This just shows how bad the state of the US Patent Industry is, were instead of making a better product, it's easier to hamstring a competing company.
If the patent is upheld, and Apple, having the hate it does for Android tries and bans Android Phones, then in the end, all it does is hurt the users who want a decent alternative to Apple Products. People expect multi-touch on their phones, and non-physical keyboards. I can just see my mom asking me why her new android phone doesn't swipe to scroll because her last phone did.
As I type on my MacBook Pro, I also wonder at what point we as a community are going to start voting with our wallets against Apple and the extent to which they are abusing the broken US patent system. Of course it's only rational to expect that they will use any means at their disposal to get a competitive advantage, but that doesn't mean that we must reserve moral judgment.
For me, Apple has already moved into "prefer competitors' products" territory, but they keep pushing me closer to all-out boycott.
> I also wonder at what point we as a community are going to start voting with our wallets against Apple and the extent to which they are abusing the broken US patent system.
Good question. I never used any Apple products and never will. While they definitely made others try to compete with them, at the same time they held back many important technologies. For example audio and video codecs. Why don't we see open codecs gaining wider adoption in hardware and on the Web? Apple is the culprit.
Try to find a hardware player which supports Vorbis (and also has characteristics that you need), or try to explain to an Apple user while your OGG/Vorbis audio or WebM video doesn't play in their iPod or Safari.
It's quite irritating when some control the technology because of their greed and hold back the innovation which they claim to embrace.
Vorbis doesn't have hardware support on many chipsets which means that battery life would not be as good as for MP3/AAC. I find it quite hard to see Apple as evil for implementing International Standards and while they are not free (or Free software compatible) they are open.
There are plenty of good reasons for not adding support to additional codecs without good reason to.
1) Different (and confusing) compatibility depending on the exact model of your product.
2) Need to keep support indefinitely otherwise you cut off previously supported content in people's libraries. People get far more annoyed when you take something away that if you never enabled it.
3) If you have Apple's scale and people will encode to your format anyway a narrow minimal range of formats supported will reduce debugging and handling of edge cases and file types.
Free codecs are a niche concern, almost all users get them [edit: by "them" I meant AAC/AVC/MPEG4] free from their OS provider and in the trickier cases like Linux there are plenty of sources for open source codecs that you can obtain as packages for nearly every distro. AFAIK there has never been any legal action to try to prevent these packages being distributed. So in practice using Free codecs is an ideological decision in most cases and very few people care (I used to but I got over it, the AVC and AAC licenses really aren't that bad if you read them).
Adding Vorbis in hardware is not hard. The reason it's not usually added is because of Apple precisely, since they are one of the major manufacturers of hardware players. I.e. if they'd add support for Vorbis, it will become widespread pretty soon. So your argument is reversed. And, in mobile SoCs it is gaining traction now, because of Google and WebM. Hardware players are a bigger problem.
1) There is nothing confusing about codecs support. Just specify what's supported. Sansa players list supported codecs which include Vorbis and FLAC for example.
2) So what? Keep it as much as you want. What's the problem with that?
3) Barring newer and better codecs from adoption because of "debugging burden" is just ridiculous.
> Free codecs are a niche concern, almost all users get them free from their OS provider
So, how do OS X or iOS users get it from Apple? They don't. And that's the reason why HTML5 audio and video is such a mess. Apple know perfectly that they cause it, and they don't care, because they are jerks.
1) So Apple add Vorbis in the iPhone 6 and iPod fifth generation. "Why does this work on his iPod and not mine?"
2) For the iPhone 8 a new super low power, low cost chip with better integration of audio output becomes available but doesn't support Vorbis. Nevermind we will just use the old expensive high power chip instead. Every feature you add is a limitation on the future changes you can make.
3) Not always. Just a new encoder that does something differently can work on one player and not others, then you have to work out whether it is an encoder bug or decoder bug.
I meant almost all users get AAC/AVC/MPEG4 from their OS provider or Linux users can install open source (although probably not patent licensed) AAC/AVC/MPEG4 codecs from various locations. I wasn't clear and I will re-edit for clarity.
1) So? Instead of breaking your head on "how and where do I get a player which supports the codec I need", you'll worry about "which of these from the same manufacturer supports the codec I need". I surely prefer the second case to the first.
2) Why doesn't it support Vorbis? Let them make it low power low cost and add support for all modern codecs. It's doable. Apple sabotages it not because of any technical reasons.
Also, modern SoCs allow optimal decoding of any custom codec potentially, by allowing it to be defined programmatically, even if hardwired decoder is not available. See:
3) Let them debug it. Or they shouldn't make players if they can't support modern codecs because it's "hard to debug".
It's not about what users or developers and publishers can do. It's about what they can't (because of Apple). And what people can't do is using open codecs without worrying that some users won't be able to access them.
They are open as in "specs are available". They aren't open as in freedom to use them. Let's not start the semantics arguments, you know what was meant above.
Whether that benefits them not to do it - you are correct. My point is, it benefits them to sabotage the industry and to hold back innovation. It's because they view control as their main benefit, not the innovation. And that's why they are a problem for the open Web (it defines the medium that diminishes control of the likes of Apple). That was in my original point, so we don't argue here.
We have gone quite far off course but I thought I would summarise our polite disagreements which I doubt we will resolve:
1) How much effort it would be to introduce and support Vorbis over the long term. You seem to believe it is negligible in cost while I believe it is quite achievable if they wanted to do it but VERY far from free to support additional codecs.
2) Terminology. I don't like appropriation of words and think that terminology does matter. I was clear in an early post that I understood that the AAC/AVC/MPEG4 codecs are not free (or Free). I will continue to argue against claims (even implicit) that Open Standards are not open.
3) Innovation. Although I haven't responded to the point I don't see Vorbis as a significant innovation beyond AAC so I don't see Apple as holding back innovation by not supporting it. I don't see much innovation held back by the lack of Free codecs but perhaps you do.
4) "it benefits them to sabotage the industry and to hold back innovation" This is a really strange one to me. As (3) I'm not sure about the innovation. Also the idea that they have a duty to at their own expense (1) take actions that benefit other people seems odd to me. If they were using their own proprietary codec that would be different but I just don't see the duty that they are breaching.
5) My view is that there are advantages to the limited set of codec required to support virtually all devices that may even outweigh the disadvantages of them not being Free. This is probably our core disagreement. Until there is at least a factor of two improvement in coding efficiency it is unlikely to be worth making a leap in codecs. Vorbis, theora, VP8 all came too late (at least with hardware implementations) to win this generation and it is best that an open non-proprietary winner takes all. The presence of the Free codecs (and to an even greater degree VC-1 which at the time was pitched as royalty free) helped ensure reasonable licensing terms for AAC/AVC etc. (unlike MPEG4 part2/H.263) so for almost all use cases the cost of AAC/AVC/MPEG4 is negligible in business scenarios. (Shipping a free Linux distribution or other free player/encoder software is the only case that I can see being troubled but they mostly get around it by not including the codecs while making it easy for the user to obtain them elsewhere.)
1) It's not even the point whether there is some cost or none. It's not the cost that prevents Apple from implementing open codecs. It's control, I already emphasized that above. They spend a lot on other things, it's not like they direly lack resources.
2) I didn't invent the usage of "open" as in "liberated". That's used in open Web, open technologies and etc. Usually some try to complain that free software is different from open source software and so on. While it's formally valid, most often you can deduce what's implied from the context. Open codecs imply liberated codecs. Open standard (in many contexts) includes being not encumbered by patents (surely, even closed codec can be implemented as open source, it doesn't make it free because of that). And that's not the case with proprietary codecs - they are patent encumbered. That's why they are not open standards. When something is discussed as open vs closed as in not having a public specification, it's usually pretty clear.
3) Vorbis is clearly innovative over MP3. We were talking about digital players, and most of them use MP3, not AAC.
Opus is clearly innovative over any above, including AAC.
4) I already explained, it's not about expenses. It's about control. It's not just about "taking actions that benefit other people". It's about taking the opposite - actions which damage others (i.e. HTML5 codecs mess). Apple can't escape being blamed for it.
5) Even if there is some benefit in limiting the number of codecs, it's not what drives Apple not to use open ones, especially when they are technically better.
So we agree that Apple doesn't see a benefit in using open codecs, but we disagree on their motivation or what exactly they see as a benefit. You view them equating benefit with reducing expenses. I think they consider control as the primary benefit.
(1) Even Apple prioritise and focus. Do you have evidence besides the bank balance that it isn't cost but control?
(2) I'm not saying you invented the use of open or that Vorbis isn't open but that the word applies at least equally to traditional open standards. Open standard does not mean that there are now patents and the software people new to standardisation who believe otherwise are wrong. The attempt to appropriate the word (which you didn't start but you are continuing) isn't an attempt to debate on the merits. Patent encumbered standards can be compatible with many proper open source licenses.
(3) I don't know Opus or how good it is but it seems too new. The proposed standard RFC is only a year old and silicon specification lead times are often several times that.
All iPods support AAC in MP4 containers and have since the first iPod shipped so that is why I was comparing with AAC, MP3 is just for backwards compatibility in my view.
1) Aren't recent patent events demonstrate that Apple is clearly paranoidally interested in control? Monopolistic grip = control. Banning competitive technologies = control. Codecs are just in line of Apple's usual behavior. Vorbis isn't even new. You could say that VP8 is relatively new and Opus is very new, so Apple is too slow to adopt them. But Vorbis is nowhere new. Apple always showed clear disdain towards open codecs, and it was never based on technical merits. Closed codecs equals control (or to make it more clear patents = control).
2) Arguments about what's an "open standard" aren't new either. I hold - open standards means unencumbered by patents. Especially when applied to the idea "open Web requires open standards". Luckily, W3C adopted that position.
3) Ubiquitous common denominator in audio players is still MP3. They aren't forward compatible though, i.e. players which support just MP3 can't play AAC.
5) Clear evidence is that other manufacturers successfully implement open codecs. It's not a downside, it's a benefit (for them and for their users).
I don't think anyone else is reading and doubt that we will change each other's minds. But I'll give you one more response.
1) No. Sort of but I'm not sure they have achieved a monopoly. When have they banned competitive technologies? An alternative perspective is that they felt their technology and design were ripped off improperly and responded with the legal remedies open to them. Even so that show that their codec decisions were about control of anyone else. Vorbis is old but newer (at least the integer version) than AAC which matches it for quality. VO8 is newer and not much better than AVC. Opus is just too new. Apple doesn't use closed codecs, I won't concede the language to you.
2) W3C requires royalty free open standards which is great but does not make that the definition of open standards (although it is within the definition).
3) Yes and Apple support that too. It is old and poor by modern standards but I'm not sure of the relevance to this debate.
5) That is nice. I have the feeling that many of them may drop it in subsequent models if it was inconvenient. Again I'm not sure of the relevance of this to our disagreements.
Many times. One of the glaring examples - competing browser engines on iOS.
> Vorbis is old but newer (at least the integer version) than AAC which matches it for quality.
Yet, AAC can't be used in an interoperable way because it's patent encumbered. Vorbis can, but Apple still refused to adopt it. Control conflicts with interoperability. Open Web requires interoperability. Apple obviously doesn't care.
> I won't concede the language to you.
I'm calling them closed, you can call them restricted, non free or whatever codecs. The main point - you understood what was implied.
> W3C requires royalty free open standards which is great but does not make that the definition of open standards
Neither does anyone else make such definition. It's not formal and shouldn't be. The main point that it should be clear what's implied, to avoid word play, when some call standards "open" (so fitting for the open Web), while implying that they are encumbered by patents. It caused problems in W3C in the past.
How does "open but non-free" for the MOEG4 standards and "open and Free" for the Xiph ones. Closed is wrong.
Openness and freeness are separate axis.
AAC is interoperable, there are many implementations; open, closed source and hardware on Linux, Windows, iOS, Android devices and many more devices than support Vorbis so in many ways AAC is more interoperable despite not being suitable for zero cost codec distribution or GPLv3 compatible (probably some more licenses too, not sure about MPL and CDDL off the top of my head).
Yes Apple impose limits on their iOS platform with a mixture of reasons including, security, reliability and their commercial advantage. I don't think it is an arbitrary control grab but some aspects are for their commercial benefit. Note VLC on iOS will play ogg files.
I agree that calling them free and non free is more correct. Even more correct is calling them liberated and restricted. But they are already commonly called open and closed.
Interoperability (required for the open Web) means that any participant should have equal ability to interoperate (legally). This includes both creators and consumers, including private individuals, open source projects, non profit organizations and anyone else. Patent encumbrance means that one has to pay for a license. This contradicts the requirement above, so it makes it not really interoperable in a complete sense. It wasn't without a strong opposition from Apple and Co, but these principles were accepted by W3C as a premise for the development of the Web (unfortunately this failed in case of DRM, but that's another story). Apple and similar minded managed to sabotage mandatory codecs for the video and audio tags though, making these principles easy to ignore (which they do).
Mozilla manifesto summarizes these points about interoperability and openness well:
Interoperable means that things operate together and they undoubtably do in the MPEG4 ecosystem. Anyone can legally interoperate with MPEG4 with some limitations (equally anyone can use GPL code but some requirements come with distribution). That some choose not to join in and operate together does not make a thing lack interoperability. Note that I am not saying Mozilla are wrong to stay out, they have that right. For a long time they chose not to use even existing licensed codecs provided by the OS. They have a valid manifesto and a valid point of view and I am a Firefox and Thunderbird user when on a proper computer but it was a choice. That doesn't oblige other companies or groups to bend or change to support their ideologically based position.
On the interoperability scale (it isn't a binary yes/no) MPEG4 almost certainly wins by the pure range of devices supporting it from blu-ray players, mobile devices, RaspPi etc.
It is you that want to control other organisations to bend them to your ideological position via the W3C.
If you want open codecs to become ubiquitous the next generation is where the fight is now. I don't know of an HEVC beater out there but if there isn't one getting into silicon roadmaps right now you may have lost the next generation already.
A royalty free codec would be nice but for me a ubiquitous one is better. That is a valid disagreement that we have but it shows how Apple (and others) opposition to standardising on codecs doesn't need to be seen as an evil plot but a difference in prioties between different "good" choices.
> Interoperable means that things operate together and they undoubtably do in the MPEG4 ecosystem.
No, they don't. Technical feasibility to interoperate is only part of the picture. I clearly said above, that any participant should have an equal ability to interoperate legally. This includes no barriers to enter. License is like a visa to a country - it's a barrier to enter (which makes it not open).
If it's still not clear, license means "only those who can afford can use the encoder" and etc. Only those who can afford is a barrier to enter. I hope this is clear. Open codecs ensure equal accessibility and no barriers to enter. Encoders and decoders are available to everyone equally.
Pushing Apple and Co to support open technologies? It's only a natural thing to expect, since now they have a disproportionate grip as gatekeepers (in this context - it's about controlling codecs with patents). That was the whole point above, and that's exactly why Apple opposes it so strongly. It comes back to the same thing - control. You can call it an evil plot on their part, a basic instinct (desire for power) or whatever. But they clearly are allergic to the idea of the open Web, because it leaves them less leverage and makes it better for the people.
> If you want open codecs to become ubiquitous the next generation is where the fight is now.
Google does a lot with enabling VPx support in hardware. It's more up to OS developers to support it in software now. Hardware (at least mobile SoCs) is shaping up well. With wider usage of WebRTC things will get even better, since WebRTC mandates open [free] codecs (here Apple and Co. didn't manage to sabotage it). The next big thing is Daala, which is next generation to both VP9 and H.265. That won't appear in hardware soon.
Android doesn't affect media players directly. Also, even with biggest market share, as far as someone with smaller but still significant market share sabotages codecs adoption - there is a problem. Only if Apple will become completely irrelevant as in "can be ignored", then it won't affect the situation. But so far it didn't happen yet.
Surely Apple aren't alone in causing these kind of problems, but they are a major factor.
They managed to sabotage open codecs for audio and video tags in W3C, but now there is some hope that WebRTC will make open codecs part of the standard, and Apple will be forced either to follow the standard or admit they are jerks.
And where would you go if you were to boycott Apple over the actions you deem to be "abusing the broken US patent system".
I think Google/Motorola and Samsung have behaved far worse when they attempted to obtain injuctions and excessive licensing fees over patents that they had committed to license on FRAND terms.
Microsoft has a horrible history of anticompetive behavior.
Maybe Blackberry phone and linux based computer would be an acceptable route although I'm not sure how long Blackberry will be making competitive products and there is a fairly limited choice of PCs shipping without Windows.
You may think that Google and Samsung are worse because of FRAND, but the fact is that Apple by its very nature is more dangerous because of their closed system. If Google wins a patent, with it's open source AOSP, then guess what, anyone can use it. If Apple wins a patent, guess what, everyone has to pay for it.
This is horrible for users and businesses and is evil in nature.
As for Samsung, they are fighting back against Apple for the most part, and do so however they can.
I know Google is, because they have open sourced it for so long, competitors have taken and used it... Now they are trying to reap some rewards. But it won't matter since it has been open sourced the way it has... How many different ROMS are there now based off of AOSP? Hundreds
Samsung is not a victim, they are battling just as hard as Apple, but Apple, because of how vehemently they have attached Google and Samsung, they are the bad guys. People defend them because they are blinded by some infatuation that makes no sense to me and most other, level headed people.
And before you say I am an Apple hater, I have purchased multiple Apple products (mostly to evaluate compared to other products). I have owned every type of iPhone except for the new 5 series. I have had a mac, I have had iPods, etc etc... I was never satisfied with their price point for what I got. But, as a company, they disgust me. Anyone who wants to defend them can go for it.
Cloning other people's products and then dumping them onto the market using predatory pricing is a far more 'vehement' attack than anything Apple has done.
If you seriously believe Samsung is a more ethical company than Apple, then we need discuss this no longer.
Ethical and evil are two different words with two different meanings.
And, if I can make the same thing you can for cheaper, then why shouldn't I? Your problem is that you value "ingenuity" as something that can be stolen or ripped off which is wrong. You can't protect ideas. Everyone has them. Why should yours be more valuable then mine. Just because you say yours first? Even when I may have been working on my without anyone knowing? Or maybe you think, taking the risk of making something (i.e. the iphone) and since you took that risk, you should be rewarded by not allowing anyone else to make one. Because life if fair right? If you created the first product, make the product better than others, and offer at a reasonable price, then there is no reason you shouldn't be successful.
If apple didn't have patents, they would fail, why, because their products would be too expensive to compete with other "clones". Now, if they actually made a better product, then they would at least exist (if their "better" product was worth the cost). Think about the guys that started a business building normal pc's and putting OS X on them. Apple forcibly shut them down fast because they new people would flock to them. Why, because they were much cheaper and would do the same thing as a Mac. And yet, Apple forced the business to shut down so that they would own their market. That is evil.
Your stance make me believe that either, a) you are an Apple lover and thus overriding basic logic because you are blinded, b) don't understand the underlying points c) just trying to argue. Your ultimatum of "If you don't believe Samsung is as evil as Apple then I won't talk to you" is childish, immature and extremely bias. I believe Samsung is a better company than Apple. That is my own personal opinion, and I don't care whether you believe it or not.
Patents do not protect anyone accept the greedy corporation that files them. They stifle innovation and hurt everyone but themselves. Apple is the king of patents and thus, the worst.
I never made a 'childish ultimatum'. I simply said that if you believe Samsung is a more ethical company than Samsung, we have nothing to discuss, because it have no intention of debating that belief with you.
I am glad you were willing to own up to it.
I am also glad you admit that you do not respect the idea of contract law and think that Apple should be forced to give away their intellectual property.
As far as phones go, perhaps FirefoxOS when it matures more. Too bad the OpenMoko project never picked up enough speed. If that really doesn't work, then there are several attempts to use a pure ASOP on other phones like the HTC One or something like that.
Yeah, but I haven't seen that many accusations of Blackberry "abusing" them. If that does rule them out it makes it really hard to see what a good choice would be if you are boycotting Apple over their patent (ab)use. I guess Firefox OS or something like that if you could find the right manufacturer but your choice is getting really quite slim.
I think it would be fair to say that Microsoft's bad behavior earned it an absolutely crap reputation amongst many in the tech community, and that negativity may have played a role in the rise of adoption of Apple products and Google services.
I will have to look into this FRAND issue. Do you have any good links?
I don't always agree with Florian's opinions (although I'm not usually that far off) but his facts are usually solid.
Groklaw also had coverage but was often really quite disappointing when it moved beyond the SCO case. There seemed very much a Google good Apple bad, patents bad, FRAND patents not quite as bad when they are being used on people we don't like attitude.
There are probably some good comments on some HN discussions although many people seem to be under a mistaken impression that standards essential patents are better and more inventive than others when commonly the reverse is true.
My summary:
Standards are a bit like laws and sausages - you don't want to see how they are made.
Standards bodies are groups of competitors meeting in a room to set terms of business going forwards which without a signficant number of rules (including the declaration and FRAND licensing commitment of related patents) would be illegal under anti-trust/competition law.
Often with a standard like a codec there are many ways to implement each part of the process e.g. transforming, filtering, compressing, encoding.... Many of these approaches will have similar performance or perform well in different scenarios, many will also be patented. Companies want their patents included as (whether they are good or bad patents) anyone can work around them if they aren't included in the standard so they would get no royalties for them. If included they will get a very small slice of a big pie. Horse trading goes on in addition to the inclusion of technologies on pure merit (we will vote for your filtering approach and you can vote for our encoding approach). Everyone both wants a good standard that people will use and to get as many patents in as possible. If a company has a patent that they don't want to license under the terms of the standards organisation (often very vague) they could declare that and the standard would be developed avoiding the technology (or potentially abandoned).
Patents
In principle a patent gives you the exclusive right to implement and/or license the technology and no-one should import/produce or distribute infringing technology without your permission. In practice many granted are invalid (partially or totally). If there were no FRAND commitments you could hold up any implementer of a standard in which you had a patent for virtually the whole value of the standard (and obviously if everyone did that nothing would get implemented).
Injuctions for FRAND
Courts can offer damages and injuctions. As you have agreed to license SEP (standards essential patents) under FRAND terms it should be clear that damages should be a sufficient remedy and injunctions unnecessary, the courts can sort it out later (unless the company is unlikely to be able to pay up or can't be brought to court in the jurisdiction when there may be case to impose and injunction).
People don't care about their despotic and toxic environment for the little guys or competitors because they have the best products.
That seems to be changing as Android increases in marketshare every day, and Ultrabooks are taking off while Mac marketshare generally has remained stagnant over the past 8 quarters.
So, it seems like we already are moving away from Apple. The only thing they can do is now rely on petty lawsuits that damage their reputation in the engineer/tech community, which will hurt them in the long run even more so. The best way to fight it is to fund startups that have a focus on open systems and a proven commitment to free open software. Currently, the the hardware market is controlled by a few very, very large OEMs. Slowly, though, PCB and fab is opening up to many more people besides Samsung, LG, et al. Especially with Kickstarter, I don't see it likely that we will still have a hardware oligopoly in the next 5 years. More boutique manufacturers will spring up, and like it has for desktops, mobile hardware will open up.
The next step after that is to reform the broken US patent system so gorillas like Apple and Microsoft can't abuse it.
Because doing so would be shooting ourselves in the foot.
All of the major players are equally guilty, if not more so, of 'abusing' the patent system. Google and Samsung have tried to control the whole industry through assertion of FRAND patents.
Also, you do realize that you are calling for a total monopoly on the entire industry to placed into the hands of Google?
I can't think of anything more destructive.
Note: I totally agree with you that the patent system is broken, and should be drastically changed to prevent this kind of behavior, but 'punishing' one company is just playing to the PR goals of their competitors.
I already boycott all Apple products, after using only Macs for years.
Google doesn't seem to do any rent-seeking (as MS) nor does it try to lock down its platform to prevent any competition whatsoever (as Apple). FRAND is a shitty situation, but I think it's fair to claim even with that, Google is a much less threat to freedom than Apple or MS.
Just don't count on them to provide privacy as well.
I'm hoping for Mozilla to become a major player in phones; they seem fairly dedicated to both freedom and privacy.
> Google doesn't seem to do any rent-seeking (as MS) nor does it try to lock down its platform to prevent any competition whatsoever (as Apple). FRAND is a shitty situation, but I think it's fair to claim even with that, Google is a much less threat to freedom than Apple or MS.
I take it you don't advertise with Google? Google is just like any other company - they want to increase margins on their main revenue streams, and commoditize other areas so other large companies that gain revenue in those spaces are so weak they can't challenge Google.
For a long time, Google was not rent-seeking on their advertising platform, and gained a lot of cred. Then they bought double-click and it's been downhill from there. Google knows they're the biggest/only game in town and their prices (on their main revenue stream) reflect it.
> Just don't count on them to provide privacy as well.
On the bright side, Google won't go thermonuclear on you if you choose a Google-free mod. The Cyanogenmod guys conveniently provide instructions to install "google packs" if you choose to do so. I will not do business with companies that are into thermonuclear war.
The first and last Apple product I used was an iPod, years ago. Having to convert my music and videos to specific formats made the iPod lose its luster.
I disagree with you. Me boycotting Apple would not hand the market over to its competitors. Nor would an HN-wide boycott. But as they see the tide rising against them, perhaps we'd start to see changes in attitude. Also, it would incentivize competitors to differentiate from Apple in their bad behavior to try to multiply the trend.
The strategy of targeting the big players in an industry has worked time and time again. We've seen it work with GM, McDonalds, and most recently, Walmart.
I'm not saying anyone else in the industry is an angel. Just maybe it's time to start letting people know that we care enough to weigh corporate behavior pretty heavily in the mix with product specs in making our purchasing decisions.
I think it's extraordinarily unlikely that a boycott of Apple would do anything to cause Samsung to improve their behavior in any way. Most likely they would conclude that their general PR campaign to tarnish Apple was successful and be encouraged to turn it up further.
There may be an element of truth to that but Google/Motorola and Samsung are fighting extremely dirty by using FRAND committed standards essential patents.
It can easily be seen that a large amount of [inspiration/copying/ripping off - choose your adjective depending on viewpoint] was done of the original iPhone. There are a reasonable range of views as to whether Apple should have had the right to bring any action about that but they were clearly angered and used the available laws to try to prevent it (which due largely to the slow movement of the legal system they have largely failed to do). I can see a range of valid views on the proper protection from copying of products and I don't believe it is possible to prove one better than others (although some might be obviously bad). I don't see anything evil in one mega-corp using the legal system to try to stop another mega-corp from copying it.
From Samsung's point of view if getting their current share in smartphones costs them a couple of billion dollars in damages that would be a good deal for them.
The patent law is a mess. I would prefer patents MUCH harder to obtain but that could be normally assumed valid once granted and with a legal system able to bring injuctions fast enough to get infringing models removed before they are obselete/replaced.
Ugh, no. Yes the patent was upheld. Yes, all the claims survived intact. No, the claims are not on "touch typing, multitouch"; they cover a very specific use of a heuristic to differentiate between scrolling and panning. No, it's very unlikely that it will allow "ban on most Android" devices. I think Samsung (and probably most Android vendors) have already worked around the claims.
As with all tech media discussion about patents these days, this article talks about what the patent "covers" without so much as an idea of what claims are.
Exactly. Furthermore, the claims are not limited to 'capacitive touch' screens and could in fact apply to gestures on any touch screen system, so a large part of the article is pointless and wrong.
Devices weren't banned just for having rounded corners. They violated a design patent that covered interfaces which combined 5 specific design elements, one of which was rounded icons.
Because it seems Android is becoming a risky "enterprise" for OEMs, after the MSFT tax on Android, OEMs are not willing to pay an Apple tax. Google should have cleared any potential issue, but they are too bold. They tried when they bought Motorola but this strategy is not working that well.
I think the implication is that they work around the patents or license them.
There are obviously a load of problems with that - the later is problematic as Apple have shown little interest in licensing much of this stuff. The former because some of them cover genuinely useful stuff that compromises the product if you remove it.
They may also have decided that Samsung make fortunes so perhaps they could deal with this themselves...
I swear every time I read one of those articles I die a little bit. I can't begin to apprehend the emptiness inside [insert patent trolling company] lawyers' souls after a day at work.
Not sure this is much to do with companies patent trolling. Apple developed the tech and use it, that's pretty different.
You can disagree with the specific patent (and I think in this case there's a pretty good case for that) or with patents in general, but this isn't, by my understanding of the term, patent trolling.
Granted that's not patent trolling just yet, but that would definitely be a good first step towards it.
I mean given that this patent was granted on the basis that the tech already existed but on capacitor screens and not touch screen is laughable.
Of course Apple didn't invent any of these things -- multitouch and heuristics for detected angular swipes were available on older resistive touch screens. However, modern phones don't use resistive touch. The current state of U.S. technology patents allows you to repatent virtually identical firmware on a new kind of hardware.
I agree entirely that it's a suspect patent (even without the capacitive / resistive difference elements of it are hardly innovative) but that's still not trolling as Apple actively use the patent in their own products and registered the patent with that intention.
The patents are disclosure in exchange for state granted monopoly. Or they should be - you do something amazing. No one can figure out how to do it - you tell them and they cannot use the tech for X years.
But right now people patent the end result. That is wrong.
My opinions on patents are still evolving, but I tend to see drug patents as a good thing that needs reform. I know it's a bit of a tangent, but would someone mind explaining a little?
My main concern is that we can't expect anyone to invest m/billions in necessary drug research if they can be copied the instant the drug shows success. The R&D cost per new drug brought to market is often between 1-12 billion.[1] Even on the low end, that's more than the TOTAL US government's budget for health R&D.[2] Who is going to do this research?
I say the same thing about software and hardware patents, though. What incentive will any company have to innovate if they're constantly getting copied?
IMO too many people let their emotions dictate their thoughts about business -- Company X is big enough, so it doesn't deserve patents. Company Y sues everyone in the sun for using their technology; what a horrible company! For every high-profile case like these, though, there are stories of small businesses and new inventors getting screwed by distributors who outright steal product ideas and resell them for cheaper. We need to make sure that whatever system we have can allow for invention but also not stifle progress of entire industries.
Fine, let's use your example of the small business. Suppose that this company invents a revolutionary technology, such as a cure for cancer or a teleporter. That company is perfectly within its rights to just sit on the technology for 20 years. Even if it does decide to produce the technology, there is no way that it could keep up with demand, so it ends up shipping very small numbers of a very expensive and exclusive product. There really is no situation in which patents make sense.
Do you know why 3D printing is finally taking off? The parents are starting to expire. The technology has been around since the 80's. Try to let that set in how much patents have held back a very important innovation.
> Do you know why 3D printing is finally taking off? The patents are starting to expire.
That same history happened with almost every technology since patents existed. Some quite famous examples are the steam engines, electronic valves, and airplanes. It's an easy to spot pattern, new tech just takes off only a patent length interval after it leaves the labs.
That alone is not evidence that patents are bad. But coupled with the fact that most of those techs were concurrently invented by several people (who often got bankrupt, because they couldn't sell their inventions) it becomes very strong evidence.
I would say the term length is too long, especially for software patents. And non-obviousness is not a precondition anymore, especially for software patents. Otherwise we'd be fine. Instead, nobody can scan-to-email for twenty years.
Empirically, we know that in, say, the 1990's, when hardly any software patents happened, software companies still innovated. Are you trying to suggest that there has been some kind of fundamental economic shift since then that has made innovation impossible in the absence of patents? What is that shift?
What are these stories about small businesses and new inventors getting screwed by people who steal their ideas? It seems to me that you're the one arguing based on emotion -- your post is full of dire warnings without any attempt to back them up.
The one that comes to mind is the FuzziBunz brand of reusable diapers. If you follow Shark Tank, you may have seen the owner on there lamenting about patent infringement -- an employee of hers that was responsible for coordinating the outsourcing of her product to China then abruptly left the company and started her own line of FuzziBunz clones using the same factory.
There are solutions to funding drug research that don't require artificial scarcity. Eg prizes, or simply more government R&D.
The status quo is rediculously inefficient: "...patent-protected brand drugs sell for more than three times the price of generic drugs that sell in a free market. This means that the country could save approximately $140 billion a year on its $220 billion annual bill for prescription drugs if the government did not provide patent protection and drugs were instead sold in a competitive market.
According to the pharmaceutical industry, it spent $41.1 billion on research in the United States in 2004.4 This means that the country spends more than three dollars in higher drug prices for every dollar of drug research supported through the patent system. The rest of the additional spending went to marketing, high CEO pay, and drug company profits."
The R&D issue is indeed real. Even if the state already infuses the industry with $31 billions of tax payers money each year into research, patents add an other form of extra cost onto the product (a form of taxation) that also goes to the producers medicine, which a fraction gets into R&D.
What I hear from people, is the question if this form of state supported industry is really the best way to produce superior speed in research. There are no research to support the claim that state support monopolies is the only choice, a choice with by itself is not even enough so the government has to funnel even more cash to keep things going.
The current system also makes the government assessor to murder, by preventing people in producing medicine that saves lives. Its a sacrifice some for the greater good argument, but for a 2013 society it kind of bad. We really can't figure out a better way except forbidding people to heal themselves? Kind of odd system if one think of it.
There are two main issues with that argument (they don't completely invalidate the argument, but you should be aware of them):
1 - Most of that R&D cost is created because companies must create small differences between their products, requiring new tests. That is, if patents were absent, the society would need to spend a much smaller sum for the same gain.
2 - The pharmaceutical industry isn't an unbiased party of that research (quite obviously) and thus it isn't the ideal party for administrating it.
But, like I said, it does not invalidate the argument. Those issues also don't have an obvious solution (as far as I can see), but they exist.
I think we should be looking at first principles. If we do, then how are software patents different from hardware or drug patents? One difference could be the time and cost necessary to develop them and thus to recoup costs.
If technology is accelerating, why not just shorten patent periods? We could also impose FRAND terms that dwindle over time.
Everybody knew that went the patent standoff went nuclear things like this would happen. Patents were meant to leverage innovation, not to use it to litigate yourself into monopolistic control of a vertical market.
The idea that a keyboard used with a finger is even Patentable???? How is this even close to being something that needs to be protected? So the visualization of anything is a patent worthy idea? There has to be prior art in the hundreds of touch typing?
It is so frustrating knowing the Prior work of Microsoft Surface before the iPhone with multi-touch and pinch to zoom.
I would love all Android phones to just stop being sold in protest immediately. Though this would never happen. The very idea that this was something invalid in September and now passed through smells of some outside pressure.
> The idea that a keyboard used with a finger is even Patentable???? ...
This patent isn't for that.
> It is so frustrating knowing the Prior work of Microsoft Surface before the iPhone with multi-touch and pinch to zoom.
I assume any work published prior to the priority date of the patent (could be as early as April 2007 based on the filing date) would have been presented by those who requested the re-examination.
> ... The very idea that this was something invalid in September and now passed through smells of some outside pressure.
This patent has never been decided invalid. The First Office Action (which suggested invalidity) is the very first stage of invalidation and is made before there is any defence of the patent and frequently claims suggested invalid there are later decided to be valid. I don't think that the stage that has just determined the patent is valid would have been the final stage of invalidation (despite being called final).
Note also that as I read the claims [IANALATISNLA] if your touchscreen device naively translates single or multiple touches without using heuristics based on the initial movement to decide whether it is scrolling/rotating/something else then this patent would not affect you.
I highly doubt that. I have a FingerWorks Touchstream LP that (while I don't use it anymore) was performing the same exact gestures we all recognize as "swipes" on capacitive touchscreen phones/tablets. As evidence I point you to the founder's dissertation on the topic from 1999: http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~westerma/main.pdf
The only difference between how it worked on a Touchstream LP and a modern capacitive touchscreen is that the trouchscreen has a "screen". Other than that they're absolutely identical.
Actually, the Touchstream LP had capabilities that exceed today's capacitive touchscreens. For example, it supports ten-finger chording and could recognize which finger was which. So if I pressed my index and middle fingers (say, with both hands) in a certain region of the keyboard it would recognize that and send whatever pre-programmed sequence of keystrokes or mouse movements I wanted.
It was awesome technology! It only had one (big) flaw though: No tactile feedback.
You take it for granted but the "click" you feel when you press a key on your keyboard is very, very important to typing quickly and efficiently. Without it you have to constantly ensure your hands & fingers in properly positioned. This is why autocorrect is so important with software keyboards (if you're tapping instead of swiping). Without it--if you tried to type really quickly without thinking about what is actually being output from the IME--you'll end up with typos all over the place.
Another thing we take for granted is the ability to "feel" a key as we press it. On a capacitive touch surface there's no way to do that without accidentally typing that key. This is why I have high hopes for that technology that produces little bubbles on top of touchscreens on-demand to provide tactile feedback as to key locations.
So that is the reason why I eventually gave up on using the Touchstream LP. While it was the greatest mousing device I've ever used (and I've used HUNDREDS) it was not that great of a keyboard. I'd be happy to use it day-to-day for typing up English words and sentences but it was just too error-prone to use in a bash shell or for programming. Even with the "programmer pad" feature (which let you enter keys like braces, brackets, parens, etc using handy gestures) it still resulted in too many typing mistakes--even after training myself and using it regularly for a year.
Wait, it could identify which fingers were in use? Surely there was some sort of limit on this in some way. I find it doubtful that I could put my two index fingers on the surface somewhere and the system would know that was my two index fingers as opposed to any two of the rest of my fingers.
What you describe is more like counting touch contacts within a certain space on the surface and reacting to that regardless of which fingers were which.
While the parent comment is completely wrong that it was acquired from them when it is actually an Apple patent Fingerworks is mentioned in the "Other references" (that is references to things that aren't patents) section:
PR Newswire, "FingerWorks Announces a Gestrue Keyboard for Apple PowerBooks," Jan. 27, 2004, 2 pages. cited by other .
PR Newswire, "FingerWorks Announces the ZeroForce iGesture Pad," Feb. 18, 2003, 2 pages. cited by other .
I haven't studied the cited patents, some of them may also refer to Fingerworks.
"Androids". Ugh. At least they didn't just say "Droids" to mean all Android phones, but c'mon people. That's almost up there with "MAC" as far as being a flag indicating that the author isn't super clueful about the subject matter.
On topic: software patents are usually freaking terrible, but (as others have pointed out) this article misrepresents the whole situation, presumably for clicks. Not saying that the patent holder is in the right here, just that the situation is vastly more complicated than how it's presented.
So, if Android products are banned in the US, that doesn't change the fact that they would continue to be sold elsewhere in the world, right? And if so, wouldn't it be likely that you could pay to have an Android imported (perhaps illegally)?
So in essence, Apple patented the "straight line" because I doubt in nature you'll find many straight lines as they are described in this patent. What you will find though, is the kind of lines that Apple patented. Great.
If the patent is upheld, and Apple, having the hate it does for Android tries and bans Android Phones, then in the end, all it does is hurt the users who want a decent alternative to Apple Products. People expect multi-touch on their phones, and non-physical keyboards. I can just see my mom asking me why her new android phone doesn't swipe to scroll because her last phone did.
Such a shame.