Apple Exec Says Samsung Copied iPhone and Simply 'Put a Bigger Screen Around It' (macrumors.com) 129
In a new documentary about the evolution of the iPhone, Apple's marketing chief Greg Joswiak was seen calling Samsung "annoying" and accusing them of poorly copying Apple's technology. "They were annoying," said Joswiak. "And they were annoying because, as you know, they ripped off our technology. They took the innovations that we had created and created a poor copy of it, and just put a bigger screen around it. So, yeah, we were none too pleased." MacRumors reports: Samsung launched the Galaxy S4 with a 5-inch display in early 2013, at a time when the iPhone 5 had a 4-inch display. Apple did eventually release its first larger smartphones with the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus in 2014, and the devices were met with strong demand and went on to be among the best-selling iPhone models ever.
Apple sued Samsung in 2011 for patent infringement, alleging that Samsung copied the iPhone's design with its own Galaxy line of smartphones. Apple was initially awarded around $1 billion in damages, but the amount was lowered in a subsequent retrial. In 2018, Apple finally settled with Samsung and reiterated the following statement: "We believe deeply in the value of design, and our teams work tirelessly to create innovative products that delight our customers. This case has always been about more than money. Apple ignited the smartphone revolution with iPhone and it is a fact that Samsung blatantly copied our design. It is important that we continue to protect the hard work and innovation of so many people at Apple. We're grateful to the jury for their service and pleased they agree that Samsung should pay for copying our products." The full documentary can be watched on The Wall Street Journal's website.
Apple sued Samsung in 2011 for patent infringement, alleging that Samsung copied the iPhone's design with its own Galaxy line of smartphones. Apple was initially awarded around $1 billion in damages, but the amount was lowered in a subsequent retrial. In 2018, Apple finally settled with Samsung and reiterated the following statement: "We believe deeply in the value of design, and our teams work tirelessly to create innovative products that delight our customers. This case has always been about more than money. Apple ignited the smartphone revolution with iPhone and it is a fact that Samsung blatantly copied our design. It is important that we continue to protect the hard work and innovation of so many people at Apple. We're grateful to the jury for their service and pleased they agree that Samsung should pay for copying our products." The full documentary can be watched on The Wall Street Journal's website.
Small Screens (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Apple never copied an idea before. Maybe Apple shouldn't have made phones with such fucking small screens? Just a thought.
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To me there's no serious innovative design on phones anymore.
Come back when the phone can induce the display directly to the optical nerve.
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What you call a notch, is what others may call additional screen real-estate, that would otherwise be just a black bevel.
I am sorry, little quarks on cellphones really don't get me that excited anymore. Unless you are into photography, there isn't any really good reason to get a new smartphone. Where I think they should be called Smart Camera's with a Cell phone feature.
Re:Small Screens (Score:5, Informative)
Specifically the design aspects that Apple complained about - rounded rectangle, bezeled, phone with large square touch screen and minimal buttons were first put out in the LG Prada phone [androidauthority.com] and had in turn been copied from elsewhere. Copying is normal, everyone does it and most improvement comes from evolutionary improvement between competitors trying to match each other. The things that made the Prada a broken phone (lack of on-screen keyboard) were things that already existed in other systems which apple copied and then Samsung part copied from them. Apple wants special privileges for their specific set of design elements just because the iPhone arrived at the moment that things clicked sufficiently for consumers to actually start buying. Sure, they put in a bunch of effort to get things right but LG put in effort too. We aren't handing out participation prizes.
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Specifically the design aspects that Apple complained about - rounded rectangle, bezeled, phone with large square touch screen and minimal buttons were first put out in the LG Prada phone [androidauthority.com] and had in turn been copied from elsewhere. Copying is normal, everyone does it and most improvement comes from evolutionary improvement between competitors trying to match each other. The things that made the Prada a broken phone (lack of on-screen keyboard) were things that already existed in other systems which apple copied and then Samsung part copied from them. Apple wants special privileges for their specific set of design elements just because the iPhone arrived at the moment that things clicked sufficiently for consumers to actually start buying. Sure, they put in a bunch of effort to get things right but LG put in effort too. We aren't handing out participation prizes.
This is why a lot of design elements need to be treated as generic, like rounded corners, square buttons, et al.
Imagine if someone patented the milk bottle (either US style glass ones or UK style plastic ones)... Everyone would either have to pay royalties or go to the expense of developing their own bottle shapes unique enough not to infringe it which would be pretty hard if the patent is "a square or cylindrical container, taller than it is wider or thicker narrowing to a spout at the top used to hold
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The LG Prada phone didn't have a touchscreen and thus did not meet all the aspects of the design.
What? [androidauthority.com]
So... you were saying?
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First line of the article, "There’s no question that the iPhone radically changed the smartphone industry. Decades from now, there will be two eras of mobile technology: pre-iPhone and post-iPhone."
Parent was incorrect that the Prada didn't have a touchscreen. It did. They just didn't use it to it's best advantage. Heck, they barely used it at all. No multi-touch. No software keyboard. (I mean, T9?) A "mobile" browser instead of full HTML support. I could go on, but just read your own article.
Last lin
Re: Small Screens (Score:4, Informative)
The LG Prada was a glorified feature phone that died in obscurity and no one cared about or copied. It had a resistive touchscreen and was as trashy as every other feature phone back then.
Yes and no. It was a glorified feature phone with no keyboard, with a touch screen and in a modern form factor. From that to the iphone or Android style of design there's a simple "apply the basic principles of UX", non innovative step where any new ideas could even have been done by copying previous existing systems.
Re: Small Screens (Score:4, Insightful)
"apply the basic principles of UX"
Pfft. Hardly. Apple did what no other phone manufacturers were doing, and by a lot. Example:
1. They removed the battery case to maximize the battery life for a phone that had significantly better electronics.
They were ridiculed for that decision.
2. They bought and leveraged multi-touch, and with it, developed a whole new touch-ui experience that was far beyond bitmap / pin-pointer tech. This allowed them to ship a phone with no keyboard.
They were ridiculed for that decision.
3. They knew everyone would want more out of a phone. They charged a lot for it and spend a ton more on it, with metal and glass.
They were ridiculed for that decision.
They made a lot of decisions with regards to that phone that no one else was doing. Today, their decisions are echoed throughout the industry. Most phones dont have swappable batteries. Most phones use the same touch-ui type elements with rubber banding, palm rejection, etc... Most phones cost more than the original iPhone. Most have insanely powerful CPUs compared to their non-smart competitors. But, thats all besides the point.
Apple isn't griping about the android ecosystem anymore. They are griping about Samsung which famously put together a 130+ page document on how to better copy the phone, down to what color the photo should be on the icon of the photos app, and where on the screen the elements should be when on a call. They are right. Samsung phones became indistinguishable from iPhones when held at a slight distance. Remember the famous notch everyone said was stupid? Hah. That is not obvious, nor was it typical. Apple made that, and everyone does what they do: copy Apple.
Re: Small Screens (Score:4, Interesting)
But does simple materials choices qualify as "innovation"?
+
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If Apple owned the patents for capacitive touch screens, then they could go at it in court, but that's not what they were whining about. They were complaining because Samsung's phone was a rectangle with round metal edges and a button at the bottom, something that is highly debatable can be protected under IP law.
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1. They removed the battery case to maximize the battery life for a phone that had significantly better electronics.
They were ridiculed for that decision.
Don't confuse planned obsolescence with innovation, because the former is exactly what it is. Yes, you can potentially make the phone thinner, however that obviously wasn't Apple's reasoning for it as there were already thinner phones with removable batteries, larger displays, lighter weight, and higher capacity batteries.
Remember the famous notch everyone said was stupid? Hah.
It is stupid. Actually Apple wasn't the first with it either, that would be Sharp. They weren't second with it either, that would be Essential. And unlike the Apple design, both of those h
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It was a glorified feature phone with no keyboard, with a touch screen and in a modern form factor.
And what was the first iPhone? Certainly nothing smart. It had a few pre-loaded apps, no different to my feature phone. It had an Edge connection, no different to my feature phone. My feature phone on the other hand had more apps available on account of running Java, and had the ability to do video calling half a decade before Apple "invented" facetime.
You clearly never owned the first gen iPhone. It was a feature phone with a touch screen. That is all. It would be several years before it actually become sm
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If you say so. Then again, I owned the first generation iPhone, and all of the features like messaging and music and even little touches like call conferencing wear light-years past those on my previous "feature" phone.
I swear there was some secret school that interface designers for feature phones and digital cameras were forced to attend in order to rob them of any "intuitive" usability traits they might ever have had...
Re: Small Screens (Score:4, Interesting)
The LG Prada was a glorified feature phone
By today's standards, so was the iPhone. It had no app store: it came preloaded with a fixed set of features.
It had a resistive touchscreen
It was capactive. It was in fact the first phone launched with one of those.
and was as trashy as every other feature phone back then.
So? LG still beat Apple to the punch on a lot of things apple fanbois and Apple claim to have invented.
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Don't get me wrong - the original iPhone was a unique (at the time) packaging of a specific set of features that nobody had combined before. it was nicely executed. That doesn't mean they own exclusive rights to package those features together indefinitely. Besides, the main selling point of the first generation iPhone was that it supported iTunes - which was the direction feature phones were evolving in at the time.
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Yeah. Apple did an excellent job of making a product from those features. Tech people often over-value the tech and undervalue the dressing, but the latter makes a product just as much as the former. And that stuff is really hard to get right as well. Since it's not appreciated, people instead assume Apple invented the tech otherwise in their minds they didn't do anything worthwhile.
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Right you are. Whether that translates into a monopoly over similar implementations is a whole other question, though.
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And according to that link, Prada's phone came out all of one month before the iPhone. So, unless Apple had spies within Prada sending them the designs the whole time, it's almost a certianty that Apple developed the iPhone independently with no influence from Prada. Not even Steve Jobs could have willed a full re-engineering of the design and re-tooling of the factories on one month notice if the iPhone had *not* already had the design it launched with. Samsung OTOH launched their Galaxy line in 2009, t
Re: Small Screens (Score:5, Insightful)
You are forgetting the Compaq iPaq. It was fullscreen, smartphone size, touch (stylus), had apps, ran Windows Mobile and even supported wifi, 8 years before the iPhone. The iPhone was just a small step in the evolution of personal computing, there was nothing revolutionary about it besides all the media hype.
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You are forgetting the Compaq iPaq. It was fullscreen, smartphone size, touch (stylus), had apps, ran Windows Mobile and even supported wifi, 8 years before the iPhone. The iPhone was just a small step in the evolution of personal computing, there was nothing revolutionary about it besides all the media hype.
Uhhhh ... no. I had one of those things. I also had an early iPhone. The iPhone represented an upgrade from the iPaq on a similar level that Korean war jet fighters were from WWII prop fighters. If it makes you feel any better the early Android phones (the Android iPhone clones, not the original Android Blackberry killer) represented a similar upgrade from the iPaq. There literally is no comparisons between the iPaq and early iPhones and Android devices. The latter two were light-years ahead of and better
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Depends what software you ran on the iPaq.
https://www.xorl.org/people/nj... [xorl.org]
https://www.xorl.org/people/kr... [xorl.org]
I mean it's not the iPaq per-se, AT&T research made huge strides in the modern concept of a smartphone and they could run the software on an iPaq for an untethered experience.
Not that it matters, it just pisses me off that Apple blatantly copy stuff then act pissy about how they invented everything first and the fanbois parrot that shit relentlessly.
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Yeah. It was just like the iPaq. I mean, they ditched the stylus and the extra buttons and implemented direct manipulation and multi-touch and the battery lasted longer than two hours but... yeah.
You're right. It was obvious that phones would have screens.
Seriously. Take a look at all of most common "smartphone" designs prior to 2007. And then look at all of them after 2007.
iPhone was the inflection point.
Re:Small Screens (Score:5, Informative)
Looking in retrospect, sure.
But at the time, when the iphone came out, it was pretty much the biggest screen out there.
Of course Apple where tardy getting bigger screens because Steve Jobs was adamant that the thumb rule must apply (If you can hold the phone in your palm, you must be able to wrap your thumb around the full width of the screen for ergonomics. It actually make a lot of sense, but ultimately the customer had a clear preference for bigger screens especially for folks like me with trashy eyesight).
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ultimately the customer had a clear preference for bigger screens especially for folks like me with trashy eyesight).
I think that the younger people (under 40 years of age) at Apple never considered that everyone, including much older people would want to buy a smartphone with a screen-only interface, so they thought that a small display (sub-10cm) was fine. Myself I use a Samsung phone with a 14cm diagonal display and I still have to squint or take my glasses off to read stuff on it sometimes because my ey
Re: Small Screens (Score:3)
What I think is interesting is that he doesn't seem to acknowledge how much they ripped off Android.
Apple actually had that Xerox mentality. Steve Jobs said nobody wanted larger screens or multitasking. If somebody sent you a text, it just stopped whatever the hell you were doing, tough shit.
What does he have to say about ripping off the notification shade from Android to fix that? Google has the patent for it, after all, but unlike Apple they typically don't sue anybody for patent infringement.
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Jobs-Speak: "Nobody wants."
English: `We have badly misread the market...
It's all been done (Score:4, Insightful)
Truly novel inventions are incredibly rare, basically everything is built upon prior work in one way or another.
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The "black slate, all screen" look was done by Samsung a few years before the iPhone in the form of a digital photo frame. LG did the first all-touch phone, which had slide-to-unlock that Apple later tried to sue Samsung for "copying".
Many of Apple's most iconic designs are clearly just ripped off from Braun. There was a book of Braun designs that someone at Apple must have owned because it had photos of all the things they copied.
https://www.cultofmac.com/1887... [cultofmac.com]
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The "black slate, all screen" look was done by Samsung a few years before the iPhone in the form of a digital photo frame. LG did the first all-touch phone,
I think that honour probably goes to IBM for a spirited attempt in 1994:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's not quite a slate due to tech limitations for speakers at the time, but it's as close as you could get with 1994 era tech. Unlike the LG prada, it even had an on-screen qwerty keyboard instead of T9 which didn't exist then anyway.
Oh also, unlike
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Thanks, that IBM one is new to me. Interesting device, but probably way ahead of its time. Well, there were a lot of pocket computers in Japan, and I think Tandy re-badged some Sharp ones for the US market. Clearly there was a niche, but I guess being IBM it was tied to IBM services and of little interest to tech enthusiasts.
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but I guess being IBM it was tied to IBM services and of little interest to tech enthusiasts.
Not clear that it was: it ran a DOS clone and could do email at a glorious 2400 baud and fax apparently (doesn't sound like it needed IBM services), and had standard peripherals (PCMCIA, RS232 and a standard modem) and so on. It looks like it was just a bit ahead its time, really.
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Interesting, I will have to look for some demonstration videos. If it was running IBM DOS then it was probably decently compatible, except that the screen looks like a weird resolution.
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It had a weirdy DOS apparently, still in principle compatible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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This. The iPhone was just one of these with newer hardware, a better screen and shitty software:
http://www.pencomputing.com/pa... [pencomputing.com]
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my parents 1980's Armada Radar Range microwave oven had capacitive touch(on a silkscreen sheet of glass), its not exactly a new idea
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Not pinch-to-zoom, but actual direct manipulation with immediate response.
Go back and watch the crowd react the first time Steve does slide-to-unlock, and then again when he flicks his finger to scroll a list in the music app.
No click wheels. No joystick or navigation buttons. Just pure direct manipulation magic.
Live by the sword die by the sword (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey Apple Xerox PARC is calling
https://appleinsider.com/artic... [appleinsider.com]
It really takes nerve for an Apple exec to whine about being copied.
Er... (Score:5, Informative)
The article you posted says that Xerox invited Apple to mass-market their GUI. Apple didn't invite Samsung to copy their phone.
Xerox later sued Apple for "misrepresenting their copyright" and lost.
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The point is Apple makes money off other people's ideas then refuses to contribute anything back while thinking that they should have an eternal monopoly on ideas like touchscreen phones and multi-touch. Even if they did invent a great touchscreen GUI it is ridiculous that they expect a monopoly over it when it is something others would have eventually gotten to within a decade or two maximum. This is ignoring the fact that the LG Prada came out months before the iPhone.
Re:Er... (Score:5, Informative)
And by the way, they copied so many things from Nokia and myOrigo (a Finnish touchscreen phone maker --which had a swipe gesture UI back in 2003). Even their browser window switcher is a slavish copy of Nokia's. Apple did innovate in that they made a usable touchscreen keyboard, (relatively) large display, and finger swipe gestures, pinch to zoom (most of which had already been invented by others for non-phone UIs). They downplay all the previous cell phone inventions the iPhone was built on.
References:
myorigo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
nokia: https://maddox.xmission.com/c.... [xmission.com]
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Well Apple may have had better lawyers but there is no way you can look at the smalltalk system from PARC and not see the Lisa and original Mac were little better than copies.
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Except for the opportunity to poke around, Apple gave Xerox about $1M in options - about 100,000 shares. Xerox would later cash it in for about $16M.
Apple didn't take anything - they paid for their visit to Xerox. Xerox cashed in their shares as soon as they could because they weren't investors, but they still made a good chunk of money from it.
In fact, all they got from Xerox
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Actually no. Apple lost because Microsoft in that Microsoft kind of way bluffed Apple with stopping all office development on the Mac. Jobs caved and the rest was history.
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You realize that in return for that visit Apple gave Xerox the opportunity to buy 100,000 shares of pre-IPO stock for $1 million.
Xerox wasn't given what amounted to $16 million for a visit the cafeteria, they knew what they were doing, and made a deal.
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That's nice, I wish I could pay my mortgage by giving pre IPO shares in me to the bank.
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Do you even realize the story we're commenting on is about an Apple employee bitching about how Samsung "copied" them 15 years ago?
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Yes.
Boo hoo! (Score:2)
Let's see - they had the gall to patent a rectangle with curved corners, they turned a blind eye to the suicide-inducing hell experienced by employees of their contract manufacturers, and they're one of the biggest, most powerful companies in the world. So excuse me if I find it really difficult to summon a tear for poor Apple and their butt-hurt over Samsung imitating their precious designs.
Anybody at Apple who feels hard-done-by on behalf of their sacred company needs a fucking enormous reality check.
Rounded corners ... (Score:2)
A design patent on fucking rounded corners.
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Not only that but in the design patent for rounded corners they cite the HP/Compaq TC1100 which is... a near featureless slab with rounded corners.
BS (Score:3)
They didn't copy any of Apple's crappy UI. They made their own crappy UI.
Apple Copied Innovator's Solution (Score:3)
The case study in The Innovator's Solution [amzn.to] was all the problems with the Blackberry business model. They described the iPhone ecosystem very closely and Steve Jobs just ripped that off* and implemented it.
Apple isn't worth Trillions today because of hardware build quality or rounded corners - it's the business model.
Who remembers being at WWDC and hearing that apps are lame and HTML/JS/CSS were the future? That was a lie because iPhone wasn't ready. Read the book to learn more.
* Great Artists Steal
Re: Apple Copied Innovator's Solution (Score:2)
The business model they got from Google.
Re:Apple Copied Innovator's Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Who remembers being at WWDC and hearing that apps are lame and HTML/JS/CSS were the future?
I think most of us do. That's the one part they got right. It's a shame they technology just wasn't quite ready for that vision in 2008. It's not like it wasn't close though. You could do some impressive stuff on even the cheapest of the FireFoxOS phones. WebOS before that was incredibly slick, even on the garbage hardware that was the Palm Pre. Modern UIs still look primitive in comparison.
Also, it might not have been a lie initially. Apple even pushed for important new standards to web that made it more viable as an application platform. Remember that BlackBerry was a juggernaut and they were in no way guaranteed success in that market. RIM actually outsold Apple into 2013, years after they were declared "dead" by the tech press. Open standards were a good thing for Apple. They're a good thing for any underdog.
Apple just that they realized they could make a shit ton of money being the exclusive distributor of apps for their platform. They took that gamble and it paid off. Unfortunately, developers didn't realize that they were only hurting themselves by embracing the proprietary over the open. That 30% cut and impossible fight for visibility in a crowded marketplace has to sting knowing what could have been.
I should point out that it's not web technology that I'm sad about losing here. It's the idea of a standard platform that developers can use to make apps that are platform independent. I expect we'd have seen a lot more competition in the mobile OS marketplace, and that's good for everybody. There's a reason that Apple refuses to allow other browsers on the platform, and why they're actively holding back the web [wccftech.com]. PWAs, crippled as they are, are a threat that they take very seriously.
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I guess you missed this: Apple is Holding the Web Back with ‘Uniquely Underpowered’ iOS Browsers [wccftech.com].
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Again, Apple is not holding anything back.
I very strongly disagree. If Chrome didn't support some new standard, then that standard might as well not exist. Developers simply can't ignore Chrome users as they make up too large a segment of the market. They could tell them to use FireFox, but users will blame the developers, not the browser. "Why can't they make it work in Chrome?" they'll ask. "My nephew, who is good with the cyber, says it's the best!"
They would absolutely be 'holding back the web', no matter how involved they are in the standard
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Apple actually thought about your scenario and they just don't care.
As I've explained, they care are great deal. That's why they're holding back the web.
You have it all wrong. Apple is not holding the Web back. Apple is just holding you back from making money without paying them a cent.
Sigh... As I've explained, that is the reason that they're "holding back the web". Open standards are a threat to them and their rent-seeking business model.
You say that Safari's engine is the only one "holding back the Web" ...
I never said that Safari was the "only one". That's something you came up with all by yourself. They are not the only problem, but they are, by far, the most significant.
The problems with Firefox, as far as standards are concerned, are mostly caused by Chrome abusin
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Apple limits iOS Safari support of open standards to favor its App Store.
Obviously.
Developers wanting to target Apple's users using iPhones need to comply with Apple's rules.
Nonsense. Do you also think Apple should get to dictate what websites their users are allowed to visit? How about what music they're allowed to listen to or books they're allowed to read?
Are they holding back the Web in iOS platform? No.
Not just on their platform, their refusal to implement standards is holding back the web everywhere. I've given you more than enough to support that claim. You're going to need to offer more than just flat contradiction.
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Who remembers being at WWDC and hearing that apps are lame and HTML/JS/CSS were the future? That was a lie because iPhone wasn't ready.
There was some speculation that it might have been because the APIs weren't polished enough, but that theory has always seemed implausible to me. After all, why not just say, "We expect to have a public API for writing apps in the future, and we will make it available as soon as we are confident that it is polished enough to guarantee binary compatibility going forwards"? Pretty much every developer would have understood that explanation, and would have been okay with it.
But no, as I understand it, it was
No no!! They copied my idea from slashdot (Score:2)
Reference: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
See above. My point is that myself, and others, on slashdot, had been asking why the fuck there was no large touchscreen phone for years before the iPhone came out.
Still I do like to take faux-credit for giving Steve Jobs the idea .. for troll purposes if these idiots keep suing each other.
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Don't overlook fashion. Old BlackBerry phones were large enough that my friends made fun of my 7290. (They were also somewhat unimpressed with the fact that I had access to much of the web in my pocket. How times have changed.)
There was even a movie, Zoolander?, that poked fun at the rapidly shrinking size of cellphones. The gag was the protagonist making a call on an impractically small cellphone. While not nearly that tiny, my Sony J300a was ridiculously small compared to every other phone I've owned,
So just release a better product then (Score:2)
Oblig Steve Jobs (Score:4)
Apple champions unoriginality (Score:3)
IPhone didn't even have an app store before Android showed Apple how to do it. Apple also stole tethering from Android. And widgets. Oh, and the app drawer they stole from Android too. Notification badges. The keyboard.
Almost everything that's not an Apple subscription service was designed by the Android team.
Apple, step up your game and design something besides a bevel.
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You forget that Android was a straight-up BlackBerry clone, and not a terribly good one. RIM pioneered most of that stuff.
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IPhone didn't even have an app store before Android showed Apple how to do it.
Heck cydia implemented an app store on jailbroken iPhones before Apple managed to come around to the idea of an app store. Cydia of course didn't claim they invented it either since they used APT which dates from 1998.
Re: Apple champions unoriginality (Score:2)
Well, you missed the point, didn't you...
Copied BSD with a better interface (Score:3)
Copied BSD with a better interface, says the people from the bsd project.
There, anyone can say that.
What do we call this? (Score:3)
...a new documentary about the evolution of the iPhone...
The full documentary can be watched on The Wall Street Journal's website.
A commercial. Or an advertisement if you'd rather.
Cognitive dissonance (Score:3)
"Apple's marketing chief Greg Joswiak [complained], "They took the innovations that we had created..."
"Marketing"? "Created"?
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Marketing guys live on a different planet from the rest of us. They'd sell out their grandmothers if there was a buck involved and they needed it. I've worked in the Auto Dealer/Sales CRM business for a while as a contractor, trust me they're sleezyAF.
I knew it! (Score:2)
Ever since Apple invented the wheel and rounded corners everyone has been copying them.
It's heartbreaking that Apple's genius has been mercilessly plagiarised and the resulting theft has left them penniless.
Please if you see an Apple employee give them a hug. They were so wronged.
Lunacy. (Score:4, Interesting)
The only distinguishing featured of the Apple iPhone is the OS, which Samsung can't copy and reproduce. Google decides the features and future of Android.
The other benefit of Apple is hardware. Apple has better battery life. In my opinion little else. Maybe the APU. That's neither here nor there, as most use specific known suppliers.
It has a walled garden. Android doesn't have that. Thank goodness for that.
If they can increase their screen size and work to improve their battery lfe they've literally been competing.
Well yeah (Score:2)
So yeah a little hypocrisy here.
Apple is guilty (Score:3)
For spreading stupid design choices to others. Now there is no phone I would even consider buying. Those I have will be buried with me.
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I totally agree. Over the years there have been a series of decisions to remove useful and common sense features that all phones used to have as standard. These decisions are clearly intended to benefit the phone makers at the cost the interest of the actual owners, and even the environment.
In my opinion, the most serious are:
eliminating user-replaceable batteries, (effectively forcing everyone to have to buy a whole new phone every 3 years).
Eliminating the 3.5mm jack, effectively froving people to have to
Hilarious (Score:4, Insightful)
Like Apple never copied a feature?
Bitch, please. It's like Milli Vanilli complaining that other performers lip-sync.
Not even close.. (Score:2)
It lacks the ability of not allowing you to sideload applications or using sane ways to transfer files.
The elderly relative test... (Score:2)
I know this is verging on a non-sequitor, but the first smart phone I tried to give my mother was a Samsung android phone... might have been an S? I don't quite recall. It was in 2011 or thereabouts. About six month later, I gave her an ipad, and shortly thereafter an iPhone. Immediate success. To this day she happily uses newer versions of both.
Was the Samsung device a "poorer copy"? Regardless of whether Apple, too, is a copycat, I can't argue against this. At the time, it was a shittier experience across
And Google copied iOS (Score:2)
Android is a copy of iOS, arguably a poor copy as well. Interestingly, the Mac user-experience is a copy of Xerox/PARC's concepts but done better. Windows is a copy of the Mac but done way worse. Apple didn't invent the MP3 player but everybody wanted an iPod and everything else was crap. Phones had some "smarts" but the iPhone changed everything and killed the Blackberry. SpaceX didn't invent rocketry or satellite delivery but they're kicking ass while everyone else is a publicity stunt. Point being
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Duh (Score:3)
Grab your baseball bat boys (Score:2)
I found a dead horse!
Isaac Newton (Score:2)
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of globals. -- Isaac Newton
Re:Apple Can Never Complain (Score:5, Informative)
The company which survived solely because they ripped off Xerox PARC has no right to ever complain about someone stealing their tech.
Can't rip off what's freely given away. PARC did what they did because the fossils at Xerox went full-retard on "We make COPIERS!" and completely ignored what was happening at PARC. Nearly cost them the entire company some time later.
You'd benefit from reading "Fumbling the Future."
Re:Apple Can Never Complain (Score:4, Interesting)
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Xerox actual invested in Apple as trade. The full retard, we are a copier company, is accurate. I worked there from 78 to 86. Rochester got stupid in the â80s. Another example is Kodak with digital cameras. They invented it as well.
QFT. Wonder why you got modded down.
Lots of "going stupid" and "goign full-retard" going on now, too. I remember Kodak. Bent over Dektol, tilting the tray over and over. RC Polycontrast III paper. The way stop bath smells of vinegar. Spooling a roll of t-max onto the tank. All gone, now, replaced by one phone.
It's mind-blowing how many people in this place.. full of "techies" and "nerds" don't know what happened at PARC and why.
PARC gave the shit away for free, all of it, GUI, mouse, ethernet, laser
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Xerox's innability to keep its inventions inhouse was astonishing.
They invented the modern GUI, and Apple and MS got rich as shit off it.
They invented Postscript, and then their main guy left and took it with him to Adobe.
They invented the laser printer, and then HP and Cannon ate their lunch. (And in fact Apple did too, ALMOST also eating Adobes lunch, if not for the fact Warnock was savy enough to coerce a lucrative licensing deal out of Jobs for postscript in Apple Laserwriter printers.)
But they still ma
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The mouse came from Doug Englebart at SRI, and the GUI from Ivan Sutherland at MIT.
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They also seem to forget the reason that the iPhone 5 had a 4-inch display was that Samsung increased their screen sizes first with the original Galaxy S. Before then, the iPhone's were stuck with tiny 3.5" screens that users hated.
This is actually a case of Apple playing catchup with their competitors.
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Samsung and Android phones in general are matching or outpacing Apple's iPhones. Samsung in the last quarter shipped almost 69m phones so yeah leave it to an Apple exec to whine. "They tuk our jerbs!" [youtube.com]