Google co-founder Larry Page has denied that Google entered the phone market after Apple and the iPhone, accusing Steve Jobs of “rewriting history” . . . “We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet enabled and have good browsers and all that because that did not exist in the marketplace,” Page said. “I think that characterization of us entering after is not really reasonable.”
Note how competing with Apple is “evil”… whereas everyting Apple is doing these days is all about optimizing the smooth user experience.
What I think is even more funny is the idiotic idea that coming up with a new idea by itself matters – what makes a product good isn’t whether the idea is new or original but whether it is executed well. Apple is now running scared because Google has jumped in on the game, and unlike Microsoft, realises that it isn’t the number of features or how new those features are but how well it is executed and delivered to the end user.
Apple has had it pretty damn easy over the last several years given how crappy the alternatives have been but with the launch of some real viable opposition to the iPhone on multiple carriers the days of iPhones dominance is ending. I for one never got into the iPhone game because it was more expensive than I need simply for a phone to text and make phone calls but more importantly I don’t like being told what I can and can not load onto my phone – hence if I ever went down the route of getting a ‘smart phone’ I’d opt for a something running Android 2.2.
Edited 2010-07-13 01:04 UTC
Yeah, Apple thought others would steer clear of the touch-based phone goldmine by filing a bunch of “using 2 fingers to touch phone” patents, but that doesn’t seem to be working well for them.
iPhone is currently being heavily commodized out of the market, and there is very little Apple can do about it. They are currently banking on the application base, but as with everything else, that changes very quickly. Games (and special cases like office suites) are the only mobile applications that are not trivial to write with current tools.
Just you wait, I’ll put money on it you’ll see Apple claim that their device is more secure because they have absolute control over how end users load applications on their device. The big question is whether the general public will be suckered into such FUD or whether good sales reps at stores and a sceptical public will undermine any FUD campaigns being started by Apple. I mean, it isn’t beneath them to make exaggerations about Mac OS X so it would be a far stretch to see them pull similar half truth advertising when it comest to the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.
I look around at the stores right now and the dominance Apple once had when it comes to an integrated out of the box solution regarding the Mac is now ending. I look at the latest laptops being put out by HP (the middle of the road priced ones) and they’re just as highly tweaked, tuned and integrated as the Mac does.
With those two issues I wonder whether eventually we’ll see a slowing down of Apple once the magic starts coming off the shining Apple as the competition improves their products.
Steve Jobs rewriting history?! You don’t say…
“Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products.”
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
He doesn’t even bother to mention KDE & KHTML by name. And khtml wasn’t small by any measure. NOKIA used khtml (and sent a really nice thank you later to the khtml mailing list) before Apple did. The first iterations of Safari were basically KHTML and a few patches. And then they didn’t exactly play by the books. They HAD TO release to source code, for khtml was (L)GPL – it wasn’t any act of charity, they basically had no choice. But they chose to release the source code in huge, unmergable code-bombs, and it took the KDE folks months of complaining and a lot of bad publicity until they finally opened up. And again, khtml was a complete rendering solution that supported the latest standards of the time – it wasn’t an amateur start-up “open source” (a misnomer btw) project like Jobs implies.
So it’s not the first time he puts a spin on things, and it won’t be the last.
Stop repeating the same lie over and over again – repeating something doesn’t make it automatically true. Apple were always going to release the patches but the problem is that they did all the development in the dark so when Safari was released there was a mountain of patches with awful hacks. The net result was KHTML developers were lumped with a massive amount of patches that were poorly documented and difficult to understand. The problem was caused by Apple’s paranoia about development and refusing to do it in the open – had they done it in the open with all the patches being submitted back as they developed it there would never have been the schism and webkit being launched.
With that being said, who gives a sh-t, there is now webkit, huge amounts of substantial work has been done by Apple and now it is one of the most well used engines out there; from Safari to Chrome to Epiphany.
You must have misread my comment. I never said Apple was not going to release the patches (they had to!). I said that they did it in the most inconvenient way (for the khtml developers). Which is basically what you said. But Apple certainly didn’t invent webkit as Jobs implies. Yes, they worked on it, and their work was substantial, but it still pales in comparison to writing a brand new html rendering engine from scratch. And yes, Apple’s contribution may have been significant for a time, but now again, it’s not completely developed by them is it? Google, Nokia and others contribute to webkit substantially. If Apple ceased any work on webkit, do you think it would disappear? What I’m saying is simply that their work is far less important than Jobs makes it out to be.
what he says is actually factually correct..
…and it’s obvious that Apple is trying to make things look better for them.
In this case, though, I agree with John Gruber ( http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/whats_fair ) when he says:
‘It’s not that Google changed course and got into the phone business, period. It’s that they got into the iPhone’s segment of the phone business. This is what Android looked like in 2007 http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/a-visual-tour-of-androids-ui/ . Here’s an actual hardware prototype from then http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/android-hardware-in-the-wild/google-andr… . It didn’t look anything like an iPhone, nor like anything Apple would ever be interested in making. It looked like a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone — hardware keyboards and non-touch screens.’
Apple didn’t invented the phone, didn’t invented the touch screen and didn’t invented multitouch interfase. They make them work nice together and make a good GUI.
This is an strategy to make the public think that everybody that makes a successful touch screen phone had copied Apple.
This (history rewritten) will became handy on the HTC trial or on any future attempt to sue Google. Steve Jobs has threaten in the past other companies with Apples patents.
look this case:
http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy…
Exactly. The point is not that Google, was copying Apple for going into the smartphone market. Obviously, Android was in development before iPhone was released. The point is that as soon as iPhone hit the market Google copied the features, and UI of the iPhone.
Also I’d like to say that I can’t believe all the big companies (Apple included) have no body to check patents and such before a product is released. That should be a part of the “research” in R&D.
Edited 2010-07-12 20:20 UTC
I think the problem here is the rules that we have.
1) Some people think that copying a feature that an application has should be forbidden and it is illegal. And that Software Patents are good.
Ex: My application was the first one to have the “File – Save as..” in the top menu. Since I invented that everyone is copying me and should pay me or get sue.
2) Some people think that copying the features but using your own source code (Copyright) to get the same results is legal.
Ex: I had seen that other OSes uses icons and mouse clicks to manage the user interface. I’m going to do the same thing for the command line OS I developed.
So, where does we draw the line between Software Patents and Absurdity?
I think we need to know in detail which are the features that Apple said that Google Android copied so we can have a more argumented discussion.
Ex:
– The fade image feature to turn to one application to other? That effect was used in TV for several years, so now only one company can use it because they had the idea to put it on the phone and looked good?
– Microsoft just patented the interface for a book reader on how to swap the pages. And the movement/gesture that their are patenting is the same one you do in real life with your finger over the book, only that this times is over a touch screen with a software.
I found that there is something very bad with the Software Patents system in the US.
Are we still on time to patent the “File – Save As…” and get money?
There’s an internet meme that says “if you’re citing j.Gruber you must have messed up something”. and this time is no exception. Gruber just write pro-Apple BS with no research and the more he praise Apple in a way that “sound correct” (but isn’t and never seems to be) the more he gets paid.
In any case, the 2007 screenies show a similar dock as the one in the iphone, similar lists etc. the only thing it doesn’t show as walls of icons.. but that’s not new either, its the oldest of them all.
Check this palm screenshot from .. ages ago:
http://tuxmobil.org/Mobile-Guide/images/pose.png
Notice how extremely similar it is to the iphone home screen ? it just doesn’t have colors!
Yes, Apple copy and always did. But they improve the copy and integrate things properly.. well excep the iPhone 4 failure
The palm on the photo was released in 1998.
http://www.metronetiq.com/archives/newton/apple_newton120.jpg
The newton had the wall of icons and the dock too, and it was released in 1993.
Not saying that Apple isn’t copying, or that copying is always a bad thing, but I think Apple had plenty of inspiration for the iPhone from within.
Umm, what?
But that’s what happened. It’s not characterisation at all, it’s history. Did Google enter the smartphone market before or after iPhone? Did Android, which was released WAY after iPhone, have a similar UI? It’s not that they put something out there a month after iPhone was released, and when they did release it the thing had morphed from looking and feeling like a Blackberry – which was the hot thing when they started their development – into a clone of the iPhone, which was the new hot thing.
Is there anything wrong with this? Meh, not really, it’s competition. But don’t try to make Google out as an innocent party who’s simply misunderstood here, they certainly did release their product with every intention of capitalising on the momentum of, and then killing off the iPhone. They made it look as much as an iPhone as they could to give themselves the best chance of doing that.
There’s certainly some spin being put on this one, and it’s not from Apple’s side of the fence…
De facto, Google entered the samartphone market way before we even thought of Apple as a samartphone company. Google went into smartphone OS development in 2005.
Oh, you mean the icons? That was really original, don’t you think? My 5 year old Nokia dumbphone has the same basic UI as the iPhone when it was released, except it’s not touch sensitive. But yeah, Android was released only several months after the iPhone with icons and ore touch orientation.
Edited 2010-07-13 01:50 UTC
You’re missing the point.
Did Android look like the iPhone OS when it was first announced? NO! It looked like a traditional phone OS, more like Blackberry.
Did Android become remarkably similar to the iPhone OS by the time the first devices made it to market (over a year after the original 2G – around the time of the 3G IIRC)? YES! But it’s more than that, because even AFTER that point, Android development between 1.6 – 2.1 has converged even MORE towards the iOS.
Honestly, I don’t see the issue with the convergence – a good interface is a good interface, and Google certainly weren’t the first iPhone interface “copyist”. The iPhone OS is fairly similar in a way to previous OS interfaces (PalmOS and QTopia come to mind.)
And you apparently concentrated on the first part of my original comment.
You say it like it was a bad thing ;-).
Fair point, but then equally Apple should other companies for the ideas they “stole”:
* Icons (this is as old as GUIs themselves and invented by Xerox)
* Touch / multi-touch screen interfaces (again, old technology)
* gestures (even web browsers had gestures long before the iPhone was released)
* app store (Linux software repositories)
* digital compass (the G1 had this first)
* gaming orientated (Nokia released a games console phone long before the iPhone and XDAs could already play games like Tomb Raider)
* productivity (MS Pocket Office)
* “an app for everything” (PocketPC already had this and the vast majority of iPhone apps are really just front ends for cloud services)
I get sick and tired of hearing the same old tired arguments that Apple “invented” x, y and z when the reality is Apple steal ideas and technology just as much as any other IT giant that wants to stay ahead in the game.
The only thing Apple deserve credit for is executing other peoples ideas better than they did.
But that wouldn’t change anything, Apple products aficionados would still continue to buy ( As … cough .. Microsoft ones ).
Do Google really need to whine about it ? on a PR point of view it doesn’t change anything, Job’s outing still look to me like a “chair throwing”. And well they did an ad with a “1984” background, didn’t they ? At least they (Apple) are honest about it.
Google trying to whine just renew interest in that *very* old news,and makes them look like whiner. They should strike more subtly where it hurt.
The summary here in osnews makes it look like whining, but when you read the article you’ll see that they are striking subtly where it hurts.
It’s interesting to see the rabid anti-Apple fanboyism with their own revisionist history. “Apple didn’t invent this”, “Apple didn’t invent that”. Technically no, they didn’t invent a lot of things.
What they did is change the smartphone market overnight. There were smartphones before the iPhone, and there are smartphones after the iPhone. And they look very different. A lot of the aspects of the iPhone platform existed before the release of the iPhone, sure, but Apple put it together in a new way that’s been widely adopted all over. Just like Google didn’t invent search (nor were they the first), Microsoft didn’t invent Office Apps (but they still dominate the desktop market), and Nokia didn’t invent cell phones.
Sure, Google was working on a smartphone for a while, but it was a smartphone to compete with RIM and Windows Mobile, and it shows: http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/a-visual-tour-of-androids-ui/
The UI now looks dramatically different, and that’s a good thing.
Everyone has changed their strategy to adopt the same model as the iPhone. Microsoft even dumped its entire platform and started over, because they finally realized people don’t want windows with a stylus on their phone (and a skin UI doesn’t cut it). With the exception of Nokia, as their strategy seems to be centered on “but we’re Nokia”.
The iPhone was the epoch that uprooted smartphones out of the Windows Mobile doldrums. And the entire market (Android, WebOS, Windows Mobile 7) is better for it.
More vendors in the market is great. Hating a vendor isn’t even all that bad, but like it or not, Apple was the catalyst.
Edited 2010-07-13 16:48 UTC
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphone
LG Electronics claimed the iPhone’s design was copied from the LG Prada. Woo-Young Kwak, head of LG Mobile Handset R&D Center, said at a press conference, “We consider that Apple copied Prada phone after the design was unveiled when it was presented in the iF Design Award and won the prize in September 2006.â€[167]