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I think that it does. A proper record of history is important, especially now that a proper record of history can mean the difference between winning a multi-billion Dollar lawsuit, and losing it.

I'm working on a large project about the history of mobile computing, and things like this need to be properly documented. Since I'm working on this anyway, it makes sense for me to drop some aspects of it on OSNews here and there.

Not at that level of course, but remember, we pretty much hold mini-trials all over the web almost daily.



"I swear, if you cared a little more about actual news and less about Windows 7, this site would be much better."

"I swear, if you cared a little more about actual news and less about Ubuntu, this site would be much better."

I swear, if you cared a little more about actual news and less about Mac OS X, this site would be much better."

You get the idea . All of those actually happened, by the way.

As much as I think Thom is a excellent troll and I don't agree much with some of the shit he says ... I do have this to say ...

He posts most of the news on this site ... and actually makes an effort to you know actually write stuff and do a bit of research ... even though I think he is overreaching his expertise. It will look good on CV as well.

If you want something more ... I dunno impartial and factual there are sites like kerneltrap that will be more what you want ...

Edited 2011-10-26 23:04 UTC

To be honest I think you sound like the troll with shit to say if you're making this comment in a thread where Thom addresses a popular discussion with evidence to support his argument.

I believe there's a simple response to this:

Go start your own site which is unbiased, non-patent-related, and "much better"... PLEASE!

Why do you still come here?

If all of those "the desktop is a dying form" doomsayers are right, and all of our computing in the near future will be mobile, on mobile operating systems, then stories on patents, following all of this, is vitally important. Do you want a pocket Microsoft keeping the technology world gridlocked for ten years and hampering innovation? Apple will be that company if we let them get away with it, now.

Edit: By the way, I think Nokia might have more to say about that Android prototype than RIM. It looks an awful lot like an E series, like the E71 or E63.

Edited 2011-10-26 23:46 UTC

Why? The patent situation is going to play out however it's going to play out, regardless of how much/little Thom rants about it. Whether there's 1 story about patents on a tech blog or 1,000,000 it's not going to change a thing. Why? Because the people who read these blogs don't have enough money to buy governments like the big corporations do. Thus, it doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference whether I stay informed about patents or not.

Am I saying that people should do nothing about patents if they're passionate about it? No, I'm saying that whining about them on tech blogs is a complete waste of time, because the people you're whining to can't do any more about it than you can. If you really want to do something about the software patent problem, find somebody who has a lot of money and convince them that patents are evil. Either that, or find a stock pile of weapons and go in with guns blazing.

BTW: The desktop isn't going anywhere. As long as people need to spend hours doing real work, they'll probably want to do it sitting down. At a desk. With a real keyboard and not a f**king phone. Every time some new whiz-bang technology comes out, 'analyst' start predicting the demise of the desktop. It's rather tiring.

Edited 2011-10-27 00:28 UTC

There's a simple solution that a lot of people have suggested: If you don't like the content, don't read. Like it or not, patent news IS OS News. It's the news of what we can expect out of next year's devices, or whether the gadget we've had our eyes on will ever make it to shelves.

Edit: I don't think the desktop is going anywhere, but I do think we're going to see a dramatic shift toward mobile computing. People will be doing more on the go, and desktops will resemble their mobile counterparts more and more. Look at Windows 8, it's Windows Phone 7 but bigger, for all we see right now.

Edited 2011-10-27 00:42 UTC

Edit: Nevermind - this is an unproductive thread.

Edited 2011-10-27 01:23 UTC

I am sorry I should have clarified (I just wrote what I thought in the context I was thinking) ...

I don't think it matters when it comes to users when they are choosing what they want.

e.g. I chose Android because it I could easily develop for it with the Kit I already had ... Windows Phone 7 wasn't about and Windows Mobile 6.5 was crap in comparison to Android or iOS.

So I choose Android ... because it seemed to fit my interests.

Edited 2011-10-26 23:05 UTC

So, now that the US is moving towards a "first to file" rather than "first to develop" patent system, will this diminish the importance of "Prior Art"?

My understanding is, no.

My understanding is that in a "first to file" system, if there is prior art to the first to file, then NOBODY gets the patent.

Are you going back to the 90's when the PDA battle pitted Apple's MessagePad and its Newton OS against Tandy's Zoomer with the DOS-based GEOS? That predates the current conflict, and even though the Zoomer didn't sell well and the Newton devices were a modest success, it serves to illustrate how Apple carried the mobile computing competition through to the present.

I think the biggest missing link in your analysis (that you should at least address in whatever final work you're putting together) is the announcement of the iPhone, 8 months before these demos took place.

So Android development had 8 months to adapt to what Apple put out there. In particular the statement that "Android was never intended to run on just one form-factor". It's possible that it was designed to run on Blackberry-esque devices, then had a sudden evolutionary shift when the iPhone came along.

The fact that the iPhone was announced 8 months before the first Android shots emerged makes your final paragraph weak, at best. The diverse Android hardware and SDK could still be a result of the iPhone.

It remains true that the original Android strategy at Google was a defence against the then reasonable view that the there was going to be a likely victory of Windows Mobile in the mobile space. Google could see a shift to internet via mobile devices coming and was worried that if something like the Microsoft OS won in the mobile space it would shut out Google's revenue earning services. If Microsoft mobile had won the mobile OS war this indeed is what would have happened.

Microsoft's strategy is to commoditise handset hardware and take the bulk of revenue in the mobile space via OS licence fees exactly as it did in the desktop market. Google decided to outflank Microsoft's strategy by reducing the value of the mobile OS to zero by developing and giving away for free a competitive mobile OS, the free OS will also commoditise handset hardware and Google can take the bulk of revenue in the mobile space via baked in Google services.

It also remains true that Apple had offered Google a close alliance which included a place on Apple's board for Google's CEO, an offer Google seemed to have accepted. We also know that Eric Schmidt as an Apple Board ember would have been privy to early demos of iOS and iPhone months before either were made public.

The balance of evidence is that the original target, and therefore the original design template, for Android was Windows Mobile and RIM and that when iPhone launched and was a big success the focus of the design of Android shifted. Google decided that Apple's iOS was a bigger threat than Windows/RIM - hence all the silly anti-Apple posturing at the Google iO conference in 2010.

Google decided to break the alliance with Apple and to attack Apple's revenue base by offering a free alternative. This is Google's modus operandi, to attack other companies business models by offering free alternatives and to thus ensure Google services remains the ubiquitous top level of services. Google has attacked the business of many, many companies in this way, always with the same aim - to ensure that Google and it's service layer is everywhere and that there is no major sector of the internet or internet activity which is beyond the reach of Google's overwatch.

Apple felt betrayed by Google's actions, a feeling that is not unreasonable under the circumstances.

Android was a huge success in terms of handsets sold but was disappointing in terms of earning revenue for Google via it's services. Google search on iOS, where for the time being it remains the default search engine, generates two thirds of Googles revenue in mobile. Google's revenue in mobile remains at a much lower level per device compared to per desktop/laptop. Android has not yet safe guarded Google's service revenue in the new internet via mobile device paradigm. iOS continues to sell very well across a spread of devices including tablets and iPods.

Apple continues to make the most profit in the mobile arena by far and Apple's iOS device sales continue to grow very strongly. Android sales in handsets exceed Apple's in numbers but do not generate big profits for most handset makers. Android in tablets has so far failed to dent the iPads market dominance.

In August 2011 Google bought Motorola mobility. It is not clear what the impact of this purchase will be. There are some strong hints that Google wants to develop very cheap or zero cost feature phones with baked in Google services possible targeted on the developing world.

In September 2011 Amazon announce a new Kindle Fire touch tablet based on a fork of Android and a new browser called Silk. Both exclude Google services.

Meanwhile Google is being sued by Oracle for wilful infringement of patents and copyrights over the use of Java in Android. Oracle appear to have a case that might win with unforeseen but possibly momentous financial and business implications for both Google and Android.

Apple bought the AI system Siri and with it's release in October 2011 it clearly shows the potential for a new way to search for information that can bypass Google. Siri uses Google for web search but can easily use other search engines. Apple continues to receive a payment from Google to use it's search engine as the default in iOS but could easily afford and quickly implement a switch to another search engine. Apple has bought several mapping companies and it is presumed will have a new mapping system in place soon that could bypass Google maps. Apple's app store continues to be a huge success obliging all competing platforms, including Android to host app stores but apps continue to pose a problem for Google as many apps access the internet directly and bypass Google services. Apps are not a natural fit for the Google business model.

The war between Google and Apple has only just begun, will it be like the first world war with a prolonged war of attrition and few clear cut victories as both take large revenues from the mobile arena? Will a third combatant in the shape of Microsoft/Nokia become a major player and if so which platform, Android or iOS, will suffer as result? Will Google's Android strategy be like Germany's invasion of France - a successful blitzkrieg leading to total victory with Google securing the bulk of the revenue in new mobile services? Or will Google's Android strategy be more like Germany's invasion of Russia, stunning early successes, and then crushed by counterattack with Google being excluded from the bulk of mobile revenues?

The next few years are going to be so very interesting.

Good writeup. I for one wouldn't mind to see a couple more strong competitors in the market without any handset maker totally dominating. It would ensure innovation keeps flowing in the handset market, and would only benefit the customer.

Debunking BS always matters

Honestly, this really doesn't settle anything. Consider the following:

Even though this video is about a month older than the December 2007 picture that's making the rounds, the iPhone was announced in January of that year, meaning the touch-screen device could easily have been a response.

Also, it's striking that for the majority of the demo with the touch-screen device, he's actually driving it via buttons along the bottom and (I believe) on the side... very much like a Blackberry FWIW. We never see the entire device, so I can say for sure. All of the gestures demonstrated rely on a single touch point, and it appears the home screen is basically the same as the first device, but extended into a portrait layout. We never see multifinger gestures or an on-screen keyboard. Granted, it's a short demo of a prototype, so maybe I'm nitpicking, but overall it looks very half-baked as a touch-driven interface, which lends further credence to the idea that this functionality was added relatively recently. [Actually, a little research confirms Android OS didn't officially support multitouch until 2.0... I'd forgotten that.]

Additionally, you need to keep in mind that Google execs knew about the iPhone well before it was publicly announced. There's no definitive proof (that I know of) that Google got privileged information from Schmidt's participation on the board--different boards exercise different levels of transparency and Apple is famously secretive. However, IIRC, the iPhone launched with Google search, YouTube, and Google Maps. Maps in particular must have required cooperation with Google's engineers. I think the reason Jobs became so vindictive is that it felt like the Mac all over again--Microsoft got early access to develop apps ahead of launch.

All in all, it's an interesting find from a historical perspective, but it's far from a myth-busting smoking gun.

Oh, God. This is exactly like that. When ever the non Apple device is better, its because it "stole" from Apple. While, as many have pointed out Apple "stole" from others.

Indeed, Jobs has admitted this himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

It seems a one ways street with Apple; they're allowed to plagiarise whoever and whenever they like. But if anyone even hints at a similarity to them (such as a tablet shaped like black rectangle), Apple get all pissy.

The hypocrisy is strong in Apple.

Edited 2011-10-27 07:35 UTC

That's because it's all Apple have. They got crushed before when the generic PC market completely outstripped them in terms of supply and size so they've got two options - accept it or try and desperately limit the size of Android's supply and market size. Apple can only choose the latter because it's all they know.

That's because it's all Apple have. They got crushed before when the generic PC market completely outstripped them in terms of supply and size so they've got two options - accept it or try and desperately limit the size of Android's supply and market size. Apple can only choose the latter because it's all they know. "

Samsung and their ilk have wet dreams about Apple's profit margins. Apple is being crushed in the fervent hopes of assorted android fans.

As the size of the market and the hardware supply expands those profit margins quickly crumble. It happened to Apple when the PC crushed them. Obviously Apple are extremely concerned about Android enough.

History is history I'm afraid.

As the size of the market and the hardware supply expands those profit margins quickly crumble. It happened to Apple when the PC crushed them. Obviously Apple are extremely concerned about Android enough.

History is history I'm afraid. "

Except, the Mac was not 'crushed' by the PC....not even close. And, Apple's year over year quarterly profits show no signs of crumbling. History is not history unless it is repeated. Apple has, arguably, learned well from its previous mis-steps.

Wow, way to go taking the video out of context; when he refers to stealing he is talking about 'stealing people' from other companies. The larger part of the quotation is this: Do you steal the idea or do you steal the person who came up with the idea? It is a variation of do you steal the gold eggs or do you steal the whole goose that lays them? I thought it would have been plainly obvious when he starts to talk about Apple employees and their varied backgrounds ranging from Zoologists through to Artists.

How about spending some time LISTENING to the video instead of jumping all around the room excited because you've found a video with an incriminating title but you ignore the content in the actual video.

Edited 2011-10-28 01:34 UTC

Wow, way to go taking the video out of context; when he refers to stealing he is talking about 'stealing people' from other companies. The larger part of the quotation is this: Do you steal the idea or do you steal the person who came up with the idea? It is a variation of do you steal the gold eggs or do you steal the whole goose that lays them? I thought it would have been plainly obvious when he starts to talk about Apple employees and their varied backgrounds ranging from Zoologists through to Artists.

How about spending some time LISTENING to the video instead of jumping all around the room excited because you've found a video with an incriminating title but you ignore the content in the actual video. "

I did listen to the video and I can hardly be blamed if the uploader decided to edit it in an incriminating way (ie editing out all context).

Beside, the video is almost unnecessary as Apples track record speaks volumes. They are no more the inventors than Google nor Microsoft, yet somehow they want to be treated differently.

I've made a list before about features that appeared on Android before iOS and it's not a short list. So if one was as religions towards Google as many fanboys are to Apple, one could argue that Apple stole from Google. However anyone sane (ie outside of their respective companies RDF) will simply say "there are just best methods of doing things that all companies would agree on".

This is the only reason I don't like Apple - their devices are good, but not pioneering and certainly not worthy of all the bullshit that surrounds them.

Well duh, it's a prototype I am pretty sure iPhone's UI looked half baked at some point. Remember that it took Android aboout a year to reach a mature UI.

Regarding multitouch, it wasn't there because of Apple. Once the Google-Apple relationship started to get ugly, Google implemented it in Android.


Hey, we're integrating your stuff into OS X/new shiny app/whatever. And we're gonna fake user agent strings in case you want to look at the logs.

or

Google Engineers, here's what we're working on, sign this NDA and if you speak we'll sue the crap out of you.
^ Since this didn't happen I assume Apple built the apps by themselves with some form of help from Google, but without revealing the iPhone to them.

I think you missed the point of the argument. Thom is trying to tell us that Android already had a touch phone in the works before the iPhone demo, however, he has sited no evidence for this. Android was started in 2003, but we don't know any more than that (well, unless I have missed something, in which case, please let me know (no sarcasm)).

The point is, the state of the "touch" version of Android looked half baked in the demo, like touch was a recent addition to it. There are some touch functions, but nothing like the integration that the iPhone had quite a few months earlier.

I understand (and remember) that Apple asked Google not to add multitouch and some other gestures to the OS, but the one shown in the demo was lacking swipes in obvious areas, such as switching between histories in the browser. If this had been in the works prior to Jan 2011 then I'd suggest Google are rather slow at coding, and we know this isn't the case.

To me (and many others here) it seems that (note the word "seems" as I have no evidence that the touch version wasn't started before the iPhone demo) that the touch version of Android was started after the iPhone demo. I'm pretty sure a lot of people messed their pants that day, including Google.

Please know, I love competition and I want Android to be around...

I had a touchscreen device that also had buttons in 2004, you could navigate using either. And no, it was not a Blackberry, it was a Sony running Symbian.
Google was designing a system that flexibly fitted most devices on the market at the time ‐ which included fully touch screen devices.

A) Didn't your mind protest when you wrote those two statements together?

B) Search, YouTube and Maps have had public APIs for a long time. If needed, Apple could have developed Search, YouTube and Maps in secret. Or at least not say what device those would be used on. In short, it's not proof of anything.

C) It will still not convince all of the rabid WP7* and iOS fans, so I wouldn't even bother.

There is no smoking gun on either side. The facts are only these:
- iPhone demonstrated/popularised new interaction/input paradigm for smartphones.
- Android was known to exist since 2005
- Android's demo devices first appeared later than iPhone, much later.
- Dev devices are rarely what they end up to be.

* - Yes, WP7 fans are hypocritical enough to forget that finger touch orientation was popularised by none-other than the iPhone. But as long as they are Android bashing they don't care for little things called "facts".

And yet it worked. There you were trolling.

No, because today you have to be original. It doesn't matter if there's only one way of making touch screen OSes: GUI, swiping and a big screen. People will complain:

YOU COPIED FROM MY FRIEND APPLE WAAAAH!

So I guess in a software project features are just coming up by magic? Maybe, just maybe, the team wanted to have a set of core functionality in there first and then worry about scrolling and touch-friendly buttons?

I'd also like to know what these similarities are. Everybody's talking about them, but I don't hear any specifics.

Edited 2011-10-27 07:56 UTC

The whole product design is the similarity. The form factor, the scrolling, the way it works, ...

And don't even try to start a "but this similar feature were already present in product X or software Y". This only proves you're a bozo that hasn't got the faintest clue about the fundamentals of what product design really is about. Design is not about individual features, its about how these features come together in a great product.

Android is the antithesis of good design. Because its desire to be succesful instead of being a great product, it merely rips off the design and character of other, successful products. First it ripped off the BlackBerry design, and when it was clear that Blackberry was going to be passed by by the iPhone, it adopted the iPhone design.

Android merely morphs into what happens to be "le plat du jour" and effectively doesn't have a spine or character of its own. This makes it a worthless me-too product, because without a host to feed on, it would never know what it would have to be about. Without other, great products around, Android will just succumb in the same degenerated mess that Windows has become over the years.

I don't think they really care about Android as an operating system, it's an revenue stream for their services and ads.

Indeed, thats exactly what it is.

And Apple has iOS as a vehicle for iTunes Store and App Store. What's the difference? Both companies use them to get money from their users.

There was no app store when the iPhone came out, Steve even opposed the idea of 3rd party apps until he changed his mind when he was convinced Apple could pull it off.

For music I don't the iPhone matters much. I think people buy more using iTunes on their computer than using their iPone. The iTunes Music Store and millions of iPods was enough to have a revenue stream.

Google saw mobile devices were starting to play a much larger role in people's lives. They bought Android, stole Java, wanted to imitate BlackBerry, then went for iOS, gave it all away for free to make sure a number of companies would produce handhelds with their OS and made sure they all were tied to Google services.

The strategy is working. Although the Android experience is nowhere as good as iOS it is selling in numbers and getting money and our personal information to Google. The core business of Google isn't Android, search, Google+ or Google Docs, it's putting ads on your screen and mining personal information to present ads you are more likely to click on.

That is why all their stuff is free. It's not where they make their money and by giving stuff away for free they undermine paid services of other companies where these services are their core business.

Edited 2011-10-27 21:11 UTC

The difference is Apple doesn't make their money from services, but from products.

Googles biggest revenue stream is ads. Their software efforts are mainly targeted to securing those revenue streams. One of the main reasons they launched Android was to ensure a revenue stream for mobile ads.

Apple's main revenue stream is devices. Services like the App Store, iTunes store and iCloud are merely ways to integrate these devices and make them work better so they become more appealing to customer.

So its a very different starting point for both companies and this difference has effects on all the products they release.

So to summarize : If you like a good product, get an iPhone. If you like good ads, get an Android.

Edited 2011-10-28 09:28 UTC

Apple's main revenue stream is exorbitantly priced devices, vendor lock-in, and forced upgrades. You're naive if you think Apple has your best interests at heart and not the almighty dollar. It's a corporation not your girlfriend.

So even if it is a "worthless me-too", developers blithely ignore that part. Yes, even those that code for iOS first and then port to Android.

Virus scanner?

There's enough valid criticism of Android, you know. No need to start lying.

Apple-approved too:
http://www.intego.com/virusbarrierios/

Then I absolutely must reconsider gifting my tech-challenged mom Lenovo's inexpensive dual-sim Android phone because it is so much more harder and inelegant than the iPhone, and I'll have to ward it from malware myself because I'm a carefree peruser of apps.

Yeah, Android is empirically inferior to iOS. Forget about the "what works for me" adage.

Links or it didn't happen.

Android has surpased Windows as a malware target. I'd love to see your source data on that one.

So..... You're actually arguing that Android is nothing like iOS?

The argument that Android is designed to be flexible doesn't really show in their ability to adapt to different form factors and use cases and prompt quick releases, either. Just look at how long it took them to crank out a version for tablets. And even when they were able to put out 3.0, they still were too embarrased to release the source code.

Without technical details you can't know.
Android was not meant for tablet/monitor form factor. This isn't same as high-res phone screen (where everything is upscaled and then looks approximately the same). Difference is, screen is bigger so UI elements, fonts fit better when proportionally smaller vs. screen than on the phone form factor.
ICS claims to solve that issue by automatically adapting application UI to tablet and phone mode. AFAICT, competition doesn't have similar scheme, either you writer an app for a tablet or a phone. How this new feature of Android will work out in real is another question though.

iOS is derived from Mac OS X in the same way Android is derived from Linux - in other words, they're not all that similar beyond the core operating system.

iOS is derived from Mac OS X in the same way Android is derived from Linux - in other words, they're not all that similar beyond the core operating system. "

I don't see how your statement disagrees with mine.

That said, my understanding is that Android contains little of GNU/Linux beyond the Linux kernel, with freshly-written services, device drivers, etc. on top of it -- much like WebOS. iOS, on the other hand, contains much more of OSX than XNU. I'm not sure of that, though; I'm inferring from what I've read.

So far as I know, that is not correct; my understanding was that iOS didn't share much more with desktop OS X than the kernel, pretty much like Android and Linux. I think Apple originally claimed that they where closely related, but I think they baked off of that pretty quickly. Which kinda makes sense, since I personally doubt that you really could design a userspace that'd work well both on smart phones and desktop systems; the things that make for a good userspace in each case are just too different.

Which on a totally different topic is why I'm extremely dubious of what I'm hearing about Windows 8; I just don't think the things that make for a good phone userspace make a good desktop userspace or vice-versa.

Edited 2011-10-28 22:43 UTC

Nope, thats wrong.

iOS is a streamlined version of the desktop OSX, the two are very similar up until the UI layer (Cocoa vs Cocoa Touch). Ofcourse, some APIs are device specific, but most of it is the same and in some cases unique APIs introduced to one platform also end up in the next version of ther other.

The big similarity makes it relatively easy to for example port iPad and iOS apps to the Mac and share code between Mac and iOS based projects.

iOS shares more with OSX than Android does with Linux.

For the latter, the situation is a bit more complex, but it boils down the fact that for Apple products, the main difference is the UI layer, where the APIs remain the same or are designed in the same way. For Android, the API's are mobile specific (The dalvik vm)