Google's multitouch dilemma | Hacker News Reader

Google's multitouch dilemma

engadget.com

14 pointsblasdel7 comments

While there may be some intercorporate chicanery going on, I think that the "blame Andy Rubin" explanation makes the most sense.

The original Sidekick team designed Android originally before being bought by Google, and their intensely odd ideas show up all over the place in the product:

  * It makes really poor use of the Linux kernel, basically using it as a bootloader,
    hardcoding random shit, implementing its own power management by exposing a few
    low-level hardware-specific bits directly to their JVM
  
  * Bizarro JIT-less register-based alt-JVM. Aren't native apps supposed to be faster
    than web apps? WTF did they spend effort writing V8 when Squirrelfish was doing
    great, and then not bother about performance for the part that makes phone calls?
    
  * Odd decomposed 'Activity' model for applications
  
  * No house style or easy defaults for basic shit like buttons and forms
  
  * Huge holes in the API, sound is fucked to the point where you can't do decent
    games, much less the kind of musical apps you see on the iPhone
  
  * Hidden functionality via long-touches and double-clicks everywhere
  
  * 5 hardware buttons in different orders on random phones
    with different functionality in every app (back is completely fucked!)

Multitouch gestures in the default apps are just one of the lesser oddities.

Squirrelfish wasn't anywhere near ready when they started.

The button arrangement is likely something they don't have control over. If you're going to release an open-source phone platform, you're not going to sign up many OEMs to use it if you dictate the details of where the buttons go. For better or worse, that's the kind of thing that the marketing people at the OEMs want to f*#& with.

I don't think it's a patent issue. Too many other companies are using multi-touch in their products and it's a weak patent to start off with. I would guess that Eric Schmidt's involvement as a member of Apple's boar of directors and Google's involvement providing services for the iPhone starting in 2007, presumably as one of the first outside parties to see it, are the real problem here. Google must have realized how far ahead Apple was. They looked at the other companies in that space and figured Apple was a company they were ideologically compatible with. They were happy to offer search/maps on a product they could see was going to be a game changer. As a result they may have signed some non-competes to get on the iPhone early, or at least fear that Eric Schmidt's past involvement at Apple is a major legal risk and are playing it safe. It is a bit evil to be on the board of directors of one company, have a partnership with them, and turn around and use all the same technologies in your own product a year later. I imagine there are some sunsets on whatever arrangement Apple & Google have or Google, out of their own sense of fairness, is simply not pushing the issue yet. I wouldn't be surprised if the Google Voice/iPhone issue isn't related here somehow.

My guess is neither company is all that unhappy about the prospects of being the two dominant players in the SmartPhone industry in the future. They are very ideologically compatible companies. Apple poses no real threat to Google's core business, Google poses no real threat to Apple's core business. It's certainly a better arrangement than competing against Microsoft who is known to play dirty and is a more direct competitor to both companies in more ways.

Looks like Apple has big plans for maps http://www.tuaw.com/2009/11/30/apple-taking-their-maps-app-t...

Google probably wants to keep their role as the mapping service for iphone maps. This may be part of a way to keep a temporary balance between the mapping ambitions of the 2 companies.

Perhaps Apple has the patent on those particular multi-touch gestures.

This reason was dismissed in the article:

You say it's a patent issue? Nothing's changed since the last time I walked that lonely road: I still have yet to see an Apple patent that covers the pinch-to-zoom gesture, and Palm, Microsoft, and a laundry list of other companies are all now using the move without consequence. Besides, it's freaking Google -- the same company that up and decided copyright law was broken and started scanning out of print books because it wanted to try something new. Even if there is some mythical Apple patent on pinch-to-zoom, Google is one of the few companies that has the financial and legal resources to get it invalidated -- and there's plenty of prior art out there that'll help it along the way.

Transparency is not part of the "Don't be evil" motto.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com