OSNews

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

Really says all there is to say: A browser based on WebKit, using the code from KHTML to be like Gecko or Mozilla 5.0. Great artists use LGPL.

Don't forget: Apple based OS X on BSD (Darwin) and then stopped supporting the Darwin developers. Perfectly legal, BSD license and all, but right?

Darwin has always been open source. You can download the source of the latest version (From Mac OS X 10.7.2) from the Apple website.

That being said, we still have no ice cream sandwich sources in our hands, and we will never see honeycomb sources.

Google have come forward saying the ICS source will be released. Really, wait until ICS devices hit the shelves before you go complaining the source isn't out.

As for Honeycomb, it was embarrassing and hacked together, according to Google. A stop-gap measure to get tablets out. The changes made for Honeycomb are refined or redone, ICS source makes the Honeycomb source redundant.

Edited 2011-10-22 09:13 UTC

And its about damn time too, if they want to keep this so called "monniker" that the thing is open to begin with.

Mind you, "open" for Android means just open for manufacturers. Not end users. Sources for the chipsets of the specific phones aren't included, thus, the source code is useless to upgrade your phone. On how many present day phones will ICS work? Zero. For me, this is not the spirit and intention of GPL.

Meanwhile, my 2+ year old iPhone 3GS, sans the ideologic BS that its free and open and its the better thing for human society, is humming away just fine on iOS5, the latest version. Talk about warped values.

Most Google people I'm following on G+ say most Gingerbread devices should be capable of an ICS upgrade. That implies to me they haven't changed enough of the kernel to render the old device drivers incompatible, so the third party ROM makers shouldn't have nearly as much trouble porting ICS to Gingerbread phones as they've had porting Donut, Eclair and Froyo to Cupcake devices.

Google can say all they want. There's an ocean of difference between "There shouldn't be much difficulty in porting the device drivers" and "every manufacturer will put out updates so you are sure to run the latest system".

Android is a very different beast in terms of how the device makers look at it. While Android takes obvious queues from iOS feature wise, the device makers look at it from the device point of view. Like all device makers, have done for so many years. You want the new features? You buy the new model. Why would they put effort in releasing something that will compromise sales of their new devices?

In Australia an unlocked Galaxy SII costs 45% less than an unlocked iPhone 4S.

Apple just allows you to keep your outdated and overpriced hardware running a little longer. Some consolation.

45% Less is still 110% of the price in comparison when you need to upgrade your phone.

But I hear you, in overseas pricing Apple could do better.

outdated
You're one of the tech fanatics who upgrade their phone every year? :-)

Because they are released separately by the manufacturers...

And if you're referring baseband, then I just have to point out that it's illegal to mess with the baseband in most countries. Enabling illegal activity is also illegal.


Zero? That's an overstatement. Phones without a GPU will definitely not get ICS, but zero?


Why did you mention GPL? GPL demands are very clear and strict. The whole spirit in embodied in the text.

Phones without a GPU will definitely not get ICS, but zero? "
I think it's safe to say that every phone with Android on it has a GPU - including acceleration features.

It's the Android architecture so far that wasn't ready to make use of that.

The problem people have with Google's "open source" policy is apparently they can take it close sourced to behave like a proprietary development house and rush development they need to rapidly add based on competition, and then they can take their time cleaning it up, and then, presumably, they can "close source" it again at any point if they can rationalize it (needed to add features, support a device, speed development) -- and the Google advocates will do the apologizing for them.

It's not just about hording source, then releasing it, then potentially re-licensing it under closed terms. I think it's more about the "open source for vendors not end users" part; where the manufacturers create fragmented child distributions through one-off modifications while still claiming to be the original distribution.

One can never make everyone happy but even if they standardized the distribution stack and allowed manufactures to include there own hardware driver bundles it'd be better. A clean standard core distribution and centralized updates plus a manufacturer/device specific little driver bundle update from time to time.. worlds better.

(Then we just need the Nokia N0 hardware. )

Edited 2011-10-24 16:50 UTC

Device makers see their phones as devices. In this way Android will never be like say, Debian or Gentoo. Google is just clever enough to make people confuse the one with the other.

The movie was inaccurate.

Not according to Steve Wozniak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lx9JsSTklI

The ideas behind the Macintosh was stoken from Rank Xerox. What irony. History repeats itself.

Apple went to Xerox and asked to see what they were doing, and were granted permission to see it. Apple didn't get to see it for free either, I forget what was needed to allow Apple in, but it was more than a smile and a quick phone call.

Not only that, Apple did "invent" certain aspects of the UI that weren't needed by Xerox, such as the scroll bar and pull down menus.

Xerox also took cues from others as well, such as the mouse and where they got some ideas too. There are a series of interesting videos from the late 60's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4kp9Ciy1nE).

We are all standing on the shoulders of giants or as Bono once said, we are stealing from the thieves...

That's the point. Apple and its zealots believe Apple invented everything and everybody is else is stealing from poor Apple - while in fact, Apple hasn't invented anything in its entire existence. Apple has always built upon work done by others, improving what was already being developed by academia and startups - in many cases work paid for by tax money.

I actually have no issues with that - that's what companies are supposed to do - but what I do have issues with is the fact that even Apple itself now seems to believe it "invents" things, and "owns" the work it has 'stolen' (Apple zealot parlance) from others.

Well fucking said! >:|

Not even close.

So you prefered to see inventions of the said researchers to be burried in labs? "Cowboys" @ Xerox didn't recognised the value of their R&D division.

Nobody is saying that, in fact quite the opposite. What this points to, is that Steve was all too happy to "steal" from others while going ballistic when someone "stole" from him.

If stealing involves giving a large amount of stock to the "victim" in return for being allowed access to, and therefore develop, the WIMP interface - sure. What Microsoft then did was more akin to stealing I'm afraid.

Ideas should not be something you can steal. Everybody has ideas and a lot of people have the same ideas. It is when how and where you make it that makes the difference. If everybody makes a product based on the same idea how would you choose between them?

Zoologiest... oh give me break! No wonder they nearly went bankrupt while Microsoft just kept focusing on what mattered.

Doesn't really matter; these operating systems are constantly stealing features from each other (iOS5 stole Android notifications from Android, while ICS stole the new folder creation stuff from iOS, and also stole Fizzy Lifting Drinks from WebOS and WP7).

This whole 'who copied who' shit is getting old, especially in the smartphone realm, and it really needs to be buried once and for all. Even if you could prove indefinitely which one copied more, it still doesn't matter, because people are going to use what they want to use regardless of where it was copied from.

Arguing over this stuff is like competing in the special olympics ...

Edited 2011-10-22 01:12 UTC

Well put.

Exactly. I'll copy this post from reddit which sums it up:

""He's spot on. There's plenty of ways a $150b+ company can make a mobile OS, see Windows Phone for example.
Google bought Android when it was a BlackBerry clone, and when iPhone debuted they turned it into an iOS clone, no one can seriously deny this"

The problem is not solely that Android was just an iPhone clone. It's that Apple and Google had a very close relationship before that so this was a pretty serious stab in the back. Hence the personal vendetta.
This is not about copying a little feature here and there. This is about turning around to go after a former partner's main strategy. Like as if Apple had gone and made a search engine.

Android is not fundamentally innovative. Of course there are good features (ie, notification system) but it's no major change in design. At least a platform like Windows Phone thought about the whole experience and tried to make something different.

Edited 2011-10-22 01:29 UTC

Innovation, in the end, really doesn't matter. As has been demonstrated by the numerous arguments over innovation both here and elsewhere on the internet very few people even agree on what is or is not innovative. Ultimately people choose the product that is most attractive to them according to their criteria. If you want to argue about phones argue about their features, performance, things that actually matter rather than a pretty pointless history lesson on who did something the first the most number of times ( if that's how one person chooses to define innovation).

The confusion arises from inventive vs innovative.

I agree. And I'm not even arguing that Android has now surpassed the iPhone in many ways. It's not relevant. The point is, it didn't start out as a fundamentally innovative idea, and thus you can understand Steve's attitude. Doesn't matter what is happening now, this was a reaction to events from 3 years ago.

> Cloud based apps,
Google has been developing cloud based apps for many years. What did people expect from Google? Not to use them?

> a tablet,
Did people expect Google to give up markets?

> and a unified OS
So Google has not diverse OS like Chrome and Android?

> Android was just an iPhone clone.

"Besides a mobile phone, the major applications were a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touchscreen to select phone numbers with a finger".

It was an invent from Apple? No.
http://www.retrocom.com/bellsouth_ibm_simon.htm
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF8&pr...

Yeah, a clone that can't even run apps made for iOS, or even have some compatibily at SDK level, not even the same language to develop for.

Something weird happened to the definition of "clone" word in the IT. Now, just sharing a vague physical shape make a product a "clone", an illegal copy of another one.

All this is not getting silly, it *IS*.
Since far too long.

Too many people seems trapped in a distortion field.



As 99.9999% of software code. Even iOS, MacOS X, Windows, Linux share a large portion of software design that were written decades ago.
Under iOS, there is an UNIX layer.
Same for MacOS X. Apple invent none of them.
But without them, no iDevice, zero.

What Android did is to put a fast quasi-java runtime and write an orthogonal framework that doesn't need to learn a language only used by one company products (Objective C). Suddently, all java coders could see a new opportunity, when they didn't with Apple ecosystem.
This kind of choice also matter.



You mean, not like the lack of multitasking in iOS until 3.0? Or system-wide copy&paste?
Sure, multitasking, aka the ability to NOT have to restart from scratch what you were doing before you accept to answer that call is not a major change in design for a smartphone operating system. It was so fun without multitasking, so true.

Yeah, right.
Sorry, but sporting an apple logo is not a major design change anymore. The same apply to huge margin.
And consumer started to see that since a year.
What did Apple innovate since?
Their latest innovation is whinning about stealers.
Indeed, that's a very big change, for a company that started to gain profit by copying Xerox WIMP design.



Which has yet miss success, mostly because smartphone users are now expecting user interface they already how to use and are fluent with, like before others users were hooked to Windows and less ready to try something different like... a Mac.

How ironic.

Apple innovate. They create a new design paradigm, so great that nobody can think to use a smartphone that won't be a touch device and behave similar to the new paradigm.

But they are hangry that their paradigm is copied!?
It's the price of success.

For some people, being successful and rich is never enough. They want to be the only one successful and rich?

Won't work. Never had, never will.

> As 99.9999% of software code. Even iOS, MacOS X, Windows, Linux share a large portion of software design that were written decades ago.
Under iOS, there is an UNIX layer.
Same for MacOS X. Apple invent none of them.
But without them, no iDevice, zero.

OSX and Linux are very different systems. Both are based on Unix, but Mac OS X uses a different kernel called Mach, which was developed from scratch by Avie Tevanian, a NeXT engineer. Mach differs in design philosophy when compared to traditional UNIX and Linux kernels, as the former are monolithic, while OSX is a hybrid kernel.

Also, iOS (and Mac OS X) have a completely different set of programming API's (Cocoa), an unique display manager (Display PDF) and a desktop (Finder). The closest thing to cocoa you have in the Linux space is GNUStep, which is essentially an incomplete re-implementation of YellowBox/Cocoa under linux which nobody uses.

Also, over the years, most of the UNIX based system tools which run under the hood in Mac OS X (and are part of Darwin) have been replaced with Apple-developed alternatives. Launchd is one small example, to replace the cron/init stuff from UNIX. A bigger example is the compiler, where GCC has been replaced by Clang/LLVM.

The only thing which is more or less the same consistently between UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X are the BSD userland tools and X11 window system, which make you able to run UNIX and X11 applications on these systems. Both are an optional install for Mac OS X and not really required to boot the system.

Edited 2011-10-24 23:23 UTC

To be clear, the Linux kernel was also written from scratch. The Linux kernel contains no UNIX code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.svg

In the diagram above, Linux is represented by the second column from the left. Unlike Mac OSX, Linux has no UNIX or BSD predecessors.

Unlike Mac OSX, Linux is not a certified implementation of UNIX.

The Linux kernel is UNIX-like, since it is designed to be POSIX compliant after all, but it is not UNIX, it contains no UNIX code, and it is not therefore based on UNIX.



UNIX userland applications will not run on Linux as there is no ABI or API compatibility. Error codes, for example, are different, because Linus mixed them up (unintentionally). X11 applications can run on Linux if they are re-compiled for Linux, binaries will not run. Bash scripts will run.

Edited 2011-10-25 06:16 UTC

I was referring to stuff like cat, ln and dd when I referred to the userland tools. as far as I know, binairy compatibility is not required on a UNIX system. Even source compatibility is not required. Source compatibility is required for POSIX, though (a standard from which Linux seems to be moving away from)

IIRC, there is a set of source compatibility to claim UNIX trademark. Have no time to find more about it, though.

I was referring to stuff like cat, ln and dd when I referred to the userland tools. as far as I know, binairy compatibility is not required on a UNIX system. Even source compatibility is not required. Source compatibility is required for POSIX, though (a standard from which Linux seems to be moving away from) "

On Linux, the command-line userland programs named cat ln and dd are not UNIX cat, ln and dd. They are written-from-scratch GNU programs with the same names and roughly the same functionality as old UNIX programs.

After all, Gnu is Not UNIX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU

"GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!", chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code."

Specifically these programs and others of a similar nature are part of GNU coreutils.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Core_Utilities

The names were kept the same as old UNIX names in order that bash scripts etc would still run as written, and in order that people didn't have to remember new commands.

Nevertheless, cat, ln and dd on Linux were written-from-scratch GNU programs and they are NOT the same programs as cat, ln and dd on UNIX.

Linux and GNU were designed to be kind-of POSIX compliant, but they are not certified to be. It costs money to get POSIX certification, and no-one has paid such a fee for Linux.

Linux is Linux. It is not UNIX (but it is UNIX-like), and it is not POSIX (but it was designed with POSIX guidelines in mind).

In this day and age, Linux is far more important (in practice) than UNIX.

Edited 2011-10-25 22:11 UTC

So, just to blow your mind : MkLinux - discuss.

Not true. NeXTStep kernel was based on Mach 2.5 microkernel, which was NOT made by Apple or NeXT engineers but written by Carnegie Mellon University.
Thanks to give credits where it's due.



Clang/LLVM was not started by Apple but at University of Illinois and release under open-source licence, which latter allow Apple to 1) hire one of the student behind LLVM and 2) reuse and improve the code without breaking the licence. Otherwise, they will have to start again from scratch, which they didn't have to, thanks for the open source output of others, like for the Mach kernel.

Again, thanks to give credits where it's due.



Try to remove the Mach kernel and see how fine it boot, just for fun.
The NIH syndrom (Not Invented Here) is not an excuse to
NOT give credits where its due.
Worst, when it make someone hide or voluntary forget the actual history track is a bit sad but, to be straigth, also a kind of revisionism.

Facts are facts.
Apple innovates? True.
Apple wrote all her stuffs from scratch? False.
Apple own some credits to others works? True.

Apple (and fanboys) gives credits to them?
No so often.

Edited 2011-10-25 08:22 UTC

Whats this? Tell frderi he's wrong day?

Mach was not written BY Carnegie Mellon. It was initially written AT Carnegie Mellon. Avie initially wrote it as part of his PhD. After a while, he wound up working for Steve Jobs at NeXT, where Mach became the kernel for NeXTSTEP and he further developed it. So YES, it was very much credited to Avie. Check the Mach source code if you don't believe me. Thanks to give credits where it's due.



Development of Clang is initiated and sponsored by Apple. The University of Illinois hosts the project. Apple is a major industry backer of both Clang AND LLVM, providing resources to both projects. Again, thanks to give credits where it's due.





Why would one want to do that? I was comparing the UNIX and Linux kernels to Mac OS X. They are not the same. Traditional UNIX systems either had System V or BSD monolithic kernels.

Facts are facts.
Apple also contributes significantly to the opensource community? True

Not invented here syndrome? Not by a long shot.

Yep, Avie is clearly credited with being an original member of the Mach team at Carnigie - though not the *only*, nor the "lead". I'd still call that a pretty big/important pedigree and it pretty much puts phoudin's comment in to the trash (hey Phillippe, loved the Cannon Printer driver for BeOS back in the day!!)

Also, Mac OS X no longer uses the Mach directly, it uses the XNU, which is a refinement/development/continuation of the Mach.

Edited 2011-10-25 21:09 UTC

Well, the Mach 2.0/2.5/3.0 code under licence, written *AT* Carnegie Mellon (aka using its resources, human and technical) is own by CMU. As such, the people who worked on it don't own any copyright on it.
As so, claiming that one individual can get the credit for the whole is clearly misleading.



And?
You said Apple deserve the credit for Mach kernel. Now you're saying that Avie deserve it (while is only one of the student working on it then), trying to link that hiring a student make you the new owner of what he could have wrote before, himself doing under the umbrella of another organisation!

By this definition, my own employer should be credited for all the code I wrote on my own up to my contract start date.

Or for a better analogy, it's like claiming current Linus Towarld's employer deserves credit for Linux kernel.

That's plenty silly.



Indeed:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/mach/public/www/people-former....

True.
But Clang is a child of LLVM. Which was not initiated by Apple. Which you seems to claim.



Consequence of CLang being a child of LLVM, which is an University of Illinois project from start.



Agreed, but like for movies, don't cherry pick the credits then: while CLang does, LLVM's credits don't all goes to Apple.

Like XUN does, but Mach don't.
Like MacOS graphical interface did, but WIMP design didn't.

See a pattern?

Apple is working hard since long to make people forget that not all was invented by Apple. Many are, but a lot others stuffs are improvement over other's innovation.

I don't know for you, but I try to keep my memories marketing/branding free.

1st point: How about timing? Touch oriented Android was presented for the first time a very long time after iPhone was released. First device was released a year and 3 months after iPhone was released. almost 2 years after iPhone was announced. If Schmidt had any insider information, wouldn't Android be touch oriented from the start?

2nd point: Schmidt was CEO of a company that publicly bought Android in 2005, when he was asked by Steve to join Apple's board in 2006.

3rd point: There is such a thing called industrial espionage and trade secrets. If Schmidt committed industrial espionage, then the trial would have been quick. However, with all that fury no accusations were made. Only nutters online allege it.

4th point: Steve said that iPhone was developed in secret.

Android was founded in '02, and then it was acquired by Google in '04/'05. Apple started the development of the iPhone in '05.


So either Schmidt has time traveling abilities, or you have fallen into the famous Steve Jobs reality distortion field.

The man was ill and was raving and delusional because of medication.

Jobs was delusion back in the 80s. Why do you think the Apple board dumped him? Apple III, Lisa...

What a load of crap.

Android would have prototyped many different interfaces long before the iPhone arrived.

Non-executive board members (eg Schmidt) don't have access to company trade secrets.

Oh, hi! You're one of the nutters that alleges it, without any proof. How's that tinfoil hat working out for ya?

Lets be honest about something. When you sit on the board of a company, there are a lot of eyes on you. As Schmidt worked for Google, he would not, and was not, privy to any discussions that would have been a conflict of interest. To do so would have put Schmidt personally in the cross hairs of a multi billion dollar law suit. Lots of boards from lots of companies have members on other boards. While Schmidt probably knew Apple was working on a phone, he would not have had any first hand knowledge of the actual design.

EDIT: To suggest otherwise is laughable considering the secrecy of Apple about their products. Do you really think Steve Jobs would allow a competitor a preview of what they were building?

Edited 2011-10-22 03:24 UTC

They weren't a competitor at that time. As Jobs stated at All Things D with Walt Mossberg, " We didn't go out and build a search engine did we?" And if anyone thinks that people sitting on the BOD don't get to sees working prototypes of future products, you obviously are tards.

So... Which BoD are you on?

In case you're referring to that devboard picture that floats around on the web: devboards look like that, keyboard and all.

It's simply easier to debug these boxes with real keys instead of relying on a metric ton of software just to be able to enter "reboot".

I'm not saying that there wasn't such a deliberate move (no idea), but that picture is not a good proof.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

It wasn't Apple's business idea. Apple's business idea was the iPod, which was dead in the water by the time the iPhone showed up.

I see. You're one of those types who think that Apple brought nothing new to the table.




Ya, because iPods don't sell anymore. Oh wait a second...

iPod sales have been dropping since before the iPhone was released. Phones do their job well enough.

mp3-players with harddisks were invented by compaq, not apple
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Jukebox

doesn't mean it was their business.

Edited 2011-10-22 01:45 UTC

The iPod-bussines idea isn’t selling HD-based music players, it’s selling HD-based music players that integrate with an online music store.

iTunes is a much bigger reason for iPod’s success than most (esp. geeks) realize.

In what universe? ... iPod was massive before the iPhone .. I had a Classic at the time 80GB ... good bit of kit ... took a lot of punishment. Everyone had a iPod of somesory (usually a mini).

iPhone 1 was arse ... iPhone4+ are awesome ... says a HTC desire owner.

Edited 2011-10-22 01:43 UTC

If you refuse the money that you've supposedly lost?

What good is getting money while they're continuing to take it?

Edited 2011-10-22 00:54 UTC

Give a number of how much money iphones/ipads/ipod touches will make for the rest of time with no competition what-so-ever, lets call that number X. If you refuse X +1.00 instead in order to accept competition, then that is not a good business decision. QED.

Because its not just his money he's squandering. Its the stock holder's money. And they get kind of pissy about those kinds of things. Problem is that Google is giving away Android. While Apple may be able to target dumb companies like Samsung, they have no way of actually stopping Android. Android is not defined by its look. Its a free and open OS. In the end, Apple will have competitors no matter what they do. So why dump money into a losing position instead of taking the pay off?

EDIT: And what would happen in a worst case scenario where someone goes after Apple for the same? Apple is a one trick pony, they shouldn't risk iOS on throwing stones at the world.

Edited 2011-10-22 02:20 UTC

Because he said " this is not about money". That makes it not a business strategy, Duh.

It does when it hurts more your own brand image than anything else.

When it's not only about money, it's not a business strategy. And the point here is Apple has already so much money that they aren't after it anymore.

Well, under Jobs era, that is.
I'll bet this will change, soon.

No one gives Nokiad any credit in all this. Nokia N-Series of internet tablets preceded the iphone.
It was always thought that Nokia should have combine the internet tablet idea with a cell phone since they were a cell phone company. The N800 was a good idea at the time, but it was woefully underpowered I think Apple saw the potential of the N-Series of internet tablets and produced the phone that Nokia was too slow to produce.

It also had icons, widgets, apps, and an app store.

A graphic showing that the iPhone sprang out of thin air, based on nothing. How inventive!

That's the "Apple reality distortion field" in full effect.

All I can say is "AHHHHHAAAHHAA". Seriously? Your little graphic ignores all the other phones were converging on the same style of interface. The Palm Pre looks just like Android and iOS. I suppose they stole from Apple too though huh? Except Palm has been working on phone OS's since the early 90's. If anyone in this market has room to be pissed at copying, its the folks at Palm.

The Palm Pilot was just a cheaper version of the Apple Newton, a device which had been under development at Apple since the end of the 80's and was released in 1993.

The idea to combine the PDA with the smartphone didn't come from Palm either. General Magic, an Apple spinoff, was already working to do this since the beginning of the nineties.

IBM Simon - first GUI phone - 1984.

"Besides a mobile phone, the major applications were a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touchscreen to select phone numbers with a finger".

It was under development since the end of the 80's and was released in 1993 [Associated Press: "Keep it simple, Simon says", Florida Times-Union newspaper, November 3, 1993].

It was an invent from Apple? No.

http://www.retrocom.com/bellsouth_ibm_simon.htm
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF8&pr...


Like we have seen, that "I want to carry one device, not two" idea was popular, because it's such a natural idea... :-)

Edited 2011-10-22 09:39 UTC

I think you're confusing features with design.

Everybody can come up with features and implement them in a certain manner using the technology available in a certain period of time. But what really matters is how you turn those features into something that gets the whole story right and you end up with an actually usable and sellable product.

A lot of people don't seem to be getting this and take these things for granted once they are out in the consumer space. They don't realize that it actually takes a lot of effort to come up with these things in the first place and make it so it actually works well enough for the consumer.

The tech industry is a very volative space. Over the years, I've seen a lot of innovative companies go under because other, often bigger ones jumped on the bandwagon and released me-too products because they wanted a piece of the pie these companies created. I'm not referring to Apple specifically, although they've more than had their share of financial problems because of it. NetScape, SGI, Software Arts, ... are just a few examples of innovative companies who changed what people can do with technology over the years. These companies are no longer around, mainly due to the fact because others stepped in and ran away with the technology they pioneered.

Historically, this hasn't turned out very well for the consumer. IE dominance was one of the main reasons NetScape tanked, and when it did internet technology entered a dark age as innovation ceased.

Love Android all you want, but you can't deny that its the iPhone who set the bar and defined the market Android is going after. And I'm not saying that out of fanboyism. I'ms saying this as a technology enthousiast who likes polished, usable products. Look at the smartphone landscape before it came out. It was labeled as a "mature market" catering primarily to a certain niche. The iPhone changed all that. It put the bar higher for technology and what you could do with it, and lowered the bar for consumers.

So I'm not mad when a company which actually does the innovation behind it to make good ideas into a reality tries to fight me-too products with all they've got. Neither would I be mad if a company like VMWare decided to go after me-too companies that think the best way of doing business is mimicking the whole widget of another company. Because its when these guys succesfully enter the market, that innovative products become commoditized and its the consumer who ultimately pays the price.

Edited 2011-10-22 10:28 UTC

> I think you're confusing features with design.
I was talking about features that were said, like "combine the PDA with the smartphone" or the features that offered Palm Pilot, Ibm Simon, Apple Newton, etc.

> Love Android all you want,
If it's important: I don't love Android, I don't even have one.

> These companies are no longer around, mainly due to
> the fact because others stepped in and ran away with
> the technology they pioneered.
That "ran away with" expression is too similar to "stealing", they are not stealing, Apple did not steal anything from Xerox or IBM Simon or Knight Ridder(*), even if Steve Jobs says it:
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

That not-building-something-totally-different-for-the-sake-of-it was beneficial for people, and so there Apple was doing the right thing (tm).

(*) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1381528/Knight-Ridde...

> I was talking about features that were said, like "combine the PDA with the smartphone" or the features that offered Palm Pilot, Ibm Simon, Apple Newton, etc.

>That "ran away with" expression is too similar to "stealing", they are not stealing, Apple did not steal anything from Xerox or IBM Simon or Knight Ridder(*), even if Steve Jobs says it

I think making a clear distinction between features and design is very important in this debate. I do believe products that are designed too similar and clearly mimick the whole widget of an original product is theft. One could speak of product identity theft, corporate identity theft or theft of goodwill related to the original product or company, because a sale of the cloned product will not result in a sale of the original product. So is this stealing? Yes. Its theft of sales, thats what it is.

Consider human reproduction. Nobody will sue you for making another human and giving him the chances in life to become a fully developed individual. You will not get sued for having the same features of other people. We are all equipped with the same ones, some more pronounced than others in each individual, some working considerably well in some individuals, others sadly being impaired or defunct in some individuals. You will get sued, however, when you mimic another person so close that people cannot distinguish between the original person and the other properly, and you start receiving benefits associated with this original person, such as cashing in his monthly wage. This is considered identity theft and fraud.

Indeed, Apple did not steal from Xerox. They commercialized parts of the GUI ideas at Xerox, a market Xerox wasn't interested in entering in the first place. So they licensed these ideas and Xerox took a stake in Apple. They also put a lot of work in actually implementing and making the ideas from Xerox in an actual usable product. The Xerox Alto was a concept, not a finished product.

Edited 2011-10-22 11:55 UTC

By that reasoning, "cloned" products are killing iPhone sales, so is it murder?



Terrible analogy. It would only be relevant if these other companies were selling phones/tablets with an apple logo, calling them "i-Phone", "i-Pad" or claiming they are selling an Apple product.

If it was true, then:

1) Steve Jobs would be a thief, after stealing a lot, and Steve Jobs would be right when he said:
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
"Good artists copy; great artists steal."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

2) Steve Jobs would be a thief and would have stolen from Xerox:
"Jobs and a team of engineers visited Xerox PARC, where they saw a demo of mouse and graphical user interface"
http://www.maniacworld.com/alto-computer-video.html [includes an interesting video of Xerox Alto]
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/storysupplement/stevejobs/in...

3) Bill Gates would be a thief and would be right when talking to Steve Jobs:
"Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox, and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/01/0119apple-unveils-lisa/
http://www.mac-history.net/the-history-of-the-apple-macintosh/rich-...
http://www.macworld.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?blogId=8&entryId=392
http://www.wservernews.com/archives/wservernews-20090330.html

Edited 2011-10-23 07:52 UTC

"It was not a commercial product, but several thousand units were built and were heavily used at PARC, other Xerox facilities, and at several universities for many years."


You don't sell thousands of "concepts". Anyway, if someone does not take Xerox Star into account, he can also make all type of conclusions...

Xerox Alto:

Price:
Never sold but often given away. Star, a commercial derivative of Alto eventually retailed for $16,595 in 1981

Units Shipped:
2,000 inside Xerox and to universities & research centers.

[There's more in http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox-alto/]

The Xerox Star:

Introduced:
April 27, 1981

Price:
Retailed for $16,595 in 1981 [Before Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh]

Units Shipped:
Tens of thousands

[There's more in http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox-8010/index.html]

Netscape tanked because it was a) not free for commercial use b) a POS that wreaked havoc on classic Macs requiring your dealer to reinstall the OS.

NetScape mainly tanked because Microsoft pushed them out of the browser market, then used proprietary technology to push them out of the server market, where its bread and butter were.

The result being an innovation stagnation for more than a decade because for Microsoft, well, the Web was a threat for its Win32 monopoly.

Not entirely true ... they went under partially because of Microsoft, but Netscape had a big fault too: their flagship product, Netscape 4, sucked. In those times I started my career as a webdeveloper and I remember that stuff mostly worked in IE while in Netscape it was a nightmare to get working. Tables were a mess, frames were a mess and don't get me started on the scripting and early CSS support (was there any?). The browser was slow and a big download for those times when you were lucky to have a 56kbps connection. As for standards, Netscape was also pushing theirs, which by the way were mostly rubbish.

I'm not saying MS was an angel, but Netscape fell to a combination of monopoly abuse from MS and a crappy product.

That is the very definition of marketing(with distribution part cut-out).


Are you saying that if Netscape had a patent on a browser, then we all would bask in the joys of innovation by Netscape for the next 20 years? (PS: Irony is, iPod is the IE of the PMP market)


Thus, iPhone revolutionised the market. But even thinking that it's their market, because they changed it is ridiculous.


Sure... It's not even the fighting, it's the reason for the fight and overwhelming sense of entitlement. The me-too part of Android was the finger oriented touch.

Its the definition of good product design. It all starts with the product.



I'm saying that if NetScape would have been around, the internet would not have been the stagnant place dominated with a browser that didn't get any noteworthy updates in a decade.



See my above post on humans.




If you had followed the Apple versus Samsung case, you'd know they are suing Samsung for way more than that.

Gosh, you weren't around when IE achieved its dominance, were you?

IE achieved dominance because it was better than Netscape. Netscape became stagnant, IE surpassed it - in the same way Firefox surpassed IE when the latter became stagnant.

And product design comes out of marketing. Marketing is not PR.


So... Samsung is Android.... Hm.... Noted.

only problem is that the first palm pda predates the newton by a year



don't quote me on this, but i'm pretty sure there was a gsm-module for the ipaq

and an ipaq+gsm/umts is pretty much what we now call a smartphone

Sure there were. There were even iPaqs with phone functionality. They were okay-ish PDA's but terrible phones. Thank god we got rid of those!

The Palm Pre looks just like Android and iOS
But not how it works and supported. Palm has always been a niche in a back streets of WinCE.

Love this picture: it show better than anything else that Apple between 2007 and 2010 (and still) don't change that much is main product.

In the meantime, concurrents cames from outdated products to the credible iPhone alternative state.

I really wonder why Apple, with so much and well deserved cash from iPhone sales, lost it's innovation advance.

I guess that what happened when you start to focus on what others do instead of what you want to do next...

I dont think its fair to say that anyone could steal multi touch from Apple. Apple made the first multi touch phone, but there were plenty of other multi touch devices out there.

Apple has bought a company that did multitouch things in 2000s. Touchscreen PCs and PDAs didn't used multi-touch before Apple and the "general public" was not aware of such tech.

I remember that iPod Touch(Sept 2007) had a cool all finger input. Nothing else really was noteable about it.

Just on your first point: the idea of a stylus-free PDA phone experience had been in the works and actually implemented for a while before the iPhone. There were a bunch of finger-friendly skins developed for WinMo 5, and HTC had been working for their stylusless TouchFlo interface for a while before the iPhone was announced. Their first TouchFlo-based phone came out just around the time the iPhone was released, and very shortly after it was announced.

What was different about the iPhone was that the interface had been built from the ground up around a particular model of user interaction, rather than slapping a finger-friendly interface on an OS designed around rather different principles. This is something Apple has always been rather good at. But the idea of fingers rather than styli wasn't new - because of the obvious inconvenience of styli, it was something a range of people had been working on.

To steal something from John, John can not have it later. If he still has it, it was not a steal.


"Besides a mobile phone, the major applications were a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touchscreen to select phone numbers with a finger".

It was an invent from Apple? No.
http://www.retrocom.com/bellsouth_ibm_simon.htm
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF8&pr...

The problem is that those are not even Apple's ideas. Finger touch screen is a result in advancement in technology. Similar to move from CRT to LCD. It is LCD tech that matured and allowed everyone to create flat panel form factor. finger touch (capacitative display LCD)is just a natural progression.

Integrated application repositories have been around on other operating systems for decades. Debian packaging system and even Cydia came before the Apple App Store did. Putting a fancy face on the old packaging system and marketing it is all Apple did.

and even if you narrow it down to an repository specific to a closed device apple got beaten by microsofts xbla by 3 years

In 100 years neither will be remembered. For multiple reasons.

The next big thing, and more significant technological development, will inevitably come around which will make Jobs and Gates "achievements" insignificant in the big scheme of things. Both will be a curious historical footnote if anything.

Malaria affects 225 million people each year and kills 800,000 (mostly children) every year.

The first ever effective malaria vaccine has just been announced. The vaccine research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation because virtually every other medical research team has considered this an impossible acheivement.

Eliminating malaria will rate as an achievement on par with the development as the printing press.

JD Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie are still immensely influential long after they died because of their charitable contributions. Bill Gates will be too.

Jobs will (at best) be remembered a a self-centred arsehole who sold overpriced consumer junk to the gullible. Steve Jobs - the PT Barnum of the early 21st century.

First off, some research on malaria vaccines is funded in part by Bill Gates' foundation. Stretching that to assign the eradication of the disease with Bill Gates himself is a magnificent leap IMO.

Rockefeller and Carnegie are two names associated with unmitigated greed, corruption, and power.


Getting your history from press releases from the interested parties provides a very flawed and partial vision. FYI.

1. Scientists can't do research without funding. The Gates Foundation is the largest single source of funding for malaria eradication. Bill Gates has stated on a number of occasions that the total elimination of malaria is his primary goal. He has raised the profile of malaria research so that that funding has increased 15-fold in less than a decade.

2. Rockefeller University, Carnegie-Mellon university etc.

There would have been no Renaissance if it wasn't for the "evil" Borgias, Medecis etc.

Don't let a few inconvenient facts get in the road of your anti-capitalist rant.

Edited 2011-10-22 10:33 UTC

Rockefeller are on the sidelines of history and Steve will be there too. He's already going there like a bullet. Do you know who T J Watson was? And it's only 60 years after his death.

And who the hell is Carnegie? I though it was the town CMU is in.

For all the biggest names in the 19th century, we only remember one businessman - Nobel. Brits will probably add Brunel.

I'm talking about influence not fame. They aren't the same.

Brunel, like James Watt, is well known in Britain but no longer influential.

The Rockefeller trust is one of the most influential NGOs in the world. It has a major influence on Western government policies - particularly the environment. The Carnegie Trust still has a major influence in Scottish education. Whether the average person has ever heard of either man is not important.

Alfred Nobel only became a benefactor because his obituary was published by mistake in a Paris newspaper. When he discovered he was considered one of the most evil men in the world (because his explosives were used for warfare) he decided to promote peace.

Jobs will have no influence at all beyond the next Apple product cycle. The Gates Foundation will probably still be highly influential in another 100 years time.

As opposed to Denis Ritchie who co-autored the C language.

You know, you could at least pay him as much respect as to spell his name correctly. And no, he didn't 'co-autor' C. He comes second on the cover of K&R C yet he developed it by himself. He was wise enough to listen to other people's good ideas, that's it.

Edited 2011-10-22 15:06 UTC

Like Steve Jobs said...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

If you're going to mid quote, at least attribute correctly. Supposedly it was Pablo Picaso who Jobs was quoting when he said "Good artists copy; great artists steal." read this:

http://arthistory.about.com/b/2009/01/26/good-artists-borrow-great-...

He wrote that Steve Jobs said that, he did not wrote that Steve Jobs was the author :-)

Also, perhaps someone has said that "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas" before.

Edited 2011-10-25 09:15 UTC

But of course you must omit the rest of what Jobs definitely said himself right after that quote?
(demonstrating his shallow understanding of the Picasso quote BTW - if anything, it was about artists who simply record reality vs. those who hijack reality)

What he himself said was even mentioned right above - and "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas" is quite clear.

I think this is what Jobs believed as well. When you look at history, people who ended up changing the world were mostly not the most rational people. They were people with a passion and persistance, who, often because of these character quirks, persued ideas where other people would have given up a long time ago. One only has to look at the lives of Napoleon, Albert Einstein or Nicola Tesla to realize this.

Tesla didn't invent electricity. But his unique ideas and insights made it possible to turn it into a practical application.

The correct comparison with Jobs is Edison. Edison blatantly stole other peoples ideas on many occasions. He exploited his loyal staff and publicly ridiculed his competitors. Edison was a two bit showman who publicly electrocuted animals, including an elephant, to show the "dangers" of AC.

Edited 2011-10-23 02:38 UTC

Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament is a book by the American psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison that examines the relationship between bipolar disorder and artistic creativity. It contains a number of case histories of dead people who are described as probably having suffered from bipolar disorder.

My thoughts exactly.

He didn't seem to take his Buddhist ideals of tranquility too seriously.

History will be repeated. Apple will probably be in serious trouble again within five years.

Yep just like Apple saw the Palm Treo then decided to create it's own and give it's "ported BSD" OS the CISCO name of iOS.

Edited 2011-10-22 23:31 UTC

Good job downmodders, you've proven that Steve's ass-kissers do in fact still exist.

Won't that be ash-kissers now? (I think, I didn't follow the proceedings; but since he was presumably a Buddhist, so with cremation indicated...)