Jobs: "I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want."
This is a dangerously broken and, for Jobs, hypocritical idea. Where would Apple and the rest of us be today if Audio Highway or Diamond "owned" the idea of an MP3 player? If Microsoft "owned" the idea of a tablet computer? If Ericsson "owned" the idea of a touchscreen smartphone?
This, of course, is what is broken about software patents today. We're handing out ownership stakes in pure ideas within a system intended to protect realized, specific implementations.
We're handing out ownership stakes in pure ideas within a system intended to protect realized, specific implementations
I’d say the iPhone contain specific, realized ideas. Thus, I challenge this statement. To me, if you can’t accept Apple patenting the specific, tangible things they do to make the specific, shipping products they sell, you might as well join me over here in saying that all patents are broken.
They’ve solved an awful lot of problems at one infinite loop. I’m sure they have filed plenty of overly broad patents, and plenty where you can toss out half or more of the claims, but like Microsoft, they have pumped billions into R&D that has resulted in actual products with discernible differences from what came before them.
Apple is neither a patent troll nor is it a copycat shop like most of the PC manufacturers. If Apple doesn’t deserve patent protection, nobody does. And yes, I’m perfectly fine with the idea that nobody does.
If you look into the history of Apple's multi-touch and touch based gestures you'll see that they were not the first to come up with the idea. In fact, they bought much of the technology when they bought a company called FingerWorks.
But even before that, in 1991 Pierre Wellner at Xerox published and demonstrated multi-touch gestures including the pinch.
Despite all this, Apple still managed to get a patent on multitouch gestures and continually claim it as their innovation. They filed the patent in 2007. In my opinion, the patent system is really broken.
"Despite all this, Apple still managed to get a patent on multitouch gestures and continually claim it as their innovation. They filed the patent in 2007. In my opinion, the patent system is really broken."
Apple doesn't have a total multitouch idea patent. This is the sort of widely repeated ignorance that makes everyone think the patent system is totally broken when it's just mostly broken.
I realize that their patent is somewhat narrow and I'm not aware of the full details. But considering the enormous research history of multi-touch gestures, I'm left wondering why we as a society feel it important to give protections to what amounts to a minor tweak to the idea.
One of the patents Apple is using in their lawsuits is "infringed" right here: http://www.google.com
The claimed infringement is Android's "Linkify" functionality. What does "Linkify" do? It scans free-form text for recognizable items (e.g. URLs, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. Apple originally did something similar with the Mac help system and patented it in 1996 and is now suing HTC, etc. over the functionality.
To me, this is an open-and-shut example of Apple attempting to claim ownership of an unrealized idea. What do you think?
Oh, by the way, I almost forgot the best bit. Even if you do think this is patentable, there is an open-and-shut example of prior art. Netscape Navigator 2.0b1, released in 1995, included "Live URL" support within its mail and newsgroup client, which does exactly what you think it does.
Apple claims it has a patent that can prevent Android from doing the same thing today. To me, this is an obvious abuse of the patent system (and I feel similarly about slide-to-unlock, photo gallery scrolling, ...).
I'm not saying Apple has no quality technical patents (the design stuff is a whole different discussion), but I'm very skeptical of the ones they're asserting against Android manufacturers. By and large, they seem to revolve around functionality that, once you've seen it being used, you need no other technical information to reconstruct it. To me, that sounds like the look-and-feel lawsuit all over again, dressed up in patent clothing. In my opinion, if the change of outfit means the suit ends up going the other way, we will all be poorer for it.
And while I don't think a "no patent" system is the best answer, it does sound a lot better than the the current system of flimsy, overbroad patents leading to rampant patent abuse from all players. I'll add that I, personally, don't distinguish much between practicing and non-practicing entities, I care far more about the quality of what you're asserting than about who you are. I'd even argue that there are cases where a practicing entity abusing overbroad, flimsy patents to stifle competition in an area can be worse (for society) than a non-practicing entity merely trying to "tax" the same area.
A lot of software patents are bogus but honestly, a lot of what Apple has done with multitouch is genuinely innovative and I can understand why Jobs would be offended that others are copying their ideas.
Hell, we might actually have seen more innovation in the mobile space if competitors weren't so quick to copy what Apple has done.
Having said that, it's also hypocritical to an extent for Steve Jobs to complain about stealing good ideas. I'm sure everyone here has read the folklore.org bit about Bill Gates telling Jobs that they both stole from their neighbor...
We should ask Wozniak how much of the Apple2 he copied from other devices (or built based on what he learned from other devices). And thus how much of Apple's current value is based on copying ideas from other companies. (Xerox!)
If Jobs wasn't fantastically rich his attitude would plainly be hypocritical and antisocial.
R&D != patents.
The number of patents generated by a company is really based on the system employed within the company and not about how innovative the company is. Most software patents are bogus and if your company is set up with a great system to file patents quickly then you will get a lot of them. For example in my company, your performance is based on how many patents are filed. Additionally they have an entire team of lawyers that take any one page description of text and turn them into patentable items. The team of lawyers write the patent, do the research on prior patents, and will then file the patent for us.
It's a great patent filing system and it generates A LOT of patents, but the company is definitely not innovative.
Most other companies that are less keen on such a system will not file these bogus and broad patents.
When you're mostly creating a better case, better UX, and better marketing.. and your partners do most of the really hard low-level technical stuff [1].. why bother with R&D?
Your whole image is based on non-engineer-driven products.
Really? Do you think making an OS (Mac OS X and iOS) and all the hardware designs of their dozens of products (remember airport express, iPods, macbook air, etc) are all "easy" to develop? Mac OS X and iOS are based on BSD, but they have been hugely modified. In fact, the kernel is far from BSD now, and they release it as open source Darwin -- it has influence from other OS'es as well.
Almost all of the difficult underlying technologies in Apple products were created 10-50 years earlier by other companies and government agencies such as Intel, Xerox, NASA, Qualcomm, the US DoD, etc. They are basically the world's most famous system integrator. If you still disagree - let me reflect the question: list the fundamental, widely accepted contributions that Apple made to cutting-edge EE/CS research between 1990-2010. And compare that versus NASA, Microsoft, Intel, etc.
Apple is like that apocryphal hot girl in high school who got the nerds to do her homework. Due to her popularity - it's almost impossible to question her intelligence without bringing a world of hurt down upon yourself, yet despite her good grades and high social status, she isn't generating very many fundamentally new ideas on her own.
Then why compare Apple with these companies? Compare them with other systems integrators and product people like HP or Compaq or Gateway, etc. Apple does manufacture the most competent desktop environment available, even if the core is open source, they made all the desktop GUI and the dock that every OS (including Windows 7) is now ripping off. HP never managed anything like that.
Besides, clearly the UX, making the better case, and the marketing, etc. is actually the hard part, because there's dozens of companies making chips. There's only one out there releasing Apple-level consumer goods.
Thats a percentage of revenues, and Apple's revenues are very high. Also -- I agree Microsoft spends a lot of money on research in their "Microsoft Research" division, but the fact is, most of their research does not end up in products. I don't know about Google - I don't think they spend a lot on Research...the link you pointed to does not talk about Google. :-)
Microsoft is a six-barrelled shotgun to Apple's sniper rifle. Chances are, Microsoft will hit something. Whereas Apple's recent misses are so few as to be individually noteworthy.
Sure, I don't mean to commend them on their efficiency ('bloated'), but they have a startlingly wide offering of software. It's not limited to just Office and Windows de jure.
I don't really think it's fair to compare the R&D budgets - there's a lot of difference - MS has an extremely broad array of software (multiplied by i18n), while Apple has an extremely vertical stack of products. I don't think these differences can be hand-waved as being theoretically financially equivalent.
In this case, the article describes Steve Jobs to be angry with a specific 2010 HTC model. I'm not sure which features he is talking about. The article doesn't clarify this.
Also, the behavior of the market always has been to try and "borrow" successful features from other phones. Coders borrow good code. Researchers cite other papers. This is a very common thing. I'm not sure why someone as mature as Jobs would explode on this matter.
And what's up with the photo? Is the article trying to say that they talked about such a serious matter at Starbucks? "C'mon Eric, lets get some coffee and let me tell you how I'm going to sue your company and drop a nuke on it."
Yeah, I've heard this. What is it about the Nexus One that Jobs was so pissy over? The multitouch? All the phones have that now, and they even had it before, they just had it turned off to avoid lawsuits. I think the Droid came mutitouchless initially.
Apple's iPhone owes a lot to Palm's devices. It's funny... Apple is competent enough that you'd think they'd have confidence in their capability of out-executing competitors. Jobs comes off as insecure.
With due respect, I think Jobs was pissed about, and talking about, "realized, specific implementations" and details thereof, and not basic, obvious, system-level ideas.
Android has arguably stolen many such details from iOS. You can debate whether that should be legally actionable or not, but the ideas were copied, nonetheless.
This is more of Android adapting well to society's needs. Isn't that what RIM and Nokia are trying to do? What's wrong with adapting to a new general idea on how to operate on a phone - from keyboard to more touchscreen?
You should check out "In the Plex", the authorized Google biography.
It details this and how Google had been working internally on two paths for Android. They were originally going to go for the Blackberry style phone at first, but internally were working on "The Dream" which was the G1. Apparently, Android had been working on this pre-acquisition by Google. Levy wrote something to the effect of -- when Apple announced the iPhone, the Android team knew they had to ditch their plans and focus on the G1 to be competitive in a post-iPhone world.
Your screenshot is one of a browser and a settings window, and a status bar at the top. My current android phone (running Android 2.5) has a browser and a settings window, with a status bar at the top.
My desktop browser can also point at google.com. It also has a status bar at the top, unrelated to the browser. I can also open up a browser-specific settings window and overlay it on the browser.
The guy on the macbook pro next to me also has a browser he can point to google, with settings overlay if he wants, and an unrelated status bar at the top.
How about the fact that everything is button based, instead of touch screen based? Do you still have to go through a menu dialogue to input a website on your Android phone? The screenshot demonstrates that pre-2007, Android was along the lines of Palm and Windows Mobile. Post 2007, it was along the lines of iPhone.
Fair point, but welcome also to evolution. Yes, the iphone was a big step forward in public access to touchscreen phones. It was an awesome product - the only problem is that people credit it for outright invention of far more than was actually invented.
But 'do I still have to go through a menu dialogue to input a website'? Well, yes. Once I'm at a site, the URL bar disappears, and I have to interact with the phone to get to a point where I can enter it again. It's not specifically 'a menu', but it is 'reveal to me this interface'
This is a dangerously broken and, for Jobs, hypocritical idea. Where would Apple and the rest of us be today if Audio Highway or Diamond "owned" the idea of an MP3 player? If Microsoft "owned" the idea of a tablet computer? If Ericsson "owned" the idea of a touchscreen smartphone?
This, of course, is what is broken about software patents today. We're handing out ownership stakes in pure ideas within a system intended to protect realized, specific implementations.