Apple applies for iWatch patent
appft.uspto.gov
appft.uspto.gov
It doesn't take a genius to see where tech is heading. Even 3M had the same ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCZz4jFok_o
Nowadays it's all patent the obvious and sue all competitors.
We passed that point: we already have Android watches. You could have purchased one last year:
No. I don't even recall having ever see a flexible watch in real life. Curved or flat hard screens all the way.
This is how patent system could have been done without violence: a group of tech companies willing to protect their IP come together and agree on a single protocol which will register their inventions. They will list what kinds of inventions are patentable and not patentable. If something in this protocol remains vague to anyone it won't be signed. Then, they agree to regularly elect a group of experts who would inspect all incoming submissions and decide which non-patented inventions are violating or not the existing patents. Every participant would have to follow the decision of the experts, or would have to appeal to other participants (in order to re-elect the experts, reexamine the protocol, or reexamine this particular decision).
If participant does not follow the decision of the experts, he is publicly defamed and economically ostracised, just like any other non-participant who violates existing patents. If any participant does not punish violators via ostracism (whether participants or not), he himself is ostracised by others.
If a large enough group of tech companies really values patents over costs of ostracism, they can do just that. (Like they agree not to hiring specialists from each other.) If they don't find the way to agree on patents, then they do not deserve them. And nobody should go to prison because of that. My gut feeling is that neither Google, nor Apple, nor Microsoft likes patents. They could agree about hiring top people, about very specific trademarks like logos, but they would never spend time fighting over rounded corners if they were not given a poisonous weapon which is a tax-funded patent office, police and prisons.
Resume: You do not need violent intervention with guns and prisons to protect yourself. Example: Apple's customers do not like working conditions of its partners' factories, so they can ostracise Apple. Apple in response asks factories to improve conditions, or Apple will ostracise them. There is no violence, but only negotiation.
All the incumbents have repeatedly lobbied to strengthen their advantage in the patent system so it is actually their fault. I don't know why you would presume Apple to be innocent. They have more power than most companies, they could lobby for change if they wanted to.
Why is it cheap? Because couple of millions of bucks spent on lawyers is nothing comparing to amount of tax money and propaganda that fuels police and courts.
No company that earns money from voluntary exchange would risk creating its own armed gang: it will quickly run out of customers well before raising enough funds for a small army.
And if you are afraid that in absence of tax-funded police, some private companies would not protect themselves and their customers, but instead become super-powerful mafia themselves, then it is yet another reason why you cannot have monopoly of violent power in the first place.
My suggestion: no reasoning and intellectual debate is possible if there is a gun in the room. Take away the gun first, then we could discuss different ways to protect intellectual and other property. Guns are needed only against other guns, but even then there's no discussion going on, but pure state of jungle.
I'll be the first to advocate for a better understanding of non-violent means for negotiation, but the dynamics of violence and weapons and human psychology goes in a different area other then a patent discussion. Unless you're trying to derail the topic into a flame war or something.
I admit, it is useless to debate too much about what would happen if. It's more pragmatic to talk about how would you design non-violent scheme of negotiation where people are protected and insured against violence.
The gun issue is not offtopic. It is the primary reason why you have all of the drama around government. Because people are ultimately threatened with murder if they do not comply. If you have no possibility to hurt person for non-complience, then there is no drama. You both can perfectly avoid each other and use peaceful means to find justice as much as you want.
So my approach to any question about abuse of (or use of) state-provided violence is this:
1. Identify the violence. 2. Think how to avoid it completely.
Patent law is a system of brutal violence not based on any hard core moral proof. You require proofs from a mathematician, and still do not kill him if he's wrong. Why don't you require even stronger proof from anybody with a gun? It is not a solution to limit patents. And not even to call for their abolishment. You cannot come to mafia and ask them to stop doing what they are doing. The solution is to simply avoid patents as much as you can while finding other ways to protect yourself.
How to do that practically (not by persuasion, but by building some sort of mechanism for people) - is another complex topic. I myself investigate how you can build an anonymous dispute resolution network on top of Bitcoin blockchain (to use it as a secure storage of agreements). Anonymity will provide safety from violence, while conforming to the network rules will allow to make deals with other people. This way you can grow a community of people who respect each other's choices without threatening each other using legal or illegal methods.
It's time to limit the effectiveness of technology patents to 1 year, maybe 2 years maximum or maybe get rid of tech patents altogether.
Another voluntary group like this is the UN; it is completely ineffective in matters of security.
Seriously, though. Patents are valuable only because there is a small amount of people with guns and prisons. Everyone else despises guns. Neither you, nor Apple lawyers would want to enforce IP using their bare hands or paying for killers out of their pocket. Same for funding soldiers killing people around the world. The existing threat of murder ("obey the patent or give your money, or go to jail, or be shot down") is here because it is already being paid for by taxpayers. And since nobody is upset about it, it feels clean and easy to use it. But in free society it will not be clean and easy to use violence. You would have to pay for it yourself. And people would pay for guns only in extreme cases for personal protection in some weird dangerous areas. Otherwise it's too damn risky. But when it's regularly paid from taxes, any enforced regulation becomes possible, any crazy PATRIOT act or SOPA becomes readily available to society without much discussion.
but it looks like they're intending to use the flexible screen tech that's been demo'd by Samsung recently
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
before the inevitable complaining about who innovated what first, I'd like to say that it looks like Samsung has the screen nailed down, but Apple is going to get the device concept figured out (which will then probably be launched off of by tons of companies not the least of which will be Samsung). I'd say Samsung's strategy might be "why waste R&D when you can get Apple to do it for you?" but it's obvious that this core tech is the result of unbelievable amounts of R&D dollars.
Pebble's Kickstarter campaign started on April 11, 2012.
From the description of the patent application it's clear that this thing is nothing like a Pebble or a watch. It's a slap bracelet covered with a flexible touchscreen. What's more, the patent application describes the device's battery being charged by ambient light and kinetic energy. That's pretty wild.
Fairly common, automatic mechanical watches already use kinetic, but were we to say "But those aren't electronic" then you could always look at something like the Seiko Premier ( http://www.seiko.co.uk/products/seiko/c/premier/m/snp005p1_s... )
And for ambient light charging, you have Citizen and their Eco-Drive range ( http://www.citizenwatch.com/en-us/watches/collections/citize... ) and Casio's G-shock ( http://www.gshock.com/technology/solar/ )
I enjoy the fact that my current watch is ambient light powered, syncs with atomic clocks each night via radio... and therefore never needs a battery or charging, and is so damn accurate that I can glance at my watch when some event happens on my NTP sync'd server and the entry in the log file is precisely when the time on my watch said it would be.
Anyhow... those power sources should be irrelevant to the patent... they've existed for years by numerous players in the watch market.
This is my biggest complaint whenever there's a patent discussion on HN (or anywhere else) by laypersons. The power sources are highly relevant to the patent; Every single claim in the patent is important. Otherwise, someone back at the beginning of patent-time could have simply patented "thing which you wrap around your wrist" and owned the patent to watches, bracelets, and handcuffs. As well, there could exist pre-existing patents for a straight stick, a piece of string, and a hook; But putting them all together to make a fishing rod would be an innovation that you could patent.
The patent also mentions many power savings features, basically putting the device into life-saving mode most of the time and only waking to perform a task or notify you of something.
If that's the case, then low power use when off is the priority for them, and if they are able to use drips of power from multiple sources to partially power that stand-by, then the battery only really gets used when you put the screen on... meaning that the device's standby time can be legitimately advertised as being some very long period of time.
And for an idea of standby power for a bluetooth device, let's go back to Casio ( http://world.g-shock.com/us/en/ble/function/ )...
> Since Bluetooth® v4.0 uses low-power near field communication technology, your function-packed G-SHOCK is able deliver to approximately two years of operation on a single coin type battery. This makes the watch's advanced functions practical for everyday use. Approximate battery life when communication function are used for 12 hours a day (tentative value).
2 years!
The iWatch (or whatever it's called) really is only going to drain the battery when that screen is on and in use.
Given the limited number of compatible iDevices, it might be prudent for Apple to hold out launching this snap bracelet device, at least until they launch the next generation of iPhones and iPod touches.
If you want to generalize it to "Apple is doing something similar to what other people had previously done" that's a completely different argument.
I have a pet theory that, when removed, the iWatch will be flat and it will be possible to use it as a phone by holding up to your ear. The cellular technology will be in your iPhone Maxi or iPad. The importance of such a feature is simply—but not unimportantly—that this would look less dorky than holding up a 5" phone to your head or using a bluetooth headset.
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Slap_20Bracelet_20Cell_20Phon...
But, lets keep in mind Apple has some patents for some pretty radical ideas floating around and reading too much into patents is like reading chicken entrails.
As a hardware company, they're playing with human real estate. They've already got us locked in our desks and on the go with our phones, but now they're trying to add yet another level of convenience with the watch.
Also, Pebble's "massive success" with whom? The only people who know about it seem to be those who hang about on tech blogs and forums and crowd sourcing sites. It hasn't crossed the chasm.
Apple's key strength has always been, from Apple II to iPhone, crossing the chasm to put a tech category into the hands of normals.
Pebble sold $10 million of units via Kickstarter. Mainstream or not, I'd consider that a mild form of success at the least.
And Apple has been able to do that, but their technology/APIs are already being used by third-party companies for similar purposes, so in this case, it seems like they're playing catch-up, at least ideologically.
I can't wait to see a keynote where the speaker will be wearing the iWatch on his thigh.
I kind of wonder where else would be appropriate to wear it other than on your wrist, given that it explicitly mentions that (Geordi LaForge style visor perhaps?)
I doubt they'd ship enough material to actually attach to a leg. And hopefully they're not just shipping an iSlapBracelet: a wrist computer needs to stay in place. Not spin around your wrist freely. Good luck to them in weighting such a device and getting it to stay in place.
Also, being a child of the 80s, I remember slap bracelets quite well, and in my experience, they fit quite snug and didn't move around much at all.
Unless this hypothetical snap-bracelet device also had its weight very well distributed, it's going to tend to spin. Particularly if the total weight is sufficient to cause the snap-bracelet to slide toward 'open', even a bit, as your wrist rotates or travels through the air. And evenly distributing the weight over an entire-surface-screen would be quite a challenge, given the internals.
I think it more likely a production device along those lines would have a series of fixed potential-attachment-points and strong magnets to counter the forces caused by the weight of the device and movement of the wrist. And the screen wouldn't need to be over the entire device, but simply enough of the 'top' so that it could reasonably serve the various potential-attachment-point configurations. (the magnets would also provide a simple and consistent way to determine just how open or closed the device is)