Technicalities aside, the whole Apple vs Android IP debate seems like it might be some sort of pinnacle. A big public case study.
These are products that a lot of people are highly engaged an opinionated about, in ways that PCs and laptop never were.^
I think we clearly see Apple leading the way (so far) with its designs & innovations. They figured out a whole lot of things that needed to be figured out in order to get a computer to pocket size and for tablet computing to work. Some of these are technical details but a lot of them are not. They're just ideas about what it should look like and how users should interact with it. Software keyboard. slide-to-unlock, rounded corners. A bunch of decisions that together amount to either a good or bad product. They may or may not have been invented at Apple but Apple did put them together and prove them in the market. They placed huge bets on these ideas and won.
I think that last part is the crucial part of innovation that IP laws are inherently useless at protecting: Putting things together to make a product and proving them in the market. It's also the part that Apple is good at.
On the other hand...
Apple is making a lot of money on iOS stuff so its hard to make the claim that they haven't been compensated. It's also hard to claim that these innovations would not have happened without the incentives guarded by IP protection. The opposite is true. We see the Android ecosystem driving down prices and improving the pace of innovation. We see more choice, including options at lower price points that Apple would never have served.
^I'm not sure, but I think this in itself is part of Apple's cultural influence. They've been encouraging people to think about products the way architects want people to think about buildings.
> I think we clearly see Apple leading the way (so far) with its designs & innovations.
I don't know if you're joking, but Apple hasn't "innovated" in the mobile space for 2 or 3 years now. They've just been copying Android, with things like multitasking, notifications, and turn-by-turn directions. As of late, their new "features", such as Siri and Maps, have been half-baked. Basic options, such as changing the default app for a function or adding widgets to the home screen, still aren't available.
On the hardware side, people applaud their industrial design when they see it in an Apple store, but in actual use, the glass backing on the iPhone 4 and 4S broke frequently, and now the aluminum on the 5 gets chipped/scratched very easily. As for form factor, they're now copying Amazon and Google by releasing an iPad Mini.
Turn-by-turn directions was an Android innovation?
Because I could swear that I've got a Windows Mobile 5.0 smart phone in the office that has Tom Tom software running on it that has been about since before the iPhone or Android existed.
As for your criticisms as to how the iPhone works in the real world, the iPhone's industry leading customer satisfaction ratings (and by a comfortable margin) suggests that you might be overstating the case just a smidge.
> Turn-by-turn directions was an Android innovation?
In the way it's done in Google Maps Navigation? Absolutely. I used a variety of standalone turn-by-turn GPS navigation devices, including Tom Tom and Garmin, before getting an original Droid in 2009, the first device with Google Maps Navigation. There was a world of difference between the two devices, and things have only gotten better with time.
I don't have any experience with Windows Mobile, but like the OP said, it's all about putting things together into a cohesive package. That's exactly what Google did with Maps Navigation.
> As for your criticisms as to how the iPhone works in the real world, the iPhone's industry leading customer satisfaction ratings (and by a comfortable margin) suggests that you might be overstating the case just a smidge.
I don't think that customer satisfaction ratings are reflective of a company's level of innovation. I know several people who've broken the glass backs on their iPhone 4s and 4Ss three or four times. The reason why they haven't complained (too much) is because there's an Apple store 15 minutes a way that will quickly replace the glass plate for free.
If the state of the smartphone market is such that incremental improvements in turn-by-turn mapping is now a mark of innovation then the market has got stale very, very quickly. When Apple release a new version of iOS with 200 incremental improvements which operate in a cohesive package (because even the iPhone's staunchest critics tend to accept that it does that well), it's criticised as unambitious yet here it's touted as innovation?
I'm not saying that customer satisfaction ratings reflect innovation. I'm saying that if the design was as flawed as suggested you'd expect people to be unhappy with their phones which clearly they're not.
You know people who've broken the glass three or four times, I know no-one who ever has out of dozens of people who own 4s and 4Ss. Anecdotal evidence is pretty poor for this sort of thing (my friends may wrap their phones in cotton wool, yours may sky dive with them) which is why I point to something which could be seen as a more objective measure, though I accept it's measuring many things, not just this one factor.
Not saying that there's no problem, just saying that saying "frequently" is an overstatement. I suspect if it was a massive problem the press would have a field day - it's not like the go easy on Apple design issues (see antenna-gate et al).
I usually despise the word, but Google has indeed disrupted turn-by-turn navigation. The day they announced to provide it for free and integrated, TomTom and other stock crashed.
I agree. Opening your comment with "I don't know if you're joking, but" is insulting to the OP. It might fly on other forums, but it has no place here. It's condescending.
Not to mention that "2 or 3 years" ago was when Apple introduced the world to the iPad, of which the rest of the industry is still struggling to match the impact. Before that introduction, did you assume that Apple hadn't been innovating for "2 or 3 years" since the iPhone?
The issue I'm seeing is that IP protections are government-granted monopolies and I can't think of any good that ever came from government-granted monopolies, except maybe in healthcare for some European countries, but that's highly debatable too.
It's also a fact that a monopoly is against the free market and while it's completely debatable whether this is good or bad for innovation or the common good ... in a free market, the law of the fittest applies. The ones that innovate are the ones that have a head-start. The ones that don't either die or if they are too big to die, they are subject to the innovator's dilemma. This is why you can see newer technologies and platforms disrupt older and bigger companies. But unfortunately, these big companies, instead of innovating and keeping pace are now choosing to use the ultimate weapon against free-market competition: government-granted monopolies.
This notion that you have to be rewarded for ideas and designs is completely preposterous, because innovators are already rewarded by the market for being first. And if not, they shouldn't get rewarded with such a monopoly anyway, because if these monopolies go so out of control, there will never be another Apple, because Apple themselves got a lot of ideas and concepts from the prior works of others.
These are products that a lot of people are highly engaged an opinionated about, in ways that PCs and laptop never were.^
I think we clearly see Apple leading the way (so far) with its designs & innovations. They figured out a whole lot of things that needed to be figured out in order to get a computer to pocket size and for tablet computing to work. Some of these are technical details but a lot of them are not. They're just ideas about what it should look like and how users should interact with it. Software keyboard. slide-to-unlock, rounded corners. A bunch of decisions that together amount to either a good or bad product. They may or may not have been invented at Apple but Apple did put them together and prove them in the market. They placed huge bets on these ideas and won.
I think that last part is the crucial part of innovation that IP laws are inherently useless at protecting: Putting things together to make a product and proving them in the market. It's also the part that Apple is good at.
On the other hand...
Apple is making a lot of money on iOS stuff so its hard to make the claim that they haven't been compensated. It's also hard to claim that these innovations would not have happened without the incentives guarded by IP protection. The opposite is true. We see the Android ecosystem driving down prices and improving the pace of innovation. We see more choice, including options at lower price points that Apple would never have served.
^I'm not sure, but I think this in itself is part of Apple's cultural influence. They've been encouraging people to think about products the way architects want people to think about buildings.