Good ideas are meant to spread | Hacker News Reader

Good ideas are meant to spread

daringfireball.net

70 pointsraganwald29 comments

"Apple brings to market a revolutionary next step in personal computers; "

In this case, Apple popularized the next step - they neither invented it, nor were they the first one to do it. In the iPhone case, you an look at the LG Prada (revealed about a month prior to the iPhone) or the HTC phones of that era (shipped a few weeks before the iPhone). If people kept that in mind, there'd be far less sympathy for what Apple is doing right now - that is trying to stop progress that would have occurred whether or not they were there to capitalize on it.

And in the GUI case, Xerox invented many of the concepts for the Alto. Apple both improved upon and popularized their work (often, Xerox engineers moved to Apple and brought their ideas with them.)

You have it backwards. The iPhone was revealed before the Prada, and was not considered to have feature parity with the iPhone at the time. Your comment about HTC phones from that time period is kind of meaningless since you don't mention what phone(s) you are talking about, so it is impossible to check your assertion.

You may want to have a look at this article from that time period: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/72B08E9A-D46...

LG Prada was announced on Dec. 12, 2006, and the design leaked on Dec. 15, 2006. The iPhone was presented on Jan. 9, 2007.

Honestly, timewise, they're pretty much a wash. The iPhone could have been revealed first if Apple wasn't so good at leak control (at least at that time).

revealed about a month prior to the iPhone... shipped a few weeks before the iPhone...

If only the cause-and-effect were so clear. The iPhone was rumored for years before it was released; it was surely in manufacturing prototype for many months before it was announced, and then it was announced months before it actually shipped.

Apple is legendary for keeping its secrets well. But even major government agencies can't keep secrets perfectly. Espionage works. And I'm sure that lots of people in China were in a position to figure out Apple's plans in advance. (Note how poorly the iPad's secrets were kept relative to the iPhone. The biggest advantage Apple had with the iPod and iPhone was the element of surprise: Nobody thought of Apple as a music-player company, or a telephony company, so nobody was focusing too hard on Apple product espionage. They're focused now, though.)

So the argument that these various contemporaneous iPhone-like devices would have happened without the iPhone is pretty weak. For example, just because Google and Microsoft announced iPad knockoffs within days of the iPad announcement [1] doesn't mean that those products [2] were going to happen with or without Apple.

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[1] Microsoft's pad was announced earlier! Of course, I'm told it also didn't look much like an iPad. In demo-theatre, as in curling, it pays to move last.

[2] If products they are. Demos are at least one order of magnitude easier to cough out than shipping products are. Of course you can build a demo of a pad. That's a couple weeks of work or less.

It's people like Grubber and you that want a clear cause-and-effect. To them, the iPhone was the genesis and everything that's mobile and touch derives from it. To me, this is a lot like people claiming Nirvana invented Grunge. No, there was a scene/movement, they were a part of it and they were the ones that hit it big and influenced it. But to claim anything more is a big mistake.

In order to defend your absurd "there would be no touch without Apple" stance, you're going to great lengths here - accusing multiple companies of successful espionage against Apple for years in a row. Instead, you could face that fact that there were many companies with touchscreen devices, that there was much research in the area (both by companies such as the MS with the Surface and various independent researchers) and technology like high-res capacitative (vs the older, cheaper, crappier resistive) screens were becoming more available.

I'm not sure where the "there would be no touch without Apple" quote comes from (parent's parent may have edited) but I agree it's false. Trivially provable, since Apple did not invent multitouch, they purchased the company/guy who did, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks

"So the argument that these various contemporaneous iPhone-like devices would have happened without the iPhone is pretty weak"

How many ways can one interpret that? Clearly, he thinks large-screened touch-based phones would not have existed without the iPhone.

your absurd "there would be no touch without Apple" stance

Who are you quoting?

They're using scare quotes to indicate a paraphrase.

Does the LG Prada (or any other phone prior to the iPhone) contain any of the things that Apple has patented?

Is not the popularizing of something revolutionary in and of itself? If touchscreen phones were unpopular before the iPhone, doesn't Apple deserve some credit for opening the market?

I'm really not trying to be an Apple apologist, here. They may not have invented the technology, but they sure as hell humanized it.

I disagree. Touch screen has been "in the wild" for quite some time in various forms. Pre-iPhone the most used one was the stylus approach. And it was awful. All the different things that come together in the iPhone made people see this as finally being the right path to moving the computer from the desktop into the hand. It might have happened without them, but judging on how all previous attempts turned out I wouldn't be surprised if they saved us decades.

It's a bit disingenuous to say "Good ideas are meant to spread." They're not really meant to do anything, in the same way that the common saying "information wants to be free" is nonsense.

It seems hand-wavy to say "good ideas are meant to spread" without a more in-depth discussion of copyright/trademark law. The information you present is hypothetical and anecdotal. Anthropomorphizing "ideas" is not a substitute for real data and constructive discussion.

You're fighting a battle you can't win. Ideas want to be anthropomorphized.

You're kidding, right? Ideas hate being anthropomorphized.

They keep changing their minds, like a cat always on the wrong side of the door.

Versus, "Good Ideas are meant to be owned?"

I think the world economy needs places where IP is not respected. That is where those ideas can freely get applied, and where they can be expanded and refined. The US was this for the world in the late 1800s. Such places will be the next economic powerhouses.

So... China.

Since the iPhone is currently a very successful product I wonder what Apple see's coming down the road that scared them into this patent lawsuit? I suppose it could be pure greed but it almost feels like they know the iPhone is in trouble long term and this was the only viable strategic move to protect the market. Otherwise they could just stay ahead of the competition with innovation and nice bouncy scrolling lists and "slide to unlock" would be old features not even worth protecting. Lots of Apple investors seem pleased at this patent lawsuit but I think they should be asking themselves if maybe Apple knows the iPhone's current success is unsustainable.

Do they really want their market dominance to continue? I thought the Apple brand was about well designed, highly refined, seamlessly integrated devices. In other words, they want commodity imitators to be the sea of dreck which they can fly above. The disappointment that emanates from that sea is the driver for their high margins.

Apple is about to launch a new product that (if successful) will undoubtedly spawn dozens of imitators. They want to prevent the competition from this product from getting a free ride on their technologies (let's assume that each is a credible invention and valid patent), as they undoubtedly have to some degree with the iPhone.

they could just stay ahead of the competition with innovation

The usefulness of this strategy is diminished when the competition can simply copy what you've done. Bouncy scrolling lists (etc.) may seem trivial, but if they didn't represent added value why would they be copied? And if they do represent added value, why shouldn't that be protected?

In general, large companies don't bring software patent lawsuits against competitors to prevent competition. Large companies bring software patent suits against competitors to win cross-licensing agreements; to get something their competitor has. (And counter-suits are typically about trying to block such a forced cross-licensing)

The exceptions to this process are notable as being exceptions.

So I'm not sure why everyone automatically assumes Apple has the 'evil'[1] motive for patent prosecution.

What I wonder, is whether the license HTC has to Nokia's GSM patents is transferable. That is: could Apple be forcing a cross-licensing agreement with HTC, to end-run Nokia's lawsuit against them?

[1] that is: suing to strangle competition. e.g. Amazon

That's really my thinking. Since some of the patents in question against HTC are the same patents in question against Nokia, I wonder if the HTC move is just to strengthen the claims against Nokia. If Android is hurt in the process, Apple doesn't care.

The advantage of inventing a better way to do something is that now you're selling a better product. Apple has been rewarded for their great ideas (embodied in the iPhone) by making a kajillion dollars and somewhat dominating the smartphone space. The ethical interpretation here seems pretty clear-cut.

A bit out of subject, but I find the white on green hard to read.

<3 http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Get your monitor fixed. The RGB values are 74, 82, 90 – that’s a rather more bluish than green grey :)

I bookmarked that readability site.. that's awesome. And yes, you are right about the bluish, however, by means of abstraction, it's the same thing for a geek like me: I found it hard to read ;)

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