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UI and UX are innovations. The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten

UI and UX are innovations. The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten everyone's lunch up till now. "Fit and finish" is as innovative as a new algorithm, it's shocking how much of the industry still treats it as a footnote and a detail, despite the entire history of the tech world since iPhone 1 would indicate.

w1ntermute 14y ago
> The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten everyone's lunch up till now. No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable, not innovative. The GP is correct in stating that Apple isn't innovative - they just take other people's innovations and monetize them by polishing things up and running effective ad campaigns to gain marketshare among the masses. And there's nothing at all wrong with that - if your primary interest is making money.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "take other people's innovations and monetize them by polishing things up" The devil is in the polishing up, evidently. Your post is almost scarily indicative of the industry attitude that has allowed Apple to take over to the degree they have. Only hard, technical inventions are given any respect, and when we talk about UX we call it "polishing up", almost spitting those words out of our mouths in condescension. Are you seriously going to hold up a clickwheel and say it wasn't innovative? Or the iPhone? Or the iPad? The fact that these products look and behave almost nothing like their progenitor technologies doesn't indicate innovation to you? It really disturbs me how little respect us geeks have for the people who consume our products. When the general public votes with their wallet in a landslide victory for Apple, we blame them for being easily manipulable by slick ad campaigns and shiny baubles. The notion that Apple has actually satisfied a long-standing demand is somehow not allowed to enter this discourse.
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree that Apple's innovative in getting technology to actually work in a user friendly way and combining them with excellent design but is that process patent worthy is the real question at hand. For example, how different is the homescreen of the iPhone from this? http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GIF http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI... Compared to that, Windows Phone with Metro is much more innovative. Another problem is that many people attribute things to being invented by Apple because they first hear of it from Apple(and because they don't use non Apple products). For example, I remember when Apple introduced hybrid graphics with a way to switch between the integrated Intel gpu and a discrete Nvidia/ATI GPU. Sony had that working before Apple, but a LOT of folks thought it was Apple that innovated it. Perhaps Apple added more polish to it, but they certainly were wrong. Polishing and going the last mile is very tough(see OEMs with half baked software and hardware) but does it deserve patent protection? Apple innovated and got awarded with becoming the most valuable company in the world with more than 100 billion dollars in the bank with which they can invest further in innovation instead of indulging in petty patent extortion over petty things like the bounceback effect or linking phone numbers in emails to the dialer.
    - hammersend 14y ago
      "Another problem is that many people attribute things to being invented by Apple because they first hear of it from Apple(and because they don't use non Apple products)." What's even worse than that is when people know Apple didn't invent something but still insist that they deserve all of the credit anyway because they "popularized" it. I have seen this argument on a few occasions. wtf?
    - czr80 14y ago
      Design is not how it looks, design is how it works. When you truly internalise that you'll see why that screenshot is irrelevant.
      - recoiledsnake 14y ago
        Design is both how it looks and how it works. If you take the Desktop WIMP UI, and try to come up with a way to redesign it work with only touch instead of mouse and keyboard, you'd roughly be already halfway to the iOS homescreen in terms of design. Instead of clicking on a icon, you touch it and the app opens, swipe to see multiple homescreens since desktop space is limited on a phone, add in a dock at the bottom. Contrast that with Metro. So that screenshot is NOT irrelevant.
- gnaffle 14y ago
  So other companies are more interested in being innovative than profitable and have decided to not spend as much as Apple on marketing (and polish), and that's the reason why Apple is succeeding?
  - lttlrck 14y ago
    quite...
- mej10 14y ago
  You make being as profitable as Apple sound so easy.
- walterkim 14y ago
  > No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable, not innovative. The GP is correct in stating that Apple isn't innovative This is decidedly backwards. From the start, Apple's focus was creating great products (by their definition of great product), and only later did they learn how to maximize their profit from them. There's a pretty good and influential taxonomy of "value disciplines": product leadership, operational excellence, and customer intimacy. Historically, Apple was good at the first and not so great at the other two. Since Jobs' return, they've really ramped up on all three. A classic way in which companies undermine themselves is by pursuing profit through cost-cutting rather than improving product/service quality. I don't have any hard data on this, but I suspect that's what happens to intiially innovative tech companies that have non-engineer/designer business types that take over.
- bonaldi 14y ago
  Crumbs, if only Dell and Microsoft had been interested in being profitable, just think!
- mbesto 14y ago
  > they're interested in being profitable, not innovative I'm confused. Any rational business is concerned with making money. Profit growth is a symptom of innovation. > No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable And Microsoft and IBM were not interested in being profitable?!?!
webwright 14y ago
Ugh, by this logic the first person to use drop-down menus should be the only person to use it (without licensing) for 20 years. Or a hover-event on a link. Or a hyperlink. Or real-time form validation. Or neverending scrolling instead of pagination. Or facebook style side menus on mobile devices. Certainly there is UI innovation, and certainly it can move mountains-- I think arguing that fact is a straw man-- no one is saying that you can't be innovative with UI. We're just saying that most/all of it isn't worthy of patent protection.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I think much of our community actually does argue that you can't be innovative with UI (see wintermute's post above). In any case, the notion that UX is important and innovative in no way justifies the gross abuse of IP law we've seen up till now from everyone involved. Which leads to... > "We're just saying that most/all of it isn't worthy of patent protection." There's a false separation here. IMO almost nothing we do in the software industry is worthy of patent protection, UI-related or otherwise. To point at UI patents and scream foul, while giving a free pass to "real" patents (ones with academic papers behind them) seems misguided.
erikpukinskis 14y ago
> UI and UX are innovations As a UX designer, the idea that UX can be patented terrifies me. It's like patenting a specific color of paint. shudders
- fpgeek 14y ago
  Don't companies trademark specific colors all the time (or at least try to prevent those colors from being used in anyone else's corporate logo)?
  - chipotle_coyote 14y ago
    No, or at least I believe it's more complicated than that. A logo's trademark may encompass the colors used, but that's not a legal maneuver which prevents those colors from being used anywhere else. The point of the trademark is to be able to stop competitors from making "confusingly similar" trademarks for their products or companies. I can make a cola, and I'm certainly not enjoined from using red and white in the colors on my can. If, however, I make a red can and put "Boba Cola" on it in white letters with roughly the same typography as Coca-Cola uses, I'm cruisin' for a bruisin', legally speaking.

w1ntermute 14y ago

> The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten everyone's lunch up till now. No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable, not innovative. The GP is correct in stating that Apple isn't innovative - they just take other people's innovations and monetize them by polishing things up and running effective ad campaigns to gain marketshare among the masses. And there's nothing at all wrong with that - if your primary interest is making money.

potatolicious 14y ago
> "take other people's innovations and monetize them by polishing things up" The devil is in the polishing up, evidently. Your post is almost scarily indicative of the industry attitude that has allowed Apple to take over to the degree they have. Only hard, technical inventions are given any respect, and when we talk about UX we call it "polishing up", almost spitting those words out of our mouths in condescension. Are you seriously going to hold up a clickwheel and say it wasn't innovative? Or the iPhone? Or the iPad? The fact that these products look and behave almost nothing like their progenitor technologies doesn't indicate innovation to you? It really disturbs me how little respect us geeks have for the people who consume our products. When the general public votes with their wallet in a landslide victory for Apple, we blame them for being easily manipulable by slick ad campaigns and shiny baubles. The notion that Apple has actually satisfied a long-standing demand is somehow not allowed to enter this discourse.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree that Apple's innovative in getting technology to actually work in a user friendly way and combining them with excellent design but is that process patent worthy is the real question at hand. For example, how different is the homescreen of the iPhone from this? http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GIF http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI... Compared to that, Windows Phone with Metro is much more innovative. Another problem is that many people attribute things to being invented by Apple because they first hear of it from Apple(and because they don't use non Apple products). For example, I remember when Apple introduced hybrid graphics with a way to switch between the integrated Intel gpu and a discrete Nvidia/ATI GPU. Sony had that working before Apple, but a LOT of folks thought it was Apple that innovated it. Perhaps Apple added more polish to it, but they certainly were wrong. Polishing and going the last mile is very tough(see OEMs with half baked software and hardware) but does it deserve patent protection? Apple innovated and got awarded with becoming the most valuable company in the world with more than 100 billion dollars in the bank with which they can invest further in innovation instead of indulging in petty patent extortion over petty things like the bounceback effect or linking phone numbers in emails to the dialer.
  - hammersend 14y ago
    "Another problem is that many people attribute things to being invented by Apple because they first hear of it from Apple(and because they don't use non Apple products)." What's even worse than that is when people know Apple didn't invent something but still insist that they deserve all of the credit anyway because they "popularized" it. I have seen this argument on a few occasions. wtf?
  - czr80 14y ago
    Design is not how it looks, design is how it works. When you truly internalise that you'll see why that screenshot is irrelevant.
    - recoiledsnake 14y ago
      Design is both how it looks and how it works. If you take the Desktop WIMP UI, and try to come up with a way to redesign it work with only touch instead of mouse and keyboard, you'd roughly be already halfway to the iOS homescreen in terms of design. Instead of clicking on a icon, you touch it and the app opens, swipe to see multiple homescreens since desktop space is limited on a phone, add in a dock at the bottom. Contrast that with Metro. So that screenshot is NOT irrelevant.
gnaffle 14y ago
So other companies are more interested in being innovative than profitable and have decided to not spend as much as Apple on marketing (and polish), and that's the reason why Apple is succeeding?
- lttlrck 14y ago
  quite...
mej10 14y ago
You make being as profitable as Apple sound so easy.
walterkim 14y ago
> No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable, not innovative. The GP is correct in stating that Apple isn't innovative This is decidedly backwards. From the start, Apple's focus was creating great products (by their definition of great product), and only later did they learn how to maximize their profit from them. There's a pretty good and influential taxonomy of "value disciplines": product leadership, operational excellence, and customer intimacy. Historically, Apple was good at the first and not so great at the other two. Since Jobs' return, they've really ramped up on all three. A classic way in which companies undermine themselves is by pursuing profit through cost-cutting rather than improving product/service quality. I don't have any hard data on this, but I suspect that's what happens to intiially innovative tech companies that have non-engineer/designer business types that take over.
bonaldi 14y ago
Crumbs, if only Dell and Microsoft had been interested in being profitable, just think!
mbesto 14y ago
> they're interested in being profitable, not innovative I'm confused. Any rational business is concerned with making money. Profit growth is a symptom of innovation. > No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable And Microsoft and IBM were not interested in being profitable?!?!

webwright 14y ago

Ugh, by this logic the first person to use drop-down menus should be the only person to use it (without licensing) for 20 years. Or a hover-event on a link. Or a hyperlink. Or real-time form validation. Or neverending scrolling instead of pagination. Or facebook style side menus on mobile devices. Certainly there is UI innovation, and certainly it can move mountains-- I think arguing that fact is a straw man-- no one is saying that you can't be innovative with UI. We're just saying that most/all of it isn't worthy of patent protection.

potatolicious 14y ago
I think much of our community actually does argue that you can't be innovative with UI (see wintermute's post above). In any case, the notion that UX is important and innovative in no way justifies the gross abuse of IP law we've seen up till now from everyone involved. Which leads to... > "We're just saying that most/all of it isn't worthy of patent protection." There's a false separation here. IMO almost nothing we do in the software industry is worthy of patent protection, UI-related or otherwise. To point at UI patents and scream foul, while giving a free pass to "real" patents (ones with academic papers behind them) seems misguided.

erikpukinskis 14y ago

> UI and UX are innovations As a UX designer, the idea that UX can be patented terrifies me. It's like patenting a specific color of paint. shudders

fpgeek 14y ago
Don't companies trademark specific colors all the time (or at least try to prevent those colors from being used in anyone else's corporate logo)?
- chipotle_coyote 14y ago
  No, or at least I believe it's more complicated than that. A logo's trademark may encompass the colors used, but that's not a legal maneuver which prevents those colors from being used anywhere else. The point of the trademark is to be able to stop competitors from making "confusingly similar" trademarks for their products or companies. I can make a cola, and I'm certainly not enjoined from using red and white in the colors on my can. If, however, I make a red can and put "Boba Cola" on it in white letters with roughly the same typography as Coca-Cola uses, I'm cruisin' for a bruisin', legally speaking.