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Comment by CamperBob | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago, a friend got one of the first of the x86 iMacs with integrated displays. Initially I thought it was a neat design but still didn't "get" what the big deal was about them and Apple's design ethos in general.

I picked up the small handheld remote that came with it, and frowned. "Hmm, OK, it comes with a remote media control. That's neat, but it's just one more rarely-used gadget that's going to get lost in the clutter on peoples' desks. What they should have done was, oh, I dunno, put a magnet in the side of the monitor frame to keep the remote out of the way when it's not needed, you know, like this..."

snap

"Oh."

I bought 100 shares of AAPL that night.

</Cool story, bro>

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Was the cool story bro really necessary? This isn't 4chan...

It's a self-deprecating device, used to indicate that the post was intended purely as a topical anecdote which should be taken or left at face value, and not as a general recommendation to buy stock based on individual product features. :-P

Surely you understand the backlash from using internet memes at HN where they are not necessary?

Apparently he does.

I like that on HN, people use memes intelligently.

Ha! I had the exact same experience, although I don't remember how many shares I bought. Buying those shares turned out to be a great idea, too.

I definitely wish the strategy scaled better...

Another cool story: when the first bi-color red/green LEDs showed up at Radio Shack in the early 1990s, I designed a PWM circuit to implement a battery-life indicator that would glow green with a full charge and slowly fade through yellow to red as the battery discharged. The patent committee at Dell was paying $1000 bonuses for disclosures at the time, but I couldn't get them to buy into this one. There were objections to the effect that it was trivial, or some such reasoning. I agreed, and left the meeting with no hard feelings. No harm in trying, right?

above is what our community is missing, and what our Radio Shack stores are missing.

Hold on a minute, are you slating Dell for not patenting something that is indeed trivial, or for not using your idea in their products? Because the former should be applauded.

I think the point isn't that they didn't think it should be patented, more that they really weren't interested in that level of detail generally.

It is trivial but lots of trivial things put together can make for the improved user experience that distinguishes products you can charge top dollar for from the sort of mass market machines Dell turn out.

At the time the bonuses were being handed out, engineers were running pretty much whatever they could think of up the flagpole. Nobody was concerned with the ethics of the situation. (In my defense I pitched only four disclosures at them, out of which only one was accepted for filing.)

Today, if you have a problem with the USPTO's policy of rubber-stamping trivial, obvious, and abstract patents (and I most certainly do), the proper targets for venting are your Congressmen. It's safe to say they don't read Hacker News (hint, hint).

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