Why are PDAs suddenly that weird uncle you never talk about and only see at birthdays?
Because they ultimately failed in the market. There was a reason that the Blackberry and Treo type devices became popular. They worked better than the early touchscreen devices.
Those early deficiencies left manufacturers gunshy about creating more touchscreen devices. It was combination of hardware issues (resistive, single touch) and also software (graffiti, interface).
It was not obvious in 2007 that such a device (full touchscreen, no physical keyboard) would succeed. The early iPhone reviews specifically addressed the keyboard issue, since this was a Blackberry world. Practically all Blackberry fans at the time were saying that the device would fail because you need a physical keyboard.
The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly.
>> It was not obvious in 2007 that such a device (full touchscreen, no physical keyboard) would succeed.
Yes. All my Blackberry toting friends were pooh-poohing the notion of a virtual keyboard, and now, the loudest critics among my peers have totally jumped ship, singing a different tune.
Regarding PDAs being that "weird uncle"...
I've had just about every PDA form-factor going back to the clamshell Sharp Wizards (which had these weird touch panels) in the late 80s to the Newton Messagepad to Windows CE, Palm and eventually Windows Mobile. The iPhone is the first "PDA" that I actually consistently use. The way you used the core features of the phone (contacts and calendar) were vastly better than anything I used prior.
Of course, I would have no problem using any "post-iOS" phone OS, which would include Windows Phone, Android and Web OS, but there really is something about the first iPhone UI that made it special. Is it as special today? Not really, but in 2007, yeah, it was pretty revolutionary.
>> Why are PDAs suddenly that weird uncle you never talk about and only see at birthdays?
> Because they ultimately failed in the market.
I have always seen the iPhone as a hybrid product. To call it a phone with PDA functionality, or a PDA with phone capabilities is just semantics in my opinion.
This has been spoken about over and over (refer to the heated discussion yesterday which wasn't my intention - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431382). The core of the article again - looks at the concept of obviousness.
Refer here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousn... - "One of the main requirements of patentability is that the invention being patented is not obvious, meaning that a "person having ordinary skill in the art" would not know how to solve the problem at which the invention is directed by using exactly the same mechanism."
Predominately - "that obviousness should be determined by looking at
the scope and content of the prior art;
the level of ordinary skill in the art;
the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art; and
objective evidence of nonobviousness.
In addition, the court outlined examples of factors that show "objective evidence of nonobviousness". They are:
commercial success;
long-felt but unsolved needs; and
failure of others."
Again - this article is attempting to state "oh because PDA existed, that means that everything related to a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious". but again, thats untrue.
I still believe - in additional the complex legal arguments - the comment below was one of greatest aspects that changed the lay-persons juror mind. Per the Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny
"In those three months, Samsung was able to copy Apple's 4-year investment in the iPhone, without taking any of the risks—because they were copying the world's most successful product ... No one is trying to stop them from selling smartphones, all we're saying is: make your own. Make your own designs, make your own phones, and compete on your own innovations."
"Just to drive the point home: a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious.."
I still don't buy it. This still misses the mark - it wasn't about a 'few' buttons, the iPhone was about none. All those pda's in the picture don't really mean anything to me. Sure, some of them had cell networking and a lot (most? all?) had wifi. But I would never consider the old pda's a mobile device. 'Mobile' to me comes from the term 'mobile phone', not 'mobile pda'.
To me, this article is typical of OSNews - if it's not Linux or open source, it bad/wrong/etc.
Anyway, Dan Frakes tweet wasn't talking about 'a few buttons being obvious' he said 'having no buttons/keys'. And like he said, if this was so obvious, then why wasn't everyone doing it in 2006? Howcome pda's didn't do this in the early 2000's? Because it took a visionary team of designers and execs (or just Jobs) that appreciates minimalism. No one at Compaq, HP, Microsoft's many pda OEMs would, no, could have done something like this. And don't forget the require stylus..
As someone who has owned a pre-iPhone phone with a touchscreen, and seen another one in the hand of a friend, no, what made the iPhone the iPhone is NOT obvious.
For the love of god, my LG Prada was so shitty I had to hit a 2px scrollbar with my thumb to scroll in the contact list. I can't contain the nervous laugh whenever some ignorant who never touched the device link to wikipedia proud of their attempt at mocking Apple.
Web browsing on a touchscreen is a real PITA without something like the double tap making a paragraph fit the whole screen automatically too.
Like it or not but the iPhone, as a whole package, without just singling out a feature here and there, was a real innovation, a breath of fresh air that opened a new market and has been copied to death by some companies like Samsung. I hated my LG Prada but instantly loved my iPhone the day I bought one and I wasn't anything like an Apple fanboy.
Ever notice how Jony Ive looks nothing like a Googler?
This whole trainwreck of a discussion is fed IMHO by the big rift between common, male IT-oriented folks and the rest of the population around visuals, aestethics and yes, concepts like fashion.
Sit in the cantina of any company and you can tell who is development/IT. Neckbeards? Socks in sandals? Leather cowboy hats? Attachments on their belts? Unshapely bodies?
Aestethics do exist in that other group. Good code, clever algorithms, etc. Fashion too, in forms of buzzwords and technologies du jour. DjangoRailsHadoop... But visual aestethics? Nope, nada, utter incomprehension.
The utter genious of Jobs was to bring the aestethics of the outer world into software and computer hardware. Design already existed in other industries, see Braun, Sony, etc but no one applied it to software. Because "nerds" didn't even understand it. See it. Grok it.
These Samsung vs Apple debates show this faultline. No comprehension at all why a particular implementation of multi touch should matter, be worth something. It is all obvious, just UI, the thing you slap on top of your awesome program. Why should it matter how it LOOKS?! How can that be so important? Didn't the LG Prada looks exactly the same? Ok, it used scrollbars, but why is that different to how iOS does it?
Whenever someone claims that Apple's success is just about marketing, nothing relevant in their products themselves. Whenever it's just off the shelf components they took and re-arranged, super simple and OBVIOUS, I can't help to think about blind people arguing about the uselessness of colors.
Interesting take that gets to the heart of the matter but my
interpretation is different.
Like you say, the genius of Apple and Jobs is an incredible focus on
the simplicity and intuitiveness of their products. I have seen two
year old kids able to use ipads. This was their innovation and it has
won them millions (billions?) of loyal fans.
This was so radically different than the prevailing ethos in the tech
industry at the time that their supporters feel they should be
protected or rewarded for changing the industry.
However, there is a problem in granting protection for these types of
innovations, in that we are setting a dangerous precedent for patents
and innovation. The individual user interface elements that make up
the iPhone, by themselves, are all relatively obvious. Swiping to turn
a page is the natural evolution of the book. Movies like Minority
Report suggest the range of gestures we can imagine given the
appropriate technology. It's quite a stretch to suggest that something
so similar to what we have done all our lives should be protected by
law and in effect create a protected monoply and prevent others from
using these ideas in their products.
Instead those that admire Apple and what they have done should
continue to do what they have been doing, buy their
products.
As someone who has owned multiple ipads, ipods, iphones, and mac
books, I know how compelling their products are and the loyalty it
breeds in their users. Therefore, I think it is unlikely that many
will step back and think whether this really is the best result for
our industry.
Icons finger sized in a grid. Well given we already had desktops, and given it's a handheld device, then it's insanely obvious to have fewer icons in a grid at finger size. Low resolution screen compared to our desktops, hey maybe we should have fullscreen as the default.
Pinch to zoom, multiple sci-fi movies.
Slide to unlock. Phones already had something called "unlock', and physical bolt locks already slide... So we make a visualisation of what amounts to a sliding latch when when have the touch screen, pure genius, nobody besides Apple could have thought of that, right?
"Trade Dress" to stop competitors should also be entirely illegal unless there is no branding or logo on the phone, or the name is too similar or in some insanely small font. If it has "Samsung" written on it it's insane to argue that anyone would confuse these things. What if these rules applied to TVs, cars or bottles of perfume? Perhaps technically they do, but people have had such things for so long they don't think about them in that way. It's farcical that anything clearly identified as a different product on the box can be subject to such rules.
Apple products are like a good classy restaurant or hotel chain. They take ingredients everyone has and put a lot of work into fit and finish, they make the customer feel special for a slightly higher price. And they have a dress code that permits only a certain crowd in there (app store approvals vs. more free entrance policy of other application stores, and by the way apt-get and various frontends to it pre-date the app store). All due respect to them for doing a good job, but Steve Jobs' entitlement complex knew no bounds and there is no moral or logical merit to their claims only a slice of legal merit on the back of stupid laws.
>Icons finger sized in a grid. Well given we already had desktops, and given it's a handheld device, then it's insanely obvious to have fewer icons in a grid at finger size. Low resolution screen compared to our desktops, hey maybe we should have fullscreen as the default.
PalmOS had icons in a grid looking pretty much the same too.
"The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card.
Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad -- in this case, an ultra-high resolution 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 480) touchscreen. "Maps look stunning on this screen," Moss-Pultz said.
The phone features an A-GPS (assisted GPS) receiver module connected to the application processor via a pair of UARTs. The commercial module has a closed design, but the API is apparently open.
Similarly, the phone's quad-band GSM/GPRS module, built by FIC, runs the proprietary Nucleus OS on a Texas Instruments baseband powered by an ARM7 core. It communicates with Linux over a serial port, using standard "AT" modem commands.
The Neo1973 will charge when connected to a PC via USB. It will also support USB network emulation, and will be capable of routing a connected PC to the Internet, via its GPRS data connection.
[...]
Moss-Pultz adds, "Applications are the ringtones of the future."
[...]
As for additional software components, Moss-Pultz admits, "Quite a lot is there, and quite a lot is not there. We're hoping to change this." In addition to a dialer, phonebook, media player, and application manager, the stack will likely include the Minimo browser
[...]
He adds, "Mobile phones are the PCs of the 21st century, in terms of processing power and broadband network access.
"
Looks familiar?
I personally have always thought the iPhone was Apple taking the openmoko idea and running with it.
>I personally have always thought the iPhone was Apple taking the openmoko idea and running with it.
From the linked article,
"
Cheap, hackable Linux smartphone due soon
By Linux Devices
2006-11-07
"
Presumably that means this was 7th November 2006.
So, in exactly 2 months ( on January 9th 2007) , Apple was able to design a prototype based on this concept, write all the software and demo it onstage ?
Yeah. Unfortunately, the hardware was atrocious, and despite the awesome work OpenedHand (now part of Intel) did on the interface apps, it wasn't that great even back then.
However, they did have a wiki page for some of the design back in 2006 showing pinch-to-zoom.
One of the big differences as far as PDAs go is that they required a stylus, and the touch was pressure sensitive. It couldn't be used just with your fingers.
The iPhone's touchscreen implementation was innovative. I remember quite a lot of debate in the period between the iPhone's announcement and release about weather or not a capacitive touchscreen on a phone would provide a terrible experience. There were a lot of very smart people out there who thought it just wouldn't work (greasy fingerprints came up a lot). At the time, for Apple, putting this kind of UX out there was a huge risk, and a major innovation in the industry. They really nailed it, and in hindsight it, like many other great innovations, seems obvious, but at the time it was far from it.
EDIT - here's a quote from a CNET article at the time:
"11. Just how useful is the touch screen? The iPhone user interface looks elegant, innovative, and easy-to-use, but is it the best interface for a device like this?
Whenever you do anything, the iPhone will command your full visual attention. "No buttons" may be sexy, but it also means you can't do anything without looking at the phone.
The iPhone's iPod usability may suffer even worse from the touch screen. Have you ever tried to operate an iPod while it's in your pocket? You can do it, but it's hard. The iPhone will make blind iPod-surfing downright impossible.
That said, it looks like the iPhone will eliminate accidental pocket-dialing once and for all."
This entire trial was a farce. The jury foreman admitted that they "skipped" prior art because "It was bogging us down."[0]
> "Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents," Ilagan said, "it's easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products because it was all the same. Like the trade dress, once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flatscreen with the Bezel...then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel.
Seriously?
> "We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."
Except the purpose of damages is to compensate the patent holder, not to punish the infringer.
And let's not forget that they responded to 700 questions in 2 days. If they worked for 16 hours/day, that's 32×60/700 = 2.7 minutes/question. I find it difficult to believe that a group of highly educated patent lawyers, let alone a group of laymen, most of whom didn't even know what a patent was a month ago, could have come to an equitable decision on all the questions so quickly.
The way I see it, Samsung clearly copied many aspects of their phones from the iPhone. That was obviously unethical, but whether it was illegal is much more difficult to determine, particularly when Apple itself copied many aspects of the iPhone from past innovations.
I don't like to think of Apple as a pure innovator - I think of them more as an assembler. When they see a market in which all the hardware pieces are available and waiting to be put together, they do that in such a way that the final product appeals to the end-user, particularly through the design of appropriate software. For example, they entered the PMP market when hard drives and batteries were cheap/portable enough to make the iPod a reality. They entered the phone market when capacitive touchscreens were cheap/large enough - their real innovation was on the software side. I don't agree with software patents, but unfortunately that's the current state of things in the US.
At the same time, there's little doubt that there was bias towards the "home team" as well, especially when the jurors live so close to Silicon Valley.
I was honestly shocked that Samsung didn't overwhelmingly beat Apple in South Korea[1], although the WSJ suggests there was definitely a bias[2]. Samsung's chairman, Lee Kun-hee, has been found guilty in the past of tax evasion, bribing politicians, prosecutors, and judges, and then pardoned for it by the South Korean government. Not surprising when you consider that Samsung generates 20% of South Korea's GDP.
The groklaw quotes were taken out of context. As far as I can tell, there's no evidence from those quotes that they skipped prior art, so much as skipped the task to move forward on others before circling back around to it.
> I don't like to think of Apple as a pure innovator - I think of them more as an assembler. When they see a market in which all the hardware pieces are available and waiting to be put together, they do that in such a way that the final product appeals to the end-user, particularly through the design of appropriate software.
Really? All Apple does is pick up the legos and put them together?
Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative.
Apple did a really good job making Samsung's prior art claims look like straw grasping. Samsung screwed up the time-line on the Diamond Touch device which of course did not use a multi-touch display anyway. They claimed prior art on a bounce-back feature that worked in the exact opposite way as Apple's patent. Something like you open Safari and it starts bouncing because you are not scrolling. I don't think the jury was impressed and apparently this was the best Samsung had to offer.
I think the trial had a normal result given the legal framework. Sometimes trials like this might go a bit this or that way, but in general they will have results like this.
My own position on this is very simple: All (yes, all) patents should be abolished. The current law is the problem, not Apple or Samsung or the Jury or the judge.
I also think what Samsung did was – in part – morally reprehensible, but should have no legal consequences.
The jury can only decide based on the facts before it. NO PRIOR ART was presented to them. They argued about how that seemed weird. Then they decided that the discussion, which could serve no purpose anyway because they still wouldn't be able to decide based on prior art they were never given, was taking too long. So they moved on.
> For example, they entered the PMP market when hard drives and batteries were cheap/portable enough to make the iPod a reality.
Apple sold the original iPod for $399, which was the cost of the original 5GB drive to Apple. It was sold at a severe loss to begin with to push the technology and ramp up volume production of those drives.
> They entered the phone market when capacitive touchscreens were cheap/large enough
The iPhone's screen was far and away the biggest cost of the device. It was moving so many of them that dropped the price. You're accusing Apple of jumping at an opportunity when they see a cheap enough component. That's entirely not true, that is what their competitors do.
What they do is choose a key component for their device and drive down the price through massive volume sales that nobody else can achieve. It was true for the hard drive in the iPod, the flash memory in the Nano and the capacitive screen in the iPhone.
If you're saying they didn't invent the HD, memory or screen themselves, that's fair. But I don't think them selling the device at a loss counts as the component being "cheap enough". More like Apple believes in the technology enough that they're willing to do whatever it takes to push adoption, get scale discounts, and MAKE it cheap enough.
That is why companies are allowed to appeal the veredict (and presumably will do so), but the whole "jury trials are unfair" thing is not new and definitely affects all kind of cases, not just technology companies, and I don't think we will get a insightful answer on this subject on this forums (experts in law have been debating this issue for years).
As of now, this is the veredict, but its not game over for Samsung. If they think they have a case and they've been wronged, they should appeal and use this quotes as proof of wrongdoing by the jury. Let the judges decide on it, that's what they are for.
Trade dress is about what the average consumer sees and perceives? First to market matters here because even with a lot of patents covering the outside of the product there's so much more involved in trade dress. Therefore it doesn't matter that Apple copies, they were first to market and were copied in the market in a way that would be considered similar by laymen. Lawyers would have a much higher/harder standard of similar.
"Intellectual property" is an oxymoron and the laws are a farce. Information is not property. Property has no objective foundation if you decouple it from tangible or economic scarcity.
Samsung stole no property from Apple. Samsung was providing value to the market by responding to the market's demands that were exposed by Apple. The existence of patents distorts economic incentives to divert activity towards patentable inventions.
The laws are not a farce: "intellectual property" exists if society decides it exists, just like physical property is a legal fiction. "Property is theft", according to the left anarchists. Saying information is not property is no different. It's a political argument, not a factual one.
The whole reason we have property laws is scarcity. Such scarcity does exist in intellectual endeavours - the time and talent taken to invent and innovate. There's a lot to be said for evolving and modernizing IP laws, but you will find most people reject the claim that they shouldn't exist.
Dad: Wait - What? They just won the court case and got a billion dollars to boot.
Me: That doesn't matter - Samsung won.
Dad: Explain.
Me: As soon as you have to sue your competition to remain competitive - you're done. Apple did the same thing with Microsoft in the nineties. Furthermore, Samsung builds not only many of Apple products - it's also leading the charge with the explosive growth of Android - open systems always win in the long run.
Dad: So Apple is done?
Me: Yeah - I sold my Apple stock after this very short case finished up. Funny thing is - the new CEO will be blamed for the fall set up by Steve Jobs - a damn shame if you ask me.
So what if you are wrong? How long do we have to wait to see if you gave your father an inaccurate reading of the situation?
I mean, I remember a lot of the "Apple is at 90$ a share now, it will go down soon" crowd in the '06 in the Yahoo Finance forum posts and I'd love to see them now and sincerely ask them what were they thinking or why did they reach that conclusion back then.
I'm completely serious. This kind of "its the beginning of the end" prophecies are easy to make because you can always say "wait a little bit longer, it will happen" but other than anecdotal evidence, i don't know what prompt you to say "s soon as you have to sue your competition to remain competitive - you're done". Is this a real thing? No company has remained afloat and well after suing a rival?
Is there no way that Apple might be both suing and at the same time innovating in some other way or on any other markets? Does it have to be one or the other?
Apple is the most successful IT company in the world and they are the most profitable in the phone industry and have the greatest market share in the tablet and music player industries. So not sure how you come up with this ludicrous idea that they can't compete.
Also "open systems" always win ? Linux would like a word with you.
Such device concepts have existed for decades in sci-fi. In the 90s, if you were thinking to the future of wireless PDAs, they always end in all glass touch screen devices.
Apple wins in execution, although one I believe is based on a flawed philosophical understanding. They won the mass market, like McDonalds did for fast food but they didn't invent anything nor does it make it good for you, developers or society. A lot of different things happened, coming together at the right time for Apple to exploit this market.
If any corporation put as much critical thought into product design as Steve Jobs and Apple did, I think they'd have the same result. To me, it's not about some innate genius or technology prophet, it's about thinking, being critical of everything and getting people to work their hardest at one single goal.
It's interesting that all of the devices that are pictured are turned off.
I remember using PDAs back in the day, and they tended to be fiddly affairs with styluses. Sure, you could use touch inputs, but touch input tended to be quite impractical, as the OS on the phone invariably tended to be a modified version of a desktop OS. [1]
Ever since the mobile phone was invented, there has been experimentation with form factors. Not all PDAs looked like iPaq's or XDA's. Nokia's Communicator [2] had an iPhone esque interface, but Nokia didn't consider making it touchscreen until well after the release of the iPhone.
Surely Apple's innovation - and the one which Samsung has copied - is combining the grid-based icon system (making tap targets much larger), with the few-button-large screen form factor. Because I don't remember PDAs being anywhere near as useful or usable as an iPhone.
The grid based icon system isn't an innvoation, nor is it even a significant part of the iPhone product -- but it's a key part of the trade dress, which explains why Samsung were so keen to appropriate it. It allowed them to market their phone as seemingly substantially similar to the iPhone. It allowed Samsung to imply "this product is basically the same as that iPhone that everyone's raving about". Customers didn't need to think they were buying an Apple product to be misled.
I used touch on the Treo all of the time, pre-apple, and didn't do too much with a stylus. There was nothing about PalmOS that was desktop based, so your "invariably" statement is a lie.
Apple's execution skills enabled them to succeed using an 'obvious strategy'that others couldn't pull off. That does not mean they "invented" the idea/strategy or that it was overly "original" (e.g. the buttons).
The true innovation of the iPhone was the global re-thinking of the software of iOs, and its relation to a phone. Recall, it was only 2.5G when it came out, one of the reason for "apps", was bandwidth efficiency, in addition to custon form factor. The misery of surfing flash-enabled desktop websites on 2.5G was not appealing. From there, there was the obvious need to maximize screen real-estate. hence, the elimination of the (physical) buttons. Soft keys, Icons, touch etc. were not per-se innovative in 2007.
The adoption of gesture based touch is obvious to anyone who saw Jeff Han in 2006 TED (well before the launch of iPhone). That's not to say apple was not innovative independently. The form factors and underlying tech vary widely.
Just to drive the point home: a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious - at least to the millions and millions of happy PDA users.
Yet somehow they look so different you could never confuse them for an iPhone while Samsung also agrees it's obvious but many of their devices look very much like an iPhone. I think the author is unintentionally proving Apple's point.
Apple steals. Starting with Xerox PARC and continuing to this day.
What do they steal? User interface design and code.
Why do they steal? Because Apple is a _hardware_ company who aims to compete with (and now aims to control) software developers. It started with trying to compete with Microsoft and it continues to this day.
To discover where Apple's interfaces come from one needs only to do the requisite research.
But it seems people have an aversion to doing such research - it's work, after all - while they have little aversion to passively being the targets of Apple's high-priced marketing and advertising. It's easier just to sit back and let Apple control the show. Show us the "future", Apple.
The ideas that are not new, but which others have been developing for years, that you have now stolen and claimed as your own. Interface designs that simply "did not exist" until you adopted them and slapped on the familar Apple logo.
I love Apple hardware. It looks great. I'd even pay higher prices for it. In fact, I have. Many years ago.
But that's as far as it goes. Apple's software and interfaces have little value to me. And when Apple tries to restrict what code I can run on their hardware, it lowers the value of the product. I lose interest, no matter how slick the hardware design. It's inflexible. And that defeats all the fun of using a computer. Apple has reached the point of diminishing returns for me. It's not worth it to buy their new stuff anymore.
According to Apple fanboys, the number of other users who think this way is so small that Apple can disregard any user preferences for flexibility. This is even worse than Microsoft.
Disclaimer: I don't have any iOS devices. But AFAIK as a developer you can load anything you want onto your personal device including C/C++ and Ruby code. Check out the Marmalade game engine for example - pure C/C++ for iOS.
Getting it published it on the app store is another matter however.
I don't want to stir up bad blood, I'm just making a point so don't kill me =).
Almost every one of those devices has at least 5 buttons (up, down, left, right center). That's not simple at all. One button is simple. The touch screen on the iphone takes those away so only one is needed. It's the reason the iphone got so dominant--it worked.
It's the reason Jobs realized his foray into tableting in the 90s (with development starting in 1987, the first being released in 1993!), the Newton, sucked. He killed it when he realized it wasn't working. The tech wasn't there, when it was, he moved.
I know people hate apple, but they need to look at this objectively. this wasn't apples first rodeo--they helped write the book on the PDA market. They're also not suing palm or Visor or HP. Those companies didn't reiterate. Apple did.
If you wanna hate, hate being judged by a jury of your peers (you probably shouldn't do that), or our current patent system. And drink some tea or something.
Jobs was running NeXT during the development of the Newton. Steve Jobs resigned from Apple in late 1985 and became interim CEO in September 1997. He discontinued the Newton project in March 1998 to refocus the company toward profitability again.
The first time I saw an iPhone, I thought to myself "oh, finally an Jornada that actually works". The number of buttons, layout of those buttons and placement of audio and charge jacks on the iPhone and the HP Jornada are nearly identical. The home button is in the same place. The volume buttons are on the top left side. It was a perfect match. That apple had a stack of jornadas stashed in the back that they were "improving" seemed so damn obvious, I thought that was the point of the whole iPhone schtick.
Ultimately this is a religious issue. The frothing anti-Apple hordes will never admit that Apple innovated and will always see Apple as in the wrong because, well, Apple is evil. These people then jump through logical hoops to justify their contortions. The simple truth is that Samsung copied from Apple wholesale. I for one hope the damages get tripled, not because Apple needs the money but because Samsung contributes precisely nothing of value to the market. They are like the idiot kid in class who tries to get ahead by copying the smart kid's work verbatim. Samsung are plagiarists and thieves.
Grids of icons are pretty obvious too - even on portable devices. Palm Pilot had 3x4, in 1996.
It's interesting to see the row of buttons at the bottom of the screen. Samsung clearly is influenced by that styling, rather than the single button on the iPhone.
[+] [-] arn|13 years ago|reply
Because they ultimately failed in the market. There was a reason that the Blackberry and Treo type devices became popular. They worked better than the early touchscreen devices.
Those early deficiencies left manufacturers gunshy about creating more touchscreen devices. It was combination of hardware issues (resistive, single touch) and also software (graffiti, interface).
It was not obvious in 2007 that such a device (full touchscreen, no physical keyboard) would succeed. The early iPhone reviews specifically addressed the keyboard issue, since this was a Blackberry world. Practically all Blackberry fans at the time were saying that the device would fail because you need a physical keyboard.
(2007) http://allthingsd.com/20070626/the-iphone-is-breakthrough-ha...
The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly.
[+] [-] slantyyz|13 years ago|reply
Yes. All my Blackberry toting friends were pooh-poohing the notion of a virtual keyboard, and now, the loudest critics among my peers have totally jumped ship, singing a different tune.
Regarding PDAs being that "weird uncle"...
I've had just about every PDA form-factor going back to the clamshell Sharp Wizards (which had these weird touch panels) in the late 80s to the Newton Messagepad to Windows CE, Palm and eventually Windows Mobile. The iPhone is the first "PDA" that I actually consistently use. The way you used the core features of the phone (contacts and calendar) were vastly better than anything I used prior.
Of course, I would have no problem using any "post-iOS" phone OS, which would include Windows Phone, Android and Web OS, but there really is something about the first iPhone UI that made it special. Is it as special today? Not really, but in 2007, yeah, it was pretty revolutionary.
[+] [-] qw|13 years ago|reply
> Because they ultimately failed in the market.
I have always seen the iPhone as a hybrid product. To call it a phone with PDA functionality, or a PDA with phone capabilities is just semantics in my opinion.
[+] [-] steve19|13 years ago|reply
They floundered for a while, but the iPod Touch is very successful today.
[+] [-] timmyd|13 years ago|reply
Refer here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousn... - "One of the main requirements of patentability is that the invention being patented is not obvious, meaning that a "person having ordinary skill in the art" would not know how to solve the problem at which the invention is directed by using exactly the same mechanism."
Predominately - "that obviousness should be determined by looking at the scope and content of the prior art; the level of ordinary skill in the art; the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art; and objective evidence of nonobviousness. In addition, the court outlined examples of factors that show "objective evidence of nonobviousness". They are: commercial success; long-felt but unsolved needs; and failure of others."
See also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_35_of_the_United_States_C....
Again - this article is attempting to state "oh because PDA existed, that means that everything related to a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious". but again, thats untrue.
I still believe - in additional the complex legal arguments - the comment below was one of greatest aspects that changed the lay-persons juror mind. Per the Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny
"In those three months, Samsung was able to copy Apple's 4-year investment in the iPhone, without taking any of the risks—because they were copying the world's most successful product ... No one is trying to stop them from selling smartphones, all we're saying is: make your own. Make your own designs, make your own phones, and compete on your own innovations."
[+] [-] equalarrow|13 years ago|reply
I still don't buy it. This still misses the mark - it wasn't about a 'few' buttons, the iPhone was about none. All those pda's in the picture don't really mean anything to me. Sure, some of them had cell networking and a lot (most? all?) had wifi. But I would never consider the old pda's a mobile device. 'Mobile' to me comes from the term 'mobile phone', not 'mobile pda'.
To me, this article is typical of OSNews - if it's not Linux or open source, it bad/wrong/etc.
Anyway, Dan Frakes tweet wasn't talking about 'a few buttons being obvious' he said 'having no buttons/keys'. And like he said, if this was so obvious, then why wasn't everyone doing it in 2006? Howcome pda's didn't do this in the early 2000's? Because it took a visionary team of designers and execs (or just Jobs) that appreciates minimalism. No one at Compaq, HP, Microsoft's many pda OEMs would, no, could have done something like this. And don't forget the require stylus..
[+] [-] Nicole060|13 years ago|reply
For the love of god, my LG Prada was so shitty I had to hit a 2px scrollbar with my thumb to scroll in the contact list. I can't contain the nervous laugh whenever some ignorant who never touched the device link to wikipedia proud of their attempt at mocking Apple. Web browsing on a touchscreen is a real PITA without something like the double tap making a paragraph fit the whole screen automatically too.
Like it or not but the iPhone, as a whole package, without just singling out a feature here and there, was a real innovation, a breath of fresh air that opened a new market and has been copied to death by some companies like Samsung. I hated my LG Prada but instantly loved my iPhone the day I bought one and I wasn't anything like an Apple fanboy.
[+] [-] pinaceae|13 years ago|reply
This whole trainwreck of a discussion is fed IMHO by the big rift between common, male IT-oriented folks and the rest of the population around visuals, aestethics and yes, concepts like fashion.
Sit in the cantina of any company and you can tell who is development/IT. Neckbeards? Socks in sandals? Leather cowboy hats? Attachments on their belts? Unshapely bodies?
Aestethics do exist in that other group. Good code, clever algorithms, etc. Fashion too, in forms of buzzwords and technologies du jour. DjangoRailsHadoop... But visual aestethics? Nope, nada, utter incomprehension.
The utter genious of Jobs was to bring the aestethics of the outer world into software and computer hardware. Design already existed in other industries, see Braun, Sony, etc but no one applied it to software. Because "nerds" didn't even understand it. See it. Grok it.
These Samsung vs Apple debates show this faultline. No comprehension at all why a particular implementation of multi touch should matter, be worth something. It is all obvious, just UI, the thing you slap on top of your awesome program. Why should it matter how it LOOKS?! How can that be so important? Didn't the LG Prada looks exactly the same? Ok, it used scrollbars, but why is that different to how iOS does it?
Whenever someone claims that Apple's success is just about marketing, nothing relevant in their products themselves. Whenever it's just off the shelf components they took and re-arranged, super simple and OBVIOUS, I can't help to think about blind people arguing about the uselessness of colors.
[+] [-] physicslover|13 years ago|reply
Like you say, the genius of Apple and Jobs is an incredible focus on the simplicity and intuitiveness of their products. I have seen two year old kids able to use ipads. This was their innovation and it has won them millions (billions?) of loyal fans.
This was so radically different than the prevailing ethos in the tech industry at the time that their supporters feel they should be protected or rewarded for changing the industry.
However, there is a problem in granting protection for these types of innovations, in that we are setting a dangerous precedent for patents and innovation. The individual user interface elements that make up the iPhone, by themselves, are all relatively obvious. Swiping to turn a page is the natural evolution of the book. Movies like Minority Report suggest the range of gestures we can imagine given the appropriate technology. It's quite a stretch to suggest that something so similar to what we have done all our lives should be protected by law and in effect create a protected monoply and prevent others from using these ideas in their products.
Instead those that admire Apple and what they have done should continue to do what they have been doing, buy their products.
As someone who has owned multiple ipads, ipods, iphones, and mac books, I know how compelling their products are and the loyalty it breeds in their users. Therefore, I think it is unlikely that many will step back and think whether this really is the best result for our industry.
[+] [-] rayiner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hammersend|13 years ago|reply
What the f is this shit? This guy:https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UxbxdEwXL7Y/AAAAAAAAAAI/A...
is the counterpart to Jony Ive. And that goes for the rest of your head-in-your-ass bigotry.
[+] [-] drats|13 years ago|reply
Tablet with news, Knight Ridder tablet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBEtPQDQNcI
Icons finger sized in a grid. Well given we already had desktops, and given it's a handheld device, then it's insanely obvious to have fewer icons in a grid at finger size. Low resolution screen compared to our desktops, hey maybe we should have fullscreen as the default.
Pinch to zoom, multiple sci-fi movies.
Slide to unlock. Phones already had something called "unlock', and physical bolt locks already slide... So we make a visualisation of what amounts to a sliding latch when when have the touch screen, pure genius, nobody besides Apple could have thought of that, right?
"Trade Dress" to stop competitors should also be entirely illegal unless there is no branding or logo on the phone, or the name is too similar or in some insanely small font. If it has "Samsung" written on it it's insane to argue that anyone would confuse these things. What if these rules applied to TVs, cars or bottles of perfume? Perhaps technically they do, but people have had such things for so long they don't think about them in that way. It's farcical that anything clearly identified as a different product on the box can be subject to such rules.
Apple products are like a good classy restaurant or hotel chain. They take ingredients everyone has and put a lot of work into fit and finish, they make the customer feel special for a slightly higher price. And they have a dress code that permits only a certain crowd in there (app store approvals vs. more free entrance policy of other application stores, and by the way apt-get and various frontends to it pre-date the app store). All due respect to them for doing a good job, but Steve Jobs' entitlement complex knew no bounds and there is no moral or logical merit to their claims only a slice of legal merit on the back of stupid laws.
[+] [-] mcantelon|13 years ago|reply
PalmOS had icons in a grid looking pretty much the same too.
[+] [-] BenoitEssiambre|13 years ago|reply
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Cheap-hackable-Linux...
"The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card.
Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad -- in this case, an ultra-high resolution 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 480) touchscreen. "Maps look stunning on this screen," Moss-Pultz said.
The phone features an A-GPS (assisted GPS) receiver module connected to the application processor via a pair of UARTs. The commercial module has a closed design, but the API is apparently open.
Similarly, the phone's quad-band GSM/GPRS module, built by FIC, runs the proprietary Nucleus OS on a Texas Instruments baseband powered by an ARM7 core. It communicates with Linux over a serial port, using standard "AT" modem commands.
The Neo1973 will charge when connected to a PC via USB. It will also support USB network emulation, and will be capable of routing a connected PC to the Internet, via its GPRS data connection. [...]
Moss-Pultz adds, "Applications are the ringtones of the future." [...]
As for additional software components, Moss-Pultz admits, "Quite a lot is there, and quite a lot is not there. We're hoping to change this." In addition to a dialer, phonebook, media player, and application manager, the stack will likely include the Minimo browser [...]
He adds, "Mobile phones are the PCs of the 21st century, in terms of processing power and broadband network access. "
Looks familiar?
I personally have always thought the iPhone was Apple taking the openmoko idea and running with it.
EDIT: added details
[+] [-] vvhn|13 years ago|reply
From the linked article,
" Cheap, hackable Linux smartphone due soon By Linux Devices 2006-11-07 "
Presumably that means this was 7th November 2006.
So, in exactly 2 months ( on January 9th 2007) , Apple was able to design a prototype based on this concept, write all the software and demo it onstage ?
[+] [-] berkut|13 years ago|reply
However, they did have a wiki page for some of the design back in 2006 showing pinch-to-zoom.
[+] [-] rjsamson|13 years ago|reply
The iPhone's touchscreen implementation was innovative. I remember quite a lot of debate in the period between the iPhone's announcement and release about weather or not a capacitive touchscreen on a phone would provide a terrible experience. There were a lot of very smart people out there who thought it just wouldn't work (greasy fingerprints came up a lot). At the time, for Apple, putting this kind of UX out there was a huge risk, and a major innovation in the industry. They really nailed it, and in hindsight it, like many other great innovations, seems obvious, but at the time it was far from it.
EDIT - here's a quote from a CNET article at the time: "11. Just how useful is the touch screen? The iPhone user interface looks elegant, innovative, and easy-to-use, but is it the best interface for a device like this? Whenever you do anything, the iPhone will command your full visual attention. "No buttons" may be sexy, but it also means you can't do anything without looking at the phone. The iPhone's iPod usability may suffer even worse from the touch screen. Have you ever tried to operate an iPod while it's in your pocket? You can do it, but it's hard. The iPhone will make blind iPod-surfing downright impossible. That said, it looks like the iPhone will eliminate accidental pocket-dialing once and for all."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9677208-1.html
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
> "Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents," Ilagan said, "it's easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products because it was all the same. Like the trade dress, once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flatscreen with the Bezel...then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel.
Seriously?
> "We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."
Except the purpose of damages is to compensate the patent holder, not to punish the infringer.
And let's not forget that they responded to 700 questions in 2 days. If they worked for 16 hours/day, that's 32×60/700 = 2.7 minutes/question. I find it difficult to believe that a group of highly educated patent lawyers, let alone a group of laymen, most of whom didn't even know what a patent was a month ago, could have come to an equitable decision on all the questions so quickly.
The way I see it, Samsung clearly copied many aspects of their phones from the iPhone. That was obviously unethical, but whether it was illegal is much more difficult to determine, particularly when Apple itself copied many aspects of the iPhone from past innovations.
I don't like to think of Apple as a pure innovator - I think of them more as an assembler. When they see a market in which all the hardware pieces are available and waiting to be put together, they do that in such a way that the final product appeals to the end-user, particularly through the design of appropriate software. For example, they entered the PMP market when hard drives and batteries were cheap/portable enough to make the iPod a reality. They entered the phone market when capacitive touchscreens were cheap/large enough - their real innovation was on the software side. I don't agree with software patents, but unfortunately that's the current state of things in the US.
At the same time, there's little doubt that there was bias towards the "home team" as well, especially when the jurors live so close to Silicon Valley.
I was honestly shocked that Samsung didn't overwhelmingly beat Apple in South Korea[1], although the WSJ suggests there was definitely a bias[2]. Samsung's chairman, Lee Kun-hee, has been found guilty in the past of tax evasion, bribing politicians, prosecutors, and judges, and then pardoned for it by the South Korean government. Not surprising when you consider that Samsung generates 20% of South Korea's GDP.
0: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390...
1: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/23/3264434/apple-samsung-kore...
2: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044423050457761...
[+] [-] flatline3|13 years ago|reply
> I don't like to think of Apple as a pure innovator - I think of them more as an assembler. When they see a market in which all the hardware pieces are available and waiting to be put together, they do that in such a way that the final product appeals to the end-user, particularly through the design of appropriate software.
Really? All Apple does is pick up the legos and put them together?
Sigh. I'm sick and tired of people twisting reality to fit an Apple anti-hero narrative.
[+] [-] arn|13 years ago|reply
They later went back to it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044427040457761...
[+] [-] jsz0|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arrrg|13 years ago|reply
My own position on this is very simple: All (yes, all) patents should be abolished. The current law is the problem, not Apple or Samsung or the Jury or the judge.
I also think what Samsung did was – in part – morally reprehensible, but should have no legal consequences.
[+] [-] sigzero|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shinratdr|13 years ago|reply
Apple sold the original iPod for $399, which was the cost of the original 5GB drive to Apple. It was sold at a severe loss to begin with to push the technology and ramp up volume production of those drives.
> They entered the phone market when capacitive touchscreens were cheap/large enough
The iPhone's screen was far and away the biggest cost of the device. It was moving so many of them that dropped the price. You're accusing Apple of jumping at an opportunity when they see a cheap enough component. That's entirely not true, that is what their competitors do.
What they do is choose a key component for their device and drive down the price through massive volume sales that nobody else can achieve. It was true for the hard drive in the iPod, the flash memory in the Nano and the capacitive screen in the iPhone.
If you're saying they didn't invent the HD, memory or screen themselves, that's fair. But I don't think them selling the device at a loss counts as the component being "cheap enough". More like Apple believes in the technology enough that they're willing to do whatever it takes to push adoption, get scale discounts, and MAKE it cheap enough.
[+] [-] wklauss|13 years ago|reply
As of now, this is the veredict, but its not game over for Samsung. If they think they have a case and they've been wronged, they should appeal and use this quotes as proof of wrongdoing by the jury. Let the judges decide on it, that's what they are for.
[+] [-] tobylane|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreamdu5t|13 years ago|reply
Samsung stole no property from Apple. Samsung was providing value to the market by responding to the market's demands that were exposed by Apple. The existence of patents distorts economic incentives to divert activity towards patentable inventions.
[+] [-] parasubvert|13 years ago|reply
The whole reason we have property laws is scarcity. Such scarcity does exist in intellectual endeavours - the time and talent taken to invent and innovate. There's a lot to be said for evolving and modernizing IP laws, but you will find most people reject the claim that they shouldn't exist.
[+] [-] bdcravens|13 years ago|reply
Oh wait ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9488453/Google-...
[+] [-] sjwright|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] confluence|13 years ago|reply
Me: No - they just lost big time - Apple is done.
Dad: Wait - What? They just won the court case and got a billion dollars to boot.
Me: That doesn't matter - Samsung won.
Dad: Explain.
Me: As soon as you have to sue your competition to remain competitive - you're done. Apple did the same thing with Microsoft in the nineties. Furthermore, Samsung builds not only many of Apple products - it's also leading the charge with the explosive growth of Android - open systems always win in the long run.
Dad: So Apple is done?
Me: Yeah - I sold my Apple stock after this very short case finished up. Funny thing is - the new CEO will be blamed for the fall set up by Steve Jobs - a damn shame if you ask me.
[+] [-] wklauss|13 years ago|reply
I mean, I remember a lot of the "Apple is at 90$ a share now, it will go down soon" crowd in the '06 in the Yahoo Finance forum posts and I'd love to see them now and sincerely ask them what were they thinking or why did they reach that conclusion back then.
I'm completely serious. This kind of "its the beginning of the end" prophecies are easy to make because you can always say "wait a little bit longer, it will happen" but other than anecdotal evidence, i don't know what prompt you to say "s soon as you have to sue your competition to remain competitive - you're done". Is this a real thing? No company has remained afloat and well after suing a rival?
Is there no way that Apple might be both suing and at the same time innovating in some other way or on any other markets? Does it have to be one or the other?
[+] [-] AllenKids|13 years ago|reply
How is the outcome of this particular case affecting your reasoning in any way?
[+] [-] arn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taligent|13 years ago|reply
Also "open systems" always win ? Linux would like a word with you.
[+] [-] jimg2|13 years ago|reply
Apple wins in execution, although one I believe is based on a flawed philosophical understanding. They won the mass market, like McDonalds did for fast food but they didn't invent anything nor does it make it good for you, developers or society. A lot of different things happened, coming together at the right time for Apple to exploit this market.
If any corporation put as much critical thought into product design as Steve Jobs and Apple did, I think they'd have the same result. To me, it's not about some innate genius or technology prophet, it's about thinking, being critical of everything and getting people to work their hardest at one single goal.
[+] [-] kristianc|13 years ago|reply
I remember using PDAs back in the day, and they tended to be fiddly affairs with styluses. Sure, you could use touch inputs, but touch input tended to be quite impractical, as the OS on the phone invariably tended to be a modified version of a desktop OS. [1]
Ever since the mobile phone was invented, there has been experimentation with form factors. Not all PDAs looked like iPaq's or XDA's. Nokia's Communicator [2] had an iPhone esque interface, but Nokia didn't consider making it touchscreen until well after the release of the iPhone.
Surely Apple's innovation - and the one which Samsung has copied - is combining the grid-based icon system (making tap targets much larger), with the few-button-large screen form factor. Because I don't remember PDAs being anywhere near as useful or usable as an iPhone.
[1] http://www.uspree.com/reviews/images/stories/hp-ipaq-214-ent... [2] http://cdn101.iofferphoto.com/img3/item/116/916/389/nokia-e9...
[+] [-] sjwright|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmcknight|13 years ago|reply
You can't patent a screen size.
[+] [-] 001sky|13 years ago|reply
The true innovation of the iPhone was the global re-thinking of the software of iOs, and its relation to a phone. Recall, it was only 2.5G when it came out, one of the reason for "apps", was bandwidth efficiency, in addition to custon form factor. The misery of surfing flash-enabled desktop websites on 2.5G was not appealing. From there, there was the obvious need to maximize screen real-estate. hence, the elimination of the (physical) buttons. Soft keys, Icons, touch etc. were not per-se innovative in 2007.
The adoption of gesture based touch is obvious to anyone who saw Jeff Han in 2006 TED (well before the launch of iPhone). That's not to say apple was not innovative independently. The form factors and underlying tech vary widely.
Just some context worth considering.
[+] [-] jsz0|13 years ago|reply
Yet somehow they look so different you could never confuse them for an iPhone while Samsung also agrees it's obvious but many of their devices look very much like an iPhone. I think the author is unintentionally proving Apple's point.
[+] [-] reddelicious|13 years ago|reply
Apple steals. Starting with Xerox PARC and continuing to this day.
What do they steal? User interface design and code.
Why do they steal? Because Apple is a _hardware_ company who aims to compete with (and now aims to control) software developers. It started with trying to compete with Microsoft and it continues to this day.
To discover where Apple's interfaces come from one needs only to do the requisite research.
But it seems people have an aversion to doing such research - it's work, after all - while they have little aversion to passively being the targets of Apple's high-priced marketing and advertising. It's easier just to sit back and let Apple control the show. Show us the "future", Apple.
The ideas that are not new, but which others have been developing for years, that you have now stolen and claimed as your own. Interface designs that simply "did not exist" until you adopted them and slapped on the familar Apple logo.
I love Apple hardware. It looks great. I'd even pay higher prices for it. In fact, I have. Many years ago.
But that's as far as it goes. Apple's software and interfaces have little value to me. And when Apple tries to restrict what code I can run on their hardware, it lowers the value of the product. I lose interest, no matter how slick the hardware design. It's inflexible. And that defeats all the fun of using a computer. Apple has reached the point of diminishing returns for me. It's not worth it to buy their new stuff anymore.
According to Apple fanboys, the number of other users who think this way is so small that Apple can disregard any user preferences for flexibility. This is even worse than Microsoft.
[+] [-] damian2000|13 years ago|reply
Getting it published it on the app store is another matter however.
[+] [-] mcclux|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silentscope|13 years ago|reply
Almost every one of those devices has at least 5 buttons (up, down, left, right center). That's not simple at all. One button is simple. The touch screen on the iphone takes those away so only one is needed. It's the reason the iphone got so dominant--it worked.
It's the reason Jobs realized his foray into tableting in the 90s (with development starting in 1987, the first being released in 1993!), the Newton, sucked. He killed it when he realized it wasn't working. The tech wasn't there, when it was, he moved.
I know people hate apple, but they need to look at this objectively. this wasn't apples first rodeo--they helped write the book on the PDA market. They're also not suing palm or Visor or HP. Those companies didn't reiterate. Apple did.
If you wanna hate, hate being judged by a jury of your peers (you probably shouldn't do that), or our current patent system. And drink some tea or something.
[+] [-] gpcz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justincormack|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
It's interesting to see the row of buttons at the bottom of the screen. Samsung clearly is influenced by that styling, rather than the single button on the iPhone.