For tablet computer visionary Roger Fidler, a lot of what-ifs | Hacker News Reader

For tablet computer visionary Roger Fidler, a lot of what-ifs

washingtonpost.com

14 pointsilamont15 comments

If so, then about a million other people "invented it" as well. Tablets are one of those "no duh" technologies that almost EVERY science fiction writer just assumed the future would have.

Apple didn't invent the tablet. They just made it not suck. The innovation didn't originate in the conception of the device itself.

Whether this is an apt counter to the article's thesis depends on whether you perceive that thesis to be "This guy invented it and therefore should get acclaim/money/patents", or "This guy invented it and therefore Apple didn't and therefore Apple shouldn't get acclaim/money/patents." In particular, as yet more evidence that Apple's design patent on the iPad is totally bogus, I think the point is valid---and your point that "about a million other people 'invented it' as well" only contributes further.

Personally? I'd go with: "No one REALLY invented the product category. So, Apple, if you want to take someone to task for specifically ripping off one of your implementation details, then go for it. Just don't claim that you somehow came up with the 'computer as big slate of glass' concept."

Well put.

Very few modern inventions have a singular "inventor" in this day and age. It's a romantic notion that there is some genius somewhere who had a light bulb go off and suddenly a product is born.

Unfortunately, that's simply not how the world works. It never was true because invention always took a lot of hard work. You need time, money, and skill. However, this romantic notion is especially not true now that timelines, budgets, and skill-requirements exceed individual inventors' minds, wallets, and lifespans.

This is stupid. 1994? Star Trek: TNG "invented" tablets, too - in the late 80s.

2001 did it before that, in 1969.

The key is figuring out when technology gets to a certain point that make a vision possible and which technologies will make it possible. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, there had been touchscreen phones for a long time. Apple identified that capacitive touchscreens were a new technology that allowed for a touch device to work much better - better to the extent that it changed whether touch devices would be generally accepted or not. They didn't invent capacitive touchscreens nor touch-phones. They did recognize how that technology changed one's ability to make good touch devices. At the time, Windows Mobile didn't even support capacitive touchscreens.

Likewise, with the iPhone and iPad, Apple designed the interface differently. I remember Windows Mobile phones that had menus much like desktop operating systems (http://pdadb.net/imageview.php?path=img/os/ppc_5.0/wm5_vga_p...). When you look over Apple's guidelines for iOS apps, you can see how they took into consideration the size of touch targets and how the user would interact with the device much more than previous touch devices.

The idea of a tablet computer has been around for a long while. Microsoft and its partners had created Windows tablets that worked like the desktop OS for a while. As others have pointed out, Star Trek and other TV programs have shown us tablet computers. What Apple brought to the table was how to make that technology compelling for people as the components to make something compelling all come into being.

ARM processors combined the needed processing power with lower power consumption meaning that the iPad could be 2 pounds or less with many hours of battery life. If you had the idea of a Pentium powered tablet in the 90s with 10 hours of battery life and a 2 pound weight, it would just be an idea. Before capacitive touchscreens, it wouldn't be a compelling experience. You can have the idea that the touchscreen would be accurate and nice to use, but identifying how to achieve that is important. While Apple's UI concepts are something we're used to today, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry was the order of the day for mobile devices back then. While one can have the idea that the tablet should be intuitive to use, actually managing that can take work.

There's a reason why one never really understands what they're doing with the computer on Star Trek. It can be hard to create a really compelling product that's actually great to use. It isn't merely the concept of "a light, powerful tablet with little weight and a great user experience" that makes it happen. One has to identify what can be brought together to accomplish it as well as design a compelling interaction.

You can find an earlier example of someone talking about any non-trivial invention. That's not the same as actually inventing it.

I wrote a tablet app for GfK around '95 using some Fujitsu tablet running Windows 3.1

Sigh. What nonsense. Give me a few minutes and I'll find an exact prediction of tablet computers in 1950's Science Fiction literature.

When flying cars are finally in use, who's going to get the credit for inventing those?

Back in 1987 Apple Computer ran a contest at various universities to "Design the Computer of the Year 2000". A team from the University of Illinois won the contest.

Their entry? A tablet.

http://engineering.illinois.edu/news/2010/01/26/tablet-compu...

(Bonus points if you noticed Stephen Wolfram on the team)

This story was all over the web almost a year ago! But I just clicked on it so the Post got the click they were looking for.

Honestly HN? You guys are submitting yet another one of these stories? After all the furor/confusion/stories about pretty much everything else of consequence that has been "invented"?

One pretty much finds these stories about who "really" invented pretty much anything, from the automobile, to social networks.

Free registration required after page 2.

This is where patents make no sense. I had a similar dream when I was a kid. Wouldn't it be cool if we had flying cars someday?! Now, if we ever have cars that fly, I can quote this HN comment and claim I predicted the future.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com