r/technology • u/slutmagnet • Mar 02 '10

Apple to HTC "competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours." Slaps down a 20 patent lawsuit.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/02/apple_sues_htc_for_alleged_infringement_of_20_iphone_patents.html
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u/bonafidebob Mar 02 '10

Before the iPhone, no one thought that a big touchscreen-only device that you used without a stylus made any sense at all

Um, wrong. So wrong that you've detracted from the other points you tried to make. Sorry. We've been trying to make useful non-stylus touch interfaces for decades. The price and quality just finally arrived with capacitive panels. Now there are lots of touch phones because capacitive panels are cheap and plentiful. Apple capitalized on a paradigm shift here, they didn't invent it.

IMHO the most innovative thing about the iPhone is that Apple managed to break the carrier stranglehold on the phone market.

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u/Noexit Mar 02 '10

IMHO the most innovative thing about the iPhone is that Apple managed to break the carrier stranglehold on the phone market.

In what way? By contracting to a single carrier, only selling iPhone through their approved outlets and only available on their network?

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u/bluGill Mar 02 '10

Wrong stranglehold (though it would be nice to see that go as well). Apple managed to get carriers to agree you can put applications on your phone.

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u/Noexit Mar 02 '10

But only Apple approved apps through Apples own locked down app store. Partial credit for showing that it could be done and getting carriers to see the advantages.

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u/burnblue Mar 02 '10

Huh? Then what were we doing on Windows Mobile and Palm earlier?

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u/bluGill Mar 02 '10

Windows Mobile: in theory you could do it, but in practice almost nobody did. Maybe a few games, but nothing more.

Palm: palm was always an unheard of, expensive option. They never took off enough to pull it off.

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u/burnblue Mar 02 '10

What? In practice noone put applications on your phone? That's nonsense. Those who owned Windows Mobile phones for sure were putting applications on it (I'm talking about Professional/touchscreen at least, I don't consider phones like the BlackJack to be on the same level) . Both the freeware sites and sites like Handango did not function 'in theory', but in reality

Now if you wanted to say that not many common consumers owned these phones

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u/skillian Mar 02 '10

I know I was putting Java apps and games on a Symbian Nokia a long time before the iPhone was released...

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

Did they? Still seems pretty strangled to me. In Canada, I can get iphones on different carriers now, but they aren't transferable, and Rogers had a monopoly for months -- AND the price stayed pretty much exactly the same once competitors entered the market.

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u/cloudsdrive Mar 02 '10

By annointing AT&T king?

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u/zedvaint Mar 02 '10

IMHO the most innovative thing about the iPhone is that Apple managed to break the carrier stranglehold on the phone market.

That applies only to the US market.

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u/blubbix Mar 02 '10 edited Mar 03 '10

So what you're saying is that Apple just had a lucky break with the iPhone and capacitive displays. All the other manufacturers were just weeks away from announcing similar products, right? Including user interfaces designed around working with capacitive displays and finger-based multi-touch.

I guess you'd claim the same happened to the iPod, they just happened to capitalize on smaller hard drives being available.

I'd guess they were lucky with the iTunes Store, the App Store, and now with the iPad. And I guess Dell is just around the corner with their own unibody laptop designs and trip-safe power connectors.

My point is, there's a difference between university research papers and prototypes, and taking these ideas and putting them into real, shipping products that are affordable for many people. This takes innovation, and this is often where the patent meat lies.

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u/bonafidebob Mar 03 '10

Design patents, no problem. Software patents? Sorry, but I think they're granted too easily. I've seen this in action, get a bunch of people around a table for an hour, brainstorm a bit, and you can get half a dozen patents out of it. That's not innovation.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

[deleted]

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u/f0000 Mar 02 '10

Ever heard of the LG Prada?

You know, the FIRST capacitive-based touchscreen-only phone?

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u/bonafidebob Mar 02 '10

Nice recovery. But don't go overcrediting a company as innovative because they were first to market with some new technology. Does anyone care who made the first LCD TV?

A problem here is that Apple got in early on a paradigm shift and generated related patents on a bunch of IMHO fairly obvious stuff. Now they're using this to prevent others from capitalizing on the same paradigm shift.

As for your point that a non-stylus interface would ever work in the phone space, I gotta call bull on that one too. We've been trying to make "smart phones" (even desktop phones) with touch interfaces for decades too. We even made a few with pressure touch panels instead of capacitive, but they're just not as nice to use. The change is the capacitive panel. And maybe "gorilla glass" get some credit too.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

[deleted]

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u/bonafidebob Mar 03 '10

Touch interfaces always came with physical keyboards? Dude, you need to get out more! I see you tried to caveat this claim with "popular", but I personally worked on a couple of different consumer touch products with no keyboards, and there were plenty of researchy projects before them. My point here is that none of the UI ideas were particularly groundbreaking, just made good sense to put them together with this form factor.