If this had happened a day earlier I don't think I would have posted that RFS. Apple is inching ever closer to evil, and I worry that there's no one within the company who can stand up to Jobs and tell him so.
It's a real shame, too - it's so easy to hate Microsoft when it gets hostile and starts abusing its position, because their software generally makes you want to scream. Apple, on the other hand, puts out stuff that is a genuine pleasure to use, but controls it in increasingly infuriating ways. What's a geek to do?
On the other hand, I wouldn't be too quick to avoid iPad startups; even if it feels "wrong", your reasons for expecting the iPad to transform the computing landscape are as valid as they ever were, and there are good businesses to be built in that space. I'd let the RFS stand, and not feel too bad about it. Business is business, we do what we can in the markets that we're able...Microsoft has sucked pretty hard for a long time, but I would never dream of blaming someone for basing a startup on the Windows platform, and I think people that ignored it over the past decade were probably making a mistake.
What I would do is be on the lookout (maybe even draft an RFS) for startups that offer a better vision for the future than Apple, assuming there are any people out there with ideas about how to get a foothold and subvert their control freakishness. Bolstering products that compete with the iPhone and iPad could be a start; if must-have software starts showing up on Android, it would really help.
As much as we might want to blame Jobs for this, I fear that once he's not holding the reins, the company will only start acting worse, as they'll have lost a lot of the vision that drives their actual innovations. And that's when the serious consumer-hostile bullshit is likely to start in earnest...
"You mean like Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation? Unfortunately that doesn't seem to have helped much."
Android is a few years behind IPhone but is gaining traction. I seriously do not feel like Android needs much help. All it needs is just time and have Apple continue to try to put tight controls on its ecosystem.
I wouldn't even say Android is that far behind. It's lacking polish, to be sure, but there isn't anything I cared to do on my iPod Touch that I can't do on my Nexus One. And the N1 offers me some things the iPod couldn't do, even ignoring the GPS, camera, and phone functions. I find the N1's interface to be a lot prettier, too (but I suppose that's a matter of personal taste).
This has been the case since they implemented PT_DENY_ATTACH. Revolutionaries that throw hammers at screens do not artificially limit their operating system.
PG, I am working on a startup in a controversial field. I'm excited about figuring out how to solve the problem that is inherent in the field. I believe our solution will bring great value to the industry but sadly, it might be exploited - albeit legally - by unscrupulous parties and still bring us revenue. It is this last part that I'm conflicted about. I truly believe in many of the hacker principles (that are also common to many users in this forum) but feel really sad and lousy that my system might violate the principles I believe in. So I ask the following question not with a trollish sentiment but with genuine interest in how you deal with similar conflicts:
You seem upset by Apple's latest antic and I am guessing that it violates some of your core principles. Would you take a stand and withdraw your RFS to show your disapproval of their tactics and risk future profits from YC's involvement in iPad startups?
I thought about it, but withdrawing an existing RFS is a more drastic step. I'm not trying to start some kind of boycott; I'm just personally not very pleased with this move.
Aiding and abetting totalitarian regimes by censoring search results and turning over email correspondence is evil. Making shiny toys that don't do exactly what you want is not evil. Let's stop using "evil" as a synonym for "reprehensible."
Historically the word "evil" has had a pretty broad meaning. Among tech companies the word has a new and fairly specific sense that follows from Paul Buchheit's slogan "Don't be evil." That's the sense I was using. It has a pretty low bar. It means, roughly, winning by taking advantage of people instead of by doing good work.
Artificially limiting the capabilities of the hardware (people pay for) with the interest of keeping control, can't possibly be in the same league as "shiny toys that don't do exactly what you want".
People also lose the perspective of scaling the current trends set by Apple and others to everything ... what would happen if all the documents within your computer would be DRMed? What would happen if all personal PCs had software only approved by a central authority?
SciFi? They are already releasing a bigger iPhone who's functionality overlaps that of tablets / small laptops.
Also, before search engines that are censoring the results in China ... we had nothing comparable. You're also free to implement your own search-engine and index all the web-pages Google does ... but try creating a phone that connects to the iTunes store and that can run iPhone apps ;)
No one is forcing you to be in the iTunes store and write iPhone apps.
As for all personal PCs having only software approved by a central authority -- all electrical appliances are approved by UL. I don't see that as having resulted in much evil. To get to drive in the US, everyone is approved by their State. I don't see that as being very evil. The former is opt-in and arranged by insurance interests. The latter is entirely government. Neither form seems to necessarily produce evil when given central authority.
It's a question of how much power is involved, and how corrupting it is. Is DRM on all data really all that much power? It would be if it were ironclad. But I doubt such a thing will ever exist in an economy run by human beings.
That's like saying 10 years ago, no one is forcing you to use Windows.
Right now there is no credible alternative to iPod/iPhone/iTunes. Guys like Google and Microsoft are trying to make a better product. If Apple continues to win by making the better product, that's good for consumers, that's how the free market is supposed to work. If Apple decides to focus their time instead on PREVENTING other people from making the better product, instead of improving their own product, that's evil.
Sorry, but by filing this lawsuit, Apple is trying to force us to do exactly that. Or at least, force us to stop using HTC phones that "look like" an iPhone.
You're appealing to choice in your argument, but by asserting patent rights Apple is saying that there is no choice.
The injunctive relief sought goes rather farther than "stop using our particular implementation of multi-touch". I think you need to go back and read the complaint (there's a great writeup right now at http://lwn.net). Yours seems to be a knee-jerk defense of your favorite company, but this is not a trivial or common license action.
You sort of prove my point ... there isn't a market in improving/modifying electrical appliances by third parties ... especially since they also come with an EULA nowadays.
> To get to drive in the US, everyone is approved by their State.
That's not the same ... the government is (theoretically) working for the people. Getting a license is required for driving on public roads only ... and they do that to insure that the public roads are safe within reason.
The difference here is one of great importance ... the government is (theoretically) trying it's best to give licenses as non-discriminatory as possible. And if they aren't doing a good job at that, you can fight back.
Pretty sure DRM started out as an industry idea. Regardless, it all pretty much had to happen the way it did. At the time, none of the major studios would have considered releasing DRM-free music.
Maybe DRM is an idea that comes from anyone who creates content and wants to get paid for it.
Yeah, most of the DRM implementations out there are a PITA, but what choice do content creators have anyway? I recently read that 90% of the installed base of World of Goo was pirated. How would you feel if someone stole 90% of your web startup's source code? Oh, you say you lock your source repository that down with tight security at the network and server level? How is that conceptually different from DRM, exactly? I realize that the implementation is very different, of course, but that's not my point.
Besides, I don't expect DRM implementations to be so painful in the future. DRM on PCs sucks because it attempts to close the barn door after the livestock has escaped. If you want to see a device where content control was built in from the ground up, consider the xBox, which is basically a special purpose PC that with tightly controlled installation rights and distribution of content. So the DRM can be relatively unobtrusive.
Or look at Steam, which has gotten quite a bit better than it was a few years ago. And they've been experimenting heavily with bringing down the price point for games, now that every paying user doesn't have to subsidize 10 thieves.
Sheesh, honestly this is far afield but why do people keep lumping not having a feature in with evil?
Aren't most of you people software developers? Do you sell software to people? Regular humans who can blow out your profit with a single helpline call?
Choosing to not support a scenario is about as far from evil as you could possibly get.
Do you seriously look at all of the things that itunes doesn't do, all of the things that it does poorly or all of its bugs and think "apple is evil"?
Isn't it clear that they, despite having some great talent, are resource-constrained like everyone else?
Have you ever used a bug database? Tracked a bug count? Tested? Shipped a product?
OK, I'm trying not to be insulting or personal here but let's be clear: not supporting file system access aka supporting only the sync model INDISPUITABLY saved engineering resources. That feature you want is not free. If you can't see that then we're done because the only response would be insulting.
My definition of Evil includes coercion. Apple doesn't coerce you into using iTunes. They market an iPod to you, which you buy voluntarily. It's only after that you have to use iTunes. And even then, you don't really have to, since there are alternatives for software.
If you can opt-out and just not pay for it, then it isn't evil. It still might be "shitty practice" but you can still vote with your feet.
Apple does own these patents. Why is it evil for them to enforce them?
If Android was a Microsoft project, would people still think this legal action was evil?
If the iPhone OS was "open source" and there were other means of selling apps other than the app store, would people still think this legal action was evil?
If Google (the "underdog" (?)) owned these patents through the purchase of Android and was suing Apple, would people think Google was evil? Or would it be a David vs. Goliath story? (goliath vs. goliath?)
If I make BLOOPT.com which does the same thing as loopt.com, is it evil for Sam Altman to sue me, when he gets his patent?
All patent suits are evil. If all software patents were enforced, no new software could be written without licensing thousands or tens of thousands of patents from hundreds of holders. And no free software could be written at all. So the answers to all your your questions is "yes".
Except the last, which is kinda dumb. "BLOOPT" would no doubt be a trademark violation, you can't patent a name. But yeah, if Loopt filed a patent suit against someone simply for competing with them, then it would be evil too.
From what you are saying, it only follows that most patent suits are legal. I am sure one would eventually find the odd legit patent suit after a rigorous enough search. (Analogous to real avail among spam.)
Firm control over one's product and patent lawsuits against one's competitors are very different things. Firm control is annoying, frustrating, and maybe borderline evil (in the tech sense of the word as pg defined it), but suing competitors' manufacturers for treble and punitive damages is definitely evil. It would take a revelation of truly bad behavior on HTC's part for me to think otherwise.
I must confess that I was very surprised to hear that Apple initiated a lawsuit against HTC and I am wondering if there is some backstory that we don't know.
I am not going to try and argue that Apple is some kind of altruistic, saintly company. But Apple's recent history lead me to believe that they viewed patents as defensive, not offensive weapons. Yes, they sued Nokia, but only after Nokia sued them first.
So questions that come to my mind include: Why HTC? Why now? Why hasn't Apple sued Palm? (Surely the Pre infringes on something!)
And is there any significance to the fact that the suit was filed with the ITC?
If Apple really is going to go on the patent offensive, I will be very disappointed.
The short answer is that Android-based phones like the Nexus One and Desire are a far bigger threat to Apple's stranglehold on the NA smartphone market than anything else to date. This isn't about "protecting their inventions", it's about throwing up roadblocks to their biggest potential competitor.
It is safer to be feared than loved, if one must choose, but above all else, one must avoid being hated. (Paraphrasing Machiavelli)
It's interesting to me that a few year ago I'd have been scared to compete (in any way) with apple for fear of being beaten by a better product. Today the picture is much muddier, but the feeling of revulsion is new...
I've realized this for a while; ever since I looked at the terms of service for the iPhone SDK, which forbid pretty much any innovation on things like RFS #5 (you are not allowed to write compilers or interpreters which run on the iPhone, which pretty much precludes any development tools that aren't web apps).
I think it's about time for me to get an Android phone. The platform isn't as polished, but you can actually get root on your damn phone and some of it is free software (about like Mac OS X, actually; a free kernel, some libraries, and utilities, with some applications on top that are closed).
Serious question: What would that person say? How could Jobs be nudged out of his reality-distortion field enough to realize the ways in which he's damaging their long-term credibility with their developer community?
Alternately, is their something we're not seeing? Is there possibly some beautiful universe that gets created when Apple controls the entire ecosystem?
They're a for-profit company. They'll act completely out of self-interest under all circumstances. Do you really trust any for-profit company? Think about it.
Steve Jobs, visited PARC in 1979 and was impressed and influenced by the Xerox Alto, the first computer ever with a graphical user interface. Jobs designed the new Apple Lisa based on the technology he saw at Xerox.
Come on now. Please explain to me what is revolutionary about the iPad. It is 'meh'. It's just a big iPod touch. It's like a netbook or laptop but less useful. There's nothing revolutionary about it at all. It's a slightly slicker version of all the tablet PCs that have failed to capture significant market share for the last 10-20 years.
It'd be easy to say "sure but you're a geek, you just don't see how easy to use and useful the iPad is for normal people". But I don't think it is. The form factor is just bad. Watch the video on the Apple store, and you'll see actor after actor carefully pretending that it's comfortable to sit/stand/hold this device without getting an aching hand/sore neck etc.
Yes, there are applications, just like there have been for previous tablet PCs, but they're niche.
Is it really that much more than the Apple Newton was 20 odd years ago? Did the Apple Newton seem revolutionary at the time? If so, why did it fail?
I'd love to hear a concrete reason why the iPad is 'revolutionary'. Like a genuine reason, not just people pointing to the lone person on slashdot who called the iPod 'meh'. That doesn't count.
So, please explain to me clearly, why having a laptop without a keyboard/trackpad is revolutionary.
The only thing I can say in response to this is that I see that my dad uses his iPhone to surf the web much more than he uses his computer, and he's interested in a bigger screen to do so. He's in his 60s, and he's actually not buying another desktop computer (his is 11 years old) because his iPhone does what he needs, and more, plus he's tired of viruses and spyware. (Yes, we know it's not a target yet, but a closed system does help prevent a lot of that.)
I see it as a step towards hurting Dell, who makes a portion of their money selling laptops and desktops to people who really don't need them, like my parents, grandparents, other non-technical people. It's also a step towards hurting the "PC repair" industry that charges these poor folks $150 to install and run freeware antivirus tools and "double your memory".
I think the lack of Flash support is going to hurt it the most, as the target market I'm describing are people who tend to use Flash a lot (think Facebook games and other online games.)
The iPad is aimed at that market of people - the people who use the Internet as another vehicle for entertainment. I've seen what the iPhone has done for average people, and I think this is Apple taking that a step further.
I guess I wouldn't say it's "revolutionary" but then again, I said that about the iPhone. ("it's just another phone, who cares?") And remember, it was pretty 'meh' before the app store.
I could be wrong, but I think it has the potential to be pretty neat for the average person. We need a revolution in that space.
I disagree @ iPhone. That was revolutionary. It was the first pocket webbrowser that actually worked well and rendered websites properly.
>> "And remember, it was pretty 'meh' before the app store."
Again, difference of opinion. I couldn't care less about the app store. Why would I download software approved by Apple, when I can just use the browser for most things?
A netbook is more of the same, its what we already have. The iPad is something new and different.
And, I've never even seen a video of a device using ChromeOS. I can't seem to bring myself to have a positive opinion of a device that's been announced for 9-10 months without so much as a screenshot or picture of a device running it.
I've made this point before, but, its worth repeating: I don't even know what market Google is targeting with ChromeOS. I've looked into it, but, I honestly have no idea.
Why would I download software approved by Apple, when I can just use the browser for most things?
Better experience. Sure, if you never use native apps, you won't know what you're missing. But, having used them and then going back, its not quite the same. There's something slightly off about the scrolling, about how everything behaves when pressed, etc.
If I were Apple, I'd love for ChromeOS and Android to win. If that's the "losing" position for Apple, then they're sitting pretty. By the time that would happen, Apple could just roll their own Android that can run legacy iPhone apps, and even have their own high-end, high-margin Apple walled garden there.
Who's not sitting pretty? Microsoft. They've got to connect a Hail Mary pass with WinMo 7 to survive and stay relevant. They may do it, though.
You're stating it's not useful to you. You're not the target market for the iPad. I personally don't have much of an interest in the iPad, but I'm not willing to go out and say that nobody else will.
You could care less. But you know better than to download malware. Most people don't, and I'm sure you know that if you've ever had to fix someone's computer over the holidays.
As for netbooks? Triad them. Screen's too small for the elderly. Apple lets you zoom up things you can't see. I have horrible vision, and I have an ipod touch and a netbook. Guess which one I surf on? It ain't the netbook.
I really think they're targeting people who don't want a computer who want the Internet for entertainment, and nothing more. It's a good sized market. Time will tell if I'm wrong.
FWIW, I may buy an iPad to play with. But here's the crutial point - I can't see it being useful to my kids, or my mum, who are most certainly in the market you describe.
My mum has a macbook, which serves her fine. My kids have Netbooks with Ubuntu netbook remix which also is great for browsing the web.
I just don't see how the form factor makes sense. I can just see the write-ups now - highly irritating to use for long periods, aching hand/neck, too easy to drop, etc etc
Yeah but that's your family. In my house, Kid #1 slings a macbook and a netbook with no problem. Kid #2 is 2. She loves looking at pictures on the iPod. Kid #2 will be hacking soon enough. But that's the environment I created, and I guess it's just like yours.
Kid #1's friends have computers, but they don't use them like we use them. They use email and Facebook. (Yes, I know, I already covered Flash games previously, so we'll need to see on that one.)
They don't know or care how their computer works, they use Internet Explorer cos it's there, and they don't download software because they've had to pay so much to have it removed by GeekSquad.
This is a smart move by Apple. It'd be smarter if they'd just make Flash work, put a couple of USB ports on the thing, and let it be a master for an ipod.
The fact that you need a win or mac box with iTunes to get music on this thing could very well be the one thing that keeps it out of the reach of the everyman. In that case, you and I are in total agreement.
Yeah I would be in total agreement if they'd come out with a macbook mini, slimmed down small macbook. It's just the form factor that I think is a big mistake. I think we agree on the software side.
Yes. I can type faster on my iPod touch or my friend's iPhone then I can on his netbook that he uses in class.
With the iPhone (and likely iPad), you'll know what to expect from the device soon enough. With the netbook, I can never quite shake the "This isn't quite a computer, even if its pretending to be one" feeling and get used to the keys being 10% smaller.
How would your father update the iPad without a system running iTunes? That is the only major thing I do not like from what information has been released.
Exactly. I think that could very well kill it for most people, but he already has an ipod and a computer fast enough to run itunes to sync. But those folks that don't? Hopefully Apple wises up on this one. Of course we all know why they won't. - they suport you playing mp3s on your iPod, but they'd rather you bought from them through iTunes, which you certainly will be able to do on this device.
It's the first tablet device that will have a large library of tablet-specific multi-touch software available. We've never seen that before. It's also the highest density multi-touch device we've seen on the consumer market.
It'd be easy to say "sure but you're a geek, you just don't
see how easy to use and useful the iPad is for normal
people". But I don't think it is.
Sorry, but you don't see. Heck, I am a geek and I do want iPad, and I know exactly why do I want it. That's because I know what I will not be doing with it, and why "deficiencies" which were repeated over and over since Jan 27 do not matter. No, I won't be doing any programming on it, nor will I be carrying it out of my house often. But there are activities on which I spend a lot of time and for those iPad is just perfect.
I used to be surprised how many geeks missed the point that iPad has IPS screen,
but I just gave up. It is so easy to point what iPad does not have and miss that it does have. Just wait till you can spend some time with the device, and say meh then.
As I say, I disagree. It's less useful for consumers, because you can't type on it properly, you can't rest it on your lap, you can't view any flash websites, etc etc.
It's the geeks that are hailing it as useful.
I can't see how my kids would use an iPad, and I can't see how my mum would use an iPad.
No offense axod, but you have a big anti-tablet bias, and I think it undermines your objectivity, the point that you keep repeating your anecdotal evaluation of your immediate family members not being likely adopters as if they were the median. You seem to be reasoning from an n of 3 or 4 people.
I find it easy to see why Apple expects it to be popular. I may be wrong, but the (apparent) fact that lots of people are interested in buying an iPad suggests they can think of ways to use it, and seriously doubt that Apple would be investing lots of money in launching one without assuring themselves of likely demand first.
Me, I would rather not buy an iPad - even though it looks like a very good product, technically - because I am increasingly put off by Apple's aggressive vertical integration and business tactics (like this patent lawsuit). But however I feel about that, I can't deny their expertise in engineering and marketing. Even if I buy a competitor's product, the price and specifications will have been influenced by Apple's offering.
I feel like we (computer users) have already gone through this 'utility' barrier many times - did average consumers 'need' the mouse, the GUI, videogame consoles, color graphics, dedicated monitors (vs a TV adapter) etc.. etc.? Well, no, not as such, but it seems that people's desire for a technology often forms prior to the availability of tools that properly exploit it, even though their use cases may be inchoate.
I'll give you two examples of non-computer geeks who nevertheless have use cases for a tablet, with the understanding that these too are anecdotal.
One is down the street from me: the people who work at the 7-11 use an oldish Panasonic tablet computer for inventory management. they probably don't need multitouch and the software looks a bit primitive, but they seem well comfortable treating it as a digital clipboard that they can hold with one hand and operate with the other. Now, you don't need a degree to work at 7-11 or even to get your own store, just a willingness to work at a small 24-hour retail outlet. 7-11 is a mature franchise business so I don't imagine that they rolled out the use of tablets to their employees on a whim - more likely, such devices hit a sweet spot between usability and capability which proved beneficial for limiting the cost of inventory control.
Another area is for creatives in a studio. I work with audio and video for a living, and for some tasks using a mouse is royal pain in the ass. There is a thriving industry in hardware control surfaces for musicians, and many of them are repurposed by 3d animators, compositors, and other video professionals because the cost of dedicated hardware for the latter is stratospheric. A general purpose device with multitouch is already a winner in this market. Cheaper ones will sell like hotcakes.
Add enough of these market segments together, and you're looking at some real money.
Just imagine some sort of ProTools, Ableton, FinalCut, or other interface on the iPad, connected to a Mac via USB. Or by wireless. Or a virtual Kaos pad :)
The iPod touch's greatest weakness is its small size. Eliminate that and you have something you can really use for ebooks and video (and for that matter, an ebook reader and 10" portable DVD player duct-taped together already cost as much an iPad even before you throw in the digital picture frame). But having a larger landscape for multitouch apps represents a lot of potential.
The greatest weaknesses of a PC are its complexity and its UI. A PC is complex enough that a novice user can either completely fuck it up or is terrified to try doing more than a limited number of tasks with it. And that's an inclusive or.
PG, in 2001:
"When you own a desktop computer, you end up learning a lot more than you wanted to know about what's happening inside it. ... My mother has a computer that she uses for email and for keeping accounts. About a year ago she was alarmed to receive a letter from Apple, offering her a discount on a new version of the operating system. There's something wrong when a sixty-five year old woman who wants to use a computer for email and accounts has to think about installing new operating sytems. Ordinary users shouldn't even know the words "operating system," much less "device driver" or "patch.""
http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html
Even if you're accessing web apps, people still have to wrangle with the operating system a good deal. People need a limited device that gets out of the way and doesn't need them to administer it. And it turns out that a limited device can also make some security guarantees about running native apps, as well.
The keyboard/mouse UI is pretty nice, but still a weakness in some respects. Keyboards are fast and mice let you do spacial things with a screen. Unfortunately, keyboards in most contexts have somewhat arbitrary effects ("/" means search, "command-z" means undo) so people don't use them outside of entering text, and mice are not especially fast. Both devices are also rather indirect. Multitouching a handheld device is about as fast as a keyboard and probably even more intuitive than a mouse. And the directness is unmatched. It can even reproduce maybe 70% of a keyboard just by pushing a keyboard up onto the screen. This seems obvious in retrospect now that we've had iPhones for years, but once again--the weakness of the iPhone and iPod touch is the small screen size.
And in the laptop context, the keyboard and trackpad physically get in your way. Why have a touchpad which indirectly controls a cursor when you can just touch the screen? The keyboard has more use, but when you take the tradeoff of eliminating it, you can get a lot closer to the screen and carry it around in a usable state far more easily. I've spent a lot of time carrying around open laptops, and it's pretty unwieldy.
I don't think the iPad will be revolutionary until it doesn't require a PC to sync to. It would also help if it was cheaper--cheap enough that you could have one in each room, at least. And I'm not completely convinced myself. But there are enough signs that they're onto something that I'm intrigued.
I love that apple drives innovation in hardware and interface design. I hate that the patent system we have now actively hinders the adoption of apple's innovations.
Apple complains that competitors are stealing apple's technology, as though apple's success relies entirely on technology x or y. Not true. Apple's success is based on its polish and attention to detail, something which competitors have an incredibly hard time copying. I for one, love when competitors copy apple, because it forces apple to up its game.
Apple's success is based on its polish and attention to detail
If that's the case, why can't they drop OS X and iPhone and simply make clones, just clones with polish and attention to detail?
You want to have your cake and eat it too: You want Apple to innovate and you want everyone else to leverage their innovation freely. I understand why that's in your best interests, I can't figure out why Apple would bother if everyone else could "adopt" their innovation wholesale.
Where do you want to draw the line? Can others adopt Apple's multi-touch gestures? How about the look and feel of OS X? What about the code, can CherryPC or whatever they were called make PCs that run OS X by writing drivers for it? How about duplicating the OS X copde, can Chinese clone makers simply copy the OS X code and replace Apple's logos with their own?
But responding to your explanation, if competitors are free to "adopt" Apple's innovations, why can't competitor's "adopt" OS X and iPhone by copying them feature for feature, polish for polish, detail for detail, simply changing logos and writing "Hello from Dreary Seattle" on the back?
It is not obvious to me how "polish and attention to detail" are going to be a competitive advantage in a world where competitors have the unrestricted right to adopt Apple's innovations.
I suggest that part of why Apple is able to differentiate with polish and attention to detail is our existing barriers to adopting other people's innovations.
> Why can't competitor's "adopt" OS X and iPhone by copying them feature for feature, polish for polish, detail for detail
They can't copy the code for OS X because it's covered by copyright. They also can't make it look exactly the same because of trademark. What does that leave? A competitor could then still completely implement their own operating system, User Interface, related hardware, and put the effort into polish and attention to detail. And somehow that's a problem that requires legal recourse to prevent?
"If that's the case, why can't they drop OS X and iPhone and simply make clones, just clones with polish and attention to detail?"
I don't think you understand what it takes to reach apple's level of polish and attention to detail. They simply can't achieve it without innovating.
"I can't figure out why Apple would bother if everyone else could "adopt" their innovation wholesale."
That's like asking why Intel would bother developing a new faster processor. Someone else will just "copy" their innovation and develop a processor just as fast, no?
You ask where I draw the line, and there is a line that I would draw. But I want to ask you where you would draw the line. Do you honestly believe that for the next (slightly less than) 20 years, no one except for apple should be able to develop a product with multi-touch capability? They don't seem much interested in licensing the technology. Do you really believe that when a bunch of companies are developing the same technology, the one that gets lucky and files it first should be able to lock everyone else out of using it for 20 years?
Yes, there has to be an incentive for innovation, but creating monopolies on whole classes of technology should not be that incentive.
Or the community interest. Is the plural of self-interest community interest? How much pain does it take to show the harmful effects of the monopoly outweigh the benefits?
I'm not suggesting that intellectual property protection is a public good. I'm disputing that companies like Apple will thrive by innovating in an environment where adopting innovation is unfettered.
It may be that if we remove all barriers to adoption that companies like Apple will die and innovation will come from artists who invent new things out of passion. I don't know, and I am not suggesting that the existence of Apple is a public good either.
I'm just skeptical that there is any incentive for Apple to do any innovation in such an environment.
The problem with patents is they kill all kinds of innovation.
Once one company, let's say Apple, gets some patents in an area, then no one else can work in the same space. Give Apple all the copyrights they want plus trademarks and design patents, but no software and hardware patents. Even independent invention is no defense against patents - if I invent something and sell it, and I've never heard of you, but you have a prior patent, you can steal my invention and work from me.
Copyright law alone doesn't incentivize the kind of work Apple does
Wasn't this the crux of the Apple/Microsoft lawsuit in the 90s? Apple claiming a copyright to the windows metaphor? So yeah, I'd say that copyright law doesn't quite cover them in this case.
Mobile devices is an incredibly patent-heavy landscape, where manufacturers are used to licensing technology from one-another and have been for years.
Obviously Apple and HTC have been in discussions (lawsuits are incredibly expensive and always a last resort) and the fact that Apple went ahead and filed indicates that these discussions failed. This means either HTC was offering less than 'market' in licensing fees, or Apple was asking for more. Which do you think is more likely?
Regardless of how patent-heavy mobile devices may be, this represents a major change in Apple's policy.
In some discussion thread in the distant past, someone pointed out that Apple has never used its patents offensively. And a quick check through Wikipedia seems to confirm it: The only mention of patents was in cases where Apple had first been sued for violating a competitor's patents.
Up until now -- well into their reign in the mobile device sector -- Apple could claim that they were only amassing patents as a means of defending themselves from other companies with patents. Hence, this preemptive strike is unusual.
I think it's far more calculated than that: Google's shipping Android builds avoid a lot of basic UI features that Apple did first. HTC then adds most of them through their "TouchSense" modifications, just like they did with WM6 before.
They're trying to keep Google in its place, and prevent HTC from extending it. They're happy with Android being out there for the dorkwads and ideologues (it lets them shed their 'worst customers') but they don't want the public to see a sea of direct clones of their style of multitouch.
I enjoy reading hacker news comments because they tend to be mature and express interesting ideas well. I hope your future comments do not resort to childish name calling as you do in this one.
As for your point, that you feel patents like the multi-touch patent are justified, I would point out that many people disagree with trivial patents such as this, or even software patents in general. It is developers and IT people that are upset with Apples highly controlled development environment. Alienating this group of people may eventually backfire.
Apple's 'style of multitouch' is the same multitouch Bell invented in the 60s. Pinch to zoom has been around for decades, Apple's genius is in bringing that to smartphones - unfortunately that's not patentable, so they have to resort to 'using a gesture to unlock a device' and other such specific (and obvious) applications of the concept.
The fact that the Nexus One is better, hardware-wise, than the iPhone? (Earlier Android devices were intentionally stripped down for the sake of being inexpensive. The Nexus One is not.)
And that HTC's own-branded Android devices compete and better iPhone in a lot of ways. When I moved from iPhone to hero, my contacts suddenly all had photos from Facebook, I didn't have to open apps to check twitter or stock prices, I could add a shortcut to SMS my girl right onto the home screen, and I didn't have to sync anymore.
I think they should put a cap on the size of a company that can hold and enforce patents. Apple et. al. do not need the protections afforded by patents. I know that in reality this would just create a lot of proxy companies but there has got to be a better way; getting rid of the patent system is not the solution as it does provide the little guy protection, from the big guys just stealing, his idea and drowning him out with cheaper copies.
But given the two choices, I am cheering for the patent trolls to just screw the whole think up to the point that the big guys clamor for it to go away.
Gizmodo has a summary of the patents:
The ‘331 Patent, entitled "Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States," was duly and legally issued on April 22, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The ‘949 Patent, entitled "Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics," was duly and legally issued on January 20, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘949 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit B.
The ‘849 Patent, entitled "Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image," was duly and legally issued on February 2, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘849 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit C.
The ‘381 Patent, entitled "List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display," was duly and legally issued on December 23, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘381 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit D.
The ‘726 Patent, entitled "System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device," was duly and legally issued on July 6, 1999 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘726 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit E.
The ‘076 Patent, entitled "Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices," was duly and legally issued on December 15, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘076 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit F.
The ‘105 Patent, entitled "GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality," was duly and legally issued on December 8, 1998 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘105 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit G.
The ‘453 Patent, entitled "Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor," was duly and legally issued on June 3, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘453 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit H.
The ‘599 Patent, entitled "Object-Oriented Graphic System," was duly and legally issued on October 3, 1995 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘599 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit I.
The ‘354 Patent, entitled "Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods," was duly and legally issued on July 23, 2002 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘354 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit J.
Don't the last two patents basically give them the right to sue ANYONE who has ever made some sort of GUI application, including vendors in their own app store and people who write apps for OSX? Aren't these basically design patterns?
> Don't the last two patents basically give them the right to sue ANYONE who has ever made some sort of GUI application, including vendors in their own app store and people who write apps for OSX? Aren't these basically design patterns?
Welcome to the world of software patents. Many of the other ones are probably also very basic and widespread, they're just not worded in such a way as to make it so obvious.
Read the claims, not the titles. The title of a patent means nothing, from a legal sense. So while a title can be broad, the claims must be very specific.
The claims merely need to be specific enough to not conflict with other patents (excluding the so called "obvious" and vague notion of "been there, done that"). Design patterns in the general sense are patentable, unfortunately.
Everyone needs to do a search through the patent database sometime. You don't really know how much of a cesspool that system has become until you see the prevalence of patent trolling.
The Signal/Bullsh#t ratio of our patent system is perhaps a little better than the Legit/Spam ratio for emails. Yes, it really is bad on a par with that!
The reason more programmers don't do that is because it is incredibly risky in terms of legal liability. The simple fact that you even looked at the patent database increases the chance that you will have to pay three times as much in damages if you are sued. Groklaw.net's sidebar has links to a bunch of information on all of this, designed to bridge the gap between lawyers and geeks.
I mean I love how easy it makes doing, say, dispatching a network update request and updating the CoreData model and refreshing the table rows when it's done but really?
"Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods"
I bet if someone got a bunch of experienced geeks together they could find prior art for most of those. Someone so motivated could start by getting in touch with pubpat.org.
> "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."
> "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."
I assume you're talking about Nokia (since as an American, I can't be bothered to remember their CEO's name).
The Nokia situation is a little more murky than this. With Nokia, Apple tried to license their patents (which I believe are crucial to GSM), but Nokia wanted a broad cross-licensing agreement, to basically use all of the Apple display / mobile device / multitouch patents (what HTC is accused of doing). Patents involved in communication standards are supposed to be licensed on reasonable terms, so Apple cried foul. The predictable lawsuit and counter-suit then commenced.
I don't think anyone in this case is saying that HTC bothered to ask Apple to license the patents in question.
Swiping to unlock and other similar patented items are all "obvious" design decisions. All great design is obvious because great design produces things that are appropriate. Moreover, because great design is so obvious, it must be easy to design great things; the world must be full of great designs.
Right?
Um, no. The truth is that great design is NOT easy, and it stands out so prominently because the world is NOT full of great designs. Things like swiping to unlock are "obvious" only in retrospect. All great design is obvious -- in retrospect -- because great design produces things that are appropriate. But it is hard to do (PG has several essays on precisely this topic). Moreover, because it is hard to do, great designers are rewarded with some degree of protection for making the details of their innovations public (thus the legal terminology that patents "teach" a particular topic). I don't see why we should expect great designers to give up control of their ideas, willingly or otherwise, simply because those ideas are particularly good. Much of the logic in these comments amounts to "the iPhone had such a marvelously simple UI that everyone copied it, and because it became pervasive (by virtue of the copying), it must remain pervasive via Apple giving up the right to protect their IP."
I just don't buy that.
Also, people are asking "why now? why not earlier?" According to Gizmodo & other news sites, the brief is some 700 pages long. I'm sure Apple started working on this the day the Nexus One details started surfacing and it became clear it was effectively an iPhone clone. They can't sue Google (remember that Schmidt sat in Apple's huddles for years, listening to the plays, learning the playbook by heart, soaking up all insider info he could) because Google is intentionally disabling contested technology in Android -- they evidently know quite well what patent infringement means. Google is instead relying upon their handset manufacturers to enable the contested technology and thus take the bullet for them. I wonder why nobody is criticizing Google for using HTC as a "human" shield?
HTC should countersue (if Apple are actually trying to sue HTC over HTC's technology and not Google's).
HTC pushed pure touch-based phones for years before Apple released the iPhone in 2007 and should have a reasonable patent portfolio they can use against trolls like this.
tl;dr - I think cross referencing is a Good Thing(tm).
Clearly some people here think that this comment detracted from the value of HN. I can accept that, and I don't mind the loss of karma. Let me just explain that as a programmer I abhor unnecessary duplication. Equally, though, as an infophile I like to get different angles on each story, to try to see if there's any extras. So when I see the same story from different sources I like to read them all, but equally, I prefer that discussion and comments end up in one place.
So I try to add value to HN in part by making sure these things get cross-referenced. Mostly I think people find it harmless. Some people actively dislike it and vote me down, others actively like it and vote me up. Yet others find it both irritating and useful in equal measure, so no doubt they are confused and conflicted. That's their problem.
But I'm slowly stopping doing this anyway. I get the occasional comment saying it's really appreciated, but in general I'm reducing the time I spend here anyway.
And that's the rationale behind the comment.
ADDED FURTHER IN EDIT: Or perhaps you saw that I'd got the reference wrong and just down-voted me instead of bothering to tell me. Now I'm really disappointed in the HN crowd. I've fixed the reference.
I appreciate the need to get different angles, TechCrunch however isn't a credible source of information (they throw great parties though).
I'd love to see a Mashable or CodeSketch or whatever perspective though. Someone else contributed John Gruber's post on the topic and was modded up accordingly.
Why can't Apple continue to out-innovate Nexus One and Android instead of suing them?
Reading from the overall situation and his quote, Steve Jobs might feel that the current iPhone UI is 'perfect' as a whole. Apart from nitty-gritty details, he does not see a way to drastically improve it. (That's why he chose it for the iPad UI as well.) So he might figure that the only way to stop competitors from getting too close is to sue them.
My next computer wont be a Macbook. :-/ Which makes me really angry because I love my current Macbook. And there goes the thought of buying an iPhone as well.
Unfortunately at this point I feel that I'm obligated not to buy Apple products. Walk with your feet, as the saying goes. Believing in patent reform can be damn inconvenient sometimes.
Apple make good laptop hardware though. Here's a better idea: keep your existing Mac, but buy an HTC Desire as your next phone.
You get a lot of features the iPhone doesn't have (pictures for your contacts, social network integration, streaming, no sync requirement, a faster CPU) and stick it to Apple at the same time.
It seems to part of a longer game, I think certain companies are not wanting "Google Voice" to revolutionise phone calls. There is a lot of companies making a lot of money for not a lot of bandwidth.
Until recent updates, Google branded devices didn't enable multitouch by default. That changed shortly after Eric Smidt left the Apple board and all the Nexus One's got multitouch turned on in an update.
Perhaps Apple will sue Google now?
(just a guess - I personally would prefer AT&T sue Apple for 'stealing' their 1960s multitouch technologies for pinch and zoom)
Innovation and theft are two different things. Forget the hardware and architecture patents - I'm sick of design being treated as a commodity that's assumed to be freely copyable, simply because it's a user interface rather than a hardware element. Just as many hours and insights went into making the iPhone UI as it did the physical device.
"Just as many hours and insights went into making the iPhone UI as it did the physical device"
I seriously doubt it, unless you are counting all the GUI elements since the Xerox PARC days. Designing and manufacturing a device like the iPhone (or any other modern electronic device) is insanely complicated. It's bad when you use reference designs. It becomes absolutely insane when you invent something new.
It becomes obvious once you make the leap to "there is no keyboard, the touchscreen is the entirety of the interface", but prior to the iPhone no one had dared to try that particular path of development. It was probably not possible to patent the concept of only using a touchscreen for your UI, so instead Apple patented a lot of the little details that are a consequence of its innovative leap.
One shouldn't be able to patent something that's a direct consequence of having a specific limitation, This slide to unlock idea is something a reasonably clever designer would figure out in about 5 minutes.
And, BTW, is a common feature in many physical devices that employ a lock over a button. It reminds me of the locks I had in my car by the late 80's and the power button I had on a Compaq server in the early 90's.
Actually a patent already has to be 'not obvious to an engineer sufficiently skilled in the art' if I remember correctly, although that's almost never applied.
Not at the time. I remember people chuckling aloud the first time they saw it. "Hah! Clever!" Steve Jobs even repeats it multiple times in the original iPhone keynote to demonstrate.
I still don't think they should have a patent for it.
