves out important information for the decision on previous questions. In this case most importantly: that the prior art has a bearing on whether or not Samsung actually violated Apples patents. >"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down." ... "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 This is the evidence to support that conclusion. From: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390

tomkin 14y ago

> Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative. They are just as guilty as any other hardware/software manufacturer which tries to stifle human progress in the name of ego. Let me provide my perspective, as flawed as it may be. In 2006, Nintendo released the Wii. To those who don't know, it, for better or worse (re)introduced motion within the context of video games. Immediately, Microsoft (Xbox) and Sony (PlayStation) criticized the Wii's motion controls – deeming them "childish" and "not what gamers want". Today, we know how that story played out. We have PS3 Move and Xbox Kinect. At the time, I had hoped and dreamed that Nintendo would sue and strike back at Sony and Microsoft (not sure if they had the grounds to, mind you). I didn't want Microsoft and Sony to benefit from Nintendo's genius, especially after they essentially deemed motion control as a ludicrous novelty. Today, Microsoft Kinect is making all sorts of cool innovations possible – not Nintendo. But in 2009, I would have been happy to hear that Microsoft would have no right to create Kinect. What a lousy outcome that would have been. Kinect, as a technology, is a benefit to a collective of people – and I was a dink to believe another outcome would have been better. Chalk it up to being a Nintendo fanboy. Today I'd be incredibly angry if Nintendo had the power to overturn, punish or fracture the Kinect technology. And watching Apple fanboys defend a system that essentially holds us all back is incredibly painful to watch. Apple has created a contemporary masterpiece and it is now the baseline for which all better technology evolves. What happens if you get your way and no one can build in the direction that is proven to work? Stagnation. Thanks for that.

flatline3 14y ago
Microsoft and Sony didn't copy Nintendo outright. Stagnation. That's what you get when people duplicate ideas instead of leading with their own.
- tomkin 14y ago
  > Stagnation. That's what you get when people duplicate ideas instead of leading with their own. Right. So the guy who invented the cell phone shouldn't have "copied" the guy who invented the cordless phone. Oh, and the guy who invented the touch screen phone shouldn't be able to make it because the guy who invented the cell phone (which can't exist because of the guy who made the cordless phone says "No") doesn't want someone to make a touchscreen phone. That's stagnation and that's what you're promoting here. You're just splitting hairs by narrowing the focus to rounded corners, # of buttons, etc. Truth be told, there are no original inventions here. Apple's products are evolutions of previous hardware created by others – let's not forget that.