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Steve Wozniak on Samsung patent verdict: ‘I hate it and I don’t agree with it’
- Empro 14y agoI feel like the craziness is only just beginning.
- roc 14y agoIt has long since begun. It is beyond me, why everyone chooses to ignore Nokia's taking a chunk out of Apple and Microsoft taking a chunk out of HTC, Samsung and Barnes & Nobles. Apple's case isn't anything new.
- warmwaffles 14y agoThis is true and Apple's case will eventually fade to the background just as the Nokia case did and Microsoft's case(s). If anything, it should be a sign that the US patent system needs to be looked at and reviewed, not completely rebuilt, but rather revamped.
- roc 14y agoIt's continually revamped. In fact, large parts of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act are going into effect just next week. (the rest to follow in March) It includes many of the top items that internet geeks call for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act
- bornhuetter 14y agoMany tech companies have used patents in the past to get royalties from each other. Some have been more aggressive than others. What is new about the Apple case is that they appear to be using patents to completely block competitors from the market, and making a huge amount of noise about how other companies are "blatantly copying" things like slide-to-unlock. Microsoft have been extracting money from Android manufacturers for a while now, but the public don't know and don't care. If Microsoft were to go around making noise about Android being copy-cats and stealing their ideas, people would be even more angry with them than they are with Apple (being Microsoft). The argument that often goes around HN that "Nokia started it" completely misses the point of what Apple are doing.
- roc 14y agoWatch more patent litigation. The suits are always just proxies for the licensing negotiation. Even seeking to get products blocked from market is just hardball. Despite the massive judgment in the Samsung/Apple case, it will likely all boil down to licensing agreements.
- motoford 14y agoI can't believe these guys just called the Woz "infamous".
- mhurron 14y agoHe's not just famous.
- xtdx 14y agoI think that's it. The phrase "the famous, or even infamous, ..." is fairly common. Monkey see, monkey do.
- thechut 14y agoThis is what struck me about the article as well. What exactly is infamous about woz?
- Steko 14y agoWell he proposed to Kathy Griffin? /shrug, looks like they've edited to remove the offending word.
- JimmaDaRustla 14y agoDoes infamous not mean "evil" or "bad reputation"? How come people keep using it as if its a good thing?
- potatolicious 14y agoInfamous does indeed refer to the bad kind of fame - this is either a simple brain fart, or possibly the writer just doesn't have a very sound grasp of the language.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
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- JimmaDaRustla 14y agoI love the head on that man's shoulders.
- ericdykstra 14y agoI hope he's right that this gets reversed. Apple makes a lot of best-in-class products (and I know some people that think everything they make is best-in-class). Do they think they need to do this kind of litigation to keep making products people will buy? Are they trying to discredit Samsung as copycats? Or is it just a case of "if it costs us $100m to pursue 10 lawsuits with a 5% chance of any one of them getting us a $1b reward, it's a positive business move" sort of thing?
- Steko 14y ago"Do they think they need to do this kind of litigation to keep making products people will buy?" Doesn't really follow. "Are they trying to discredit Samsung as copycats?" Absolutely. "it's a positive business move" sort of thing?" I think they would rather sign deals guaranteeing more product differentiation than get money directly from lawsuits so not really. ... Whether they are right or not I think Apple feels genuinely aggrieved by Android in general and Samsung's close copying in particular. Again whether they are right or not I think they are serious when they say they don't want to be both R&D and Design for the whole industry. The litigation has the following aims imho: (1) dilute the brands of copycats (2) scare copycats into differentiating their products more (3) force utility sapping differentiation via judgements
- bane 14y agoLooking at the iPhone 5, and when Apple started to go litigation crazy I think a couple factors have combined to force them to go this way. 1. The iPhone 5 is an incremental update to the iPhone 4 template. It doesn't mean it's a bad product, it actually looks like it's a very very nice device. But it isn't the leapfrog over the competition that people have come to expect and Apple has built its smartphone business around. I think Apple tends to produce their iDevices at pretty much the absolute state of the art. I think previous smartphones and recent competitors did not because it let them yield better profits given an inefficient supply chain. Now the competition has caught up and is also operating at the state of the art. Now they just produce a very very nice device with specs more or less in-line with the competition. The differentiation is harder to demonstrate. At some point during the development cycle for the iPhone 5 they had to have compared it to the competition in the marketplace and come to the conclusion that it simply isn't going to cut it the way previous phones have. They'll still sell it as an upgrade to most current users, but the rate of new user growth is slowing down and the rate of defectors to the competition is increasing. They must have decided the 5 simply isn't going to do enough on its own as a product to change that. 2. In the past year the competition has started to outsell them. Despite having the iPhone available across the major carriers, and having arguably a nicer device at a similar price, it just seems to be an increasingly hard sell. The iPhone 5 may not be enough of a difference from the 4S (in line with consumer expectations) to sway consumers back over into Appleland. Long new product development pipelines have prevented them from pushing out a product that really stands out in a meaningful way in the market anymore. So Apple is hedging, they've calculated that the new iPhone 5 won't swing the pendulum back in their favor, and the only choice is to try and frustrate the ability of the competion in bringing even newer products to market. Apple isn't hoping to make money via the awards, but in swinging the pendulum a few percent back in their favor. It could mean tens of billions on top of the award.
- kno 14y agoWhy use expression like "The infamous engineer"? what does it mean? some writers just go overboard sometimes.
- kno 14y agoWhy use expression like "The infamous engineer"? what does it mean? some writer just go overboard sometimes.
- barista 14y agoI respect the guy but is he influential enough that it matters what he thinks?
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoI can't tell if this is a serious question. I'd imagine it matters to a great deal of people what he thinks.
- xtdx 14y agoDid any of those people disagree with him before? Has he changed anyone's opinion? If he had said the opposite, that the verdict was correct, would anyone here say "hmmm, he's given me a lot to think about."? Or would they just say, "it's so sad to see a legend lose touch."?
- npguy 14y agoPatents are living proof that ideas are overrated.
- thechut 14y agoI've said it before and I will say it again. Apple needs to compete on, and thus focus on the quality of their products. Not sue everyone else into the ground because they feel threatened. Apple will just keep squeezing out incremental changes to their devices and suing everyone else until they are the only ones left standing. Maybe they should let Woz run the company, he seems to be the last innovator left.
- Steko 14y agoIn what world does Apple not focus on the quality of their products? Maybe they're the biggest public company in the world because Woz has never been in charge?
- cooldeal 14y agoIt's not about the quality per se but I think their problem right now is that users' choice is overwhelming them and the one-size-fits-all approach of the iPhone has diminishing returns after a point. The variety, choice of screen sizes and price ranges of the competition is only getting better by the day. A new iPhone is released only once a year, so it better be very good with a lot of new technologies, features, new designs etc. for sales to last all through the next year. iPhone 4S sales started lagging in the 3Q itself this year, compared to the 4th quarter for the iPhone 4. This is because people start waiting for the next version or switch to the competition because they have better specced devices with more features. I think Samsung timed their Galaxy S3 launch perfectly to coincide with the iPhone 4S getting old enough to beat, and they beat it in monthly sales for the first time, which is a noteworthy thing in itself. The whole situation is reminding me of the PC wars in the 80s, where Apple had a seemingly unassailable innovation lead, and then squandered it away by offering limited choice and higher prices, while Microsoft very smartly licensed DOS to Compaq and others like Dell and HP, and the rest is history. Apple's marketshare is now 17% vs. Android's 67% which is about 4 times more. No wonder Apple is going crazy with the patent war against Android. That's probably their only weapon against the equivalent of the hordes of the 'beige boxes'.
- Steko 14y ago
- megaman821 14y agoApple should have won a copyright case against Samsung clearly copying too much of the overall iPhone design. Instead Apple won a patent case which sucks for everyone, not just Samsung. A litigious Apple could use this win against other Android (and smart-phone in general) manufactures.
- camiller 14y agoDesign falls under Design Patent/trademark (Trade Dress) not copyright.
- megaman821 14y agoObviously they allow and people have patented things that are also copyrightable. I just don't think that they should allow patents for many of those things. It feels like a painter suing another artist not for copying his painting but for using patented brush strokes to create it.
- swang720 14y agoThis is lazy journalism. Will people stop posting what Steve Wozniak thinks about everything? Just because he's Steve Wozniak doesn't make him a foremost expert on everything related to technology. Does this quote add any insight or value at all? “I don’t agree with it — very small things I don’t really call that innovative. I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody’s technologies.”
- Jd 14y agoIn this case, Woz was one of the two founders of Apple. So it is quite relevant.
- noinput 14y agoActually it does. The man is not claiming to be an expert on technology, however he did help co-create one of the most successful and profitable companies in history. You have an opinion, why shouldn't he?
- morsch 14y agoI don't think that's the only reason he's quoted often. I think the fact that Woz continues to have very sensible opinions on a lot of things has a lot to with.
- creamyhorror 14y agoThis will just get him disavowed as a cofounder of Apple by the hardcore supporters. Eventually no one will remember he helped start Apple and everyone will think Jobs was the only one. (edit: true enough that they already see him as the black sheep, the embarrassing uncle everyone tries to ignore) No one cares what the "naive, idealistic" engineer clueless about business thinks. That's the battle we're fighting - to fix patents, we have to tell people how it's not mere idealism or ideology, but how real businesses can get squeezed out by patent trolls or assholes if software patents don't get reformed soon. On the bright side, I'm noticing more friends getting Androids, even around this time when the iPhone 5 is being launched. Only the core Apple supporters are going straight for the iPhone. The tide may be turning and Apple losing a bit of its shine, at least in my circles.
- WiseWeasel 14y agoAnyone who has followed Woz for any amount of time is completely unsurprised by this quote. Woz is the troublemaker they were talking about in that ad.
- chinmoy 14y ago"Eventually no one will remember he helped start Apple.." strongly disagree. And I don't think Woz even cares if anyone remembers him or not.
- NaturalDoc 14y agoWell said. I think it's sad that the mind behind Apple technology is getting forgotten while the marketer gets all the glory. I, too, hope Woz is right and the case gets overturned on appeal. I am also noticing the shift to Android in my circles. This could be a good thing.
- microtherion 14y agoI don't think Woz is in danger of getting forgotten anytime soon. In fact, given that the last technical contribution he made to Apple was, as far as I recall, about 30 years ago, it seems to me that is getting rather generous credit for Apple's success.
- harshpotatoes 14y agoIt's interesting that camera quality is so important for people, yet I find it difficult to find information on image quality beyond how many megapixels the sesnor has. The least they could do is tell me the sensor size/aperture size too. You really have to search the specialized review sites to find good comparisons on image quality.
- scw916 14y agoNot sure exactly what this references, but Apple actually gives fairly specific information on all of their iDevices cameras—on the Apple product page it specifically states 5 lens elements and an aperture of 2.4 for the iPhone 5. And 4 lens element and an aperture of 2.8 for the iPhone 4.
- pedalpete 14y agoThat's because the general public has been trained that more megapixels = better pictures. It's like horsepower in cars, or thread count in sheets. We're starting to see manufacturers differentiate on aperature and other details. Nokia talked about how their mechanical stabilization allowed for longer exposures, etc. etc. But when somebody asks me if the camera in my xperia s is any good, I still respond "yeah, it's 12 megapixels".
- mycodebreaks 14y agoTurn-by-Turn navigation came on Android way earlier than it came with iPhone 5 yesterday. How fair it is for Apple complain about stealing ideas?
- rimantas 14y agoAre you trying to say, that Apple was not aware about the thing called turn-by-turn navigation before Android? > How fair it is for Apple complain about stealing ideas? How about spending some time and finding out what the trial was really about?
- SquareWheel 14y ago"Are you trying to say, that Apple was not aware about the thing called turn-by-turn navigation before Android?" Are you trying to say that Google was not aware of universal search? http://www.google.com/patents/US8086604 http://www.google.com/patents/US8086604
- fpgeek 14y agoWell, to be fair, the filing date on that patent is Dec 1, 2004. Absent genuine industrial espionage, it would have been rather hard for the Google Desktop team to have been aware of it in October 2004: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop Or are you saying Google should have checked for new patents (and patent applications - this wasn't issued until December 2011) before re-implementing something they'd already done on the desktop on an Android phone?
- headShrinker 14y agoTurn by turn existed before Android.
- mycodebreaks 14y agoAgreed. Apple can't accuse competitors of being copycats when they are a copycat too at times.
- greghinch 14y agoI agree with the sentiment, admire respect the man for his contibutions to where technology is, but I really don't understand why Woz's opionion is solicited for every step that Apple of any time in the past 10 years has made. Even at the gestation of the company, his idea of how they should proceed was completely at odds with Jobs' (the latter actually wanted to turn a profit, among other things). I would call it safe to say modern Apple is all but devoid of Woz's influence
- css771 14y agoSamsung may have copied the shapes and a few gestures like slide to unlock with the original galaxy s. But anyone who claims that it gave them a market advantage is being disingenuous. Woz has always been rational about stuff and what he says. I hope the verdict gets overturned.
- BenoitEssiambre 14y agoWise man. The way I see it, Apple had a case regarding "trade dress". Some Samsung devices, for example the Galaxy Tab 10.1, do look too much like Apple products. However, the rest of the patents were ridiculous. If the bar for patent validity is going to be this low, most software developers will not be able to do a day's work without accidentally infringing on something. Every piece of software I've seen being built most certainly uses methods that are described somewhere in patents, especially if it is leading edge in terms of communicating, collecting, syncing or displaying information through the web or mobile devices. If court decisions keep going this way, it is going to become impossible to code legally without the costly burden of acquiring a patent war chest and a team of layers to defend your organisation. We might as well shut down the industry to newcomers.
- ghshephard 14y agoI'm interested in why you thought the bar was set low? From all my reading, it sounded like Samsung had to go out of their way to emulate the Apple processes, it wasn't something they would have accidentally done. I'm not saying I agree with the verdict, but a lot of people misrepresent this case as, "Apple has a patent on pinch-to-zoom" (not true), and Samsung was sued for building a rectangle-with-glass (not true) - instead of the actual, more complicated case. In particular, which patent did you think was "ridiculous?"
- cma 14y agoPinch-to-zoom. Just because it is on a capacitive touch screen instead of some other type of touch screen, doesn't really change the implementation of it, and isn't worth patentability. It is like someone coming on the scene and seeing that windowed GUIs weren't patented, deciding that now if I plug my VGA cord into an LCD instead of a CRT I have suddenly invented a new device and can get all the old innovations protected as long as they appear on a "computing device with LCD display".
- zizee 14y agoHow about: 1. Rounded Square Icons on interface 2. Enlarging documents by tapping the screen http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-versus-samsung-2012-8?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-versus-samsung-2012-8?o...
- robomartin 14y agoI am not taking sides. Don't have all the data. I'll just say that there's a huge difference between "Research & Development" and only "Development". The first is far more time consuming, risky and expensive. The second is a clear and guided roadmap that you simply follow to completion. I used to be an idealist. I bought the whole idea of "just build a better product" without question. And so I did. Many years ago I embarked in the development of electronic products for a specific industry while trenching new territory and bringing new ideas to the user base. I opted not to file for patents because, well, they were expensive and I was going to just beat them with a better product. Or so I thought. The first product took about a year and a half in R&D. Lots of work. Lots of problems to solve. Lots to learn. It finally got out and we did really good business right out of the gate. Hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. Eight months later competitors came out with devices offering about 60% of what we were doing at half the price. It nearly killed the business. A six month month run with a hardware product isn't enough to recoup your R&D. Our competitors had the advantage of only having to do the "D" part because they copied and stole as much as they could. Never mind the fact that they did not have to trench new territory and actually test to see if there was a market there. The lessons I learned during this period were invaluable (and very painful). Patents do have reason to exist and should not be ignored. People will cheat and steal in business the first chance they get. It takes a special kind of person to honor an agreement without the threat of serious financial harm through litigation if violated. People will violate NDA's and use them to get your ideas and insight under all kinds of pretenses. Business is war. I was an idealist. An idiot. Live and learn. I don't know about the Apple vs. Samsung issue. Frankly, I don't have the time to dive into the details. Even if it did, it would be a huge waste of my time as I have nothing to gain from such an exercise. Not taking sides, here's hoping that the courts get it right.
- ajross 14y agoOK, the problem with your argument is this bit: "Eight months later competitors came out with devices offering about 60% of what we were doing at half the price. It nearly killed the business" If the HTC G1 "nearly killed" the iPhone 3G, then you might have an argument. Though it would depend in sensitive ways on things like whether or not Apple had made back its R&D costs over the year of Insanely Great iPhone sales. (The fact that that phone wasn't made by Samsung seems kinda important too). Needless to say, Apple made out sorta OK under the Google/HTC onslaught of '08/90. So why cite something like this as a related anecdote when it clearly doesn't apply? The kind of damages you posit don't exist, so why sue to recoup them?
- drhowarddrfine 14y agoWoz made the original Apple computers on a single board PC and did a good job for what they were but has done nothing since and never was a good businessman. Why does anyone think his opinion means anything or carries any weight? From everything I've read, he never had good business sense and I would just do the opposite of anything he says.
- sigzero 14y agoSo what? Really. His opinion isn't any more or any less valuable that anybody else.
- headShrinker 14y agoWe know Woz is an 'outside looking in' type person. His remarks remind me of all the people who are really upset with Apple for pursuing this lawsuit. People seem to have this conception that Apple saw an opportunity to sue the pants of a harmless company so it did. This is not the case at all. The two corporations were in meetings with lawyers for a year trying to iron out a deal. The deals fell through and they went to court. The truth is everyone has been and is suing Apple, all the time. http://c4sif.org/2012/04/web-of-tech-patent-lawsuits-infographic/ http://c4sif.org/2012/04/web-of-tech-patent-lawsuits-infogra... This graphic is now 9 month old. Truth is Apple is the most sued company in tech! I just don't get this 'down with Apple' mentality. It's completely irrational. When Apple entered the phone telecom industry, it turned telecoms on their head. Apple started to take control from these awful companies (see my article on t-mobile: http://news.nucleusdevelopment.com/2012/09/11/t-mobile-inflated-my-bill-by-242-and-thought-i-wouldnt-notice/ http://news.nucleusdevelopment.com/2012/09/11/t-mobile-infla...) and give it to consumers. Remember verizon didn't want any part of the iPhone because 'it gave the consumer too much control'? Google and Samsung have been helping the telecoms regain control, allowing crapware and bloatware to go right back on the phones. That is one of the very things that Apple fought so hard to keep off their phones, and one of the main reasons Verizon didn't initially want Apple as a vendor. Not to mention, The spyware that gets installed with out our knowledge, ie: Carrier IQ. Controlling the software OS on the phones (ei: why it takes so long to get a new version of Android on your existing phone).
- mrharrison 14y agoDouble Thumbs up To This!
- fpgeek 14y agoThere are all sorts of things I disagree with in this comment, but I want to highlight just one: iPhones (like many Android phones and Blackberries and ...) had Carrier IQ software installed on them. Google-controlled Nexus phones did not. Moreover, the only reason anyone outside of Carrier IQ, operators, smartphone manufacturers, etc knows anything at all about Carrier IQ is that some people discovered it while trying to reverse-engineer an Android phone. You may think Apple is a white knight protecting you from the carriers. The truth, as always, is much more complicated.
- ToesByNoon 14y agoThe thing is, Woz isn't relevant anymore. Of course I respect his lineage, but the guy seems to have lost a lot of steps since back in the day.
- the_expert 14y agoSo how would things have turned out if we dropped all the software patent claims and Apple could only sue on trade dress? Apple is a hardware company. A hardware enclosures design company, really; they outsource most everything to do with producingthe hardware. For a company like Apple, trade dress claims make sense. Software patents seem a little fishy. (Even for software companies software patents are a bit fishy. That's why they've traditionally relied on copyright. And if I'm not mistaken that's why the USPTO is soon going to be issuing new rules and a new system to deal with software/business method patents since they cause so much concern.)
- array1999 14y agoApple should file a patent on filing patents, copyright each vowel individually and trademark "99 cents". An Apple patent a day, keeps innovation away.