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Comment by comatose_kid | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of 'Apple deserves this' type of comments in this thread that I'd like to address.

The patent system is probably flawed (IANAL), but companies do need to have a way to defend their innovations. Apple did re-invent the smart phone in 07, and has been the design leader since then.

Android has followed in their footsteps - witness the design shift from their pre-iphone roadmap which consisted of blackberry-look-alike designs.

Further, there have been no bold re-imaginings of the smartphone in Android-land (sorry, a better notification system doesn't really qualify). They are taking Apple's innovations and applying a different business model to achieve success.

Google and Apple are both amazing companies, but I have a hard time finding fault with Apple's decision to sue Google's partners. If the tables were turned, and Google came out with an Android phone first, I would support Google suing Apple for the same reasons.

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Apple iterated, but they didn't re-invent the smartphone. See the LG Prada, announced in December 2006. It was the first full-screen capacitive touch phone. Its form factor was strikingly similar to the iPhone, and LG even accused Apple of ripping off the design (though they never followed through in court).

What Apple did do was market this newer form factor very successfully, effectively tying the iPhone form factor to their brand in view of public opinion, but it's revisionist to claim that they reinvented the smartphone into the design that we know and love today.

>> What Apple did do was market this newer form factor very successfully

Marketing had a lot to do with it, but so did the quality of the OS.

Having gone through several iterations of Windows Mobile devices prior to the first iPhone, the iPhone was the first smartphone that I used that I didn't want to slam on the floor and stomp on repeatedly.

Sure, I'll buy that the iPhone was an improvement. Apple took an idea that was already out in the market, and made it not suck (as much).

Is that enough justification for them to sue everyone else in an attempt to lock them out of the market?

And if it is, does HTC get to sue over all of the bits of their Windows Mobile phones that didn't suck (even with all of its issues, there were more than a few)?

>> Is that enough justification for them to sue everyone else in an attempt to lock them out of the market?

To be clear, I don't agree with Apple's lawsuit, I think it's a waste of time/money related to one of Steve Job's personal grievances.

Keep in mind, however, that Apple is not suing everyone else. They aren't suing over Windows Phones. They didn't sue Palm/HP over WebOS. They also didn't sue RIM over the Playbook UI (although Palm should have sued them for knocking off WebOS). WP and WebOS do not look like knockoffs of iOS, unlike some of the disputed Samsung models.

Also remember that MS sued (and got lucrative settlements from) many of the same players that Apple is currently tangling with.

Keep in mind, however, that Apple is not suing everyone else.

No, they're only suing their only serious competitor, which should tell you all you need to know about how much this is about protecting innovation vs locking out a legitimate alternative and reducing consumer choice.

I'm sure they could find plenty of bogus patents to use against MS and WebOS if they felt threatened by them at all.

They are suing their biggest competitor, yes, but I'm not the only one who thinks Samsung made a few models with a UI that looks like they knocked off iOS.

WP and WebOS might be bit players, but they have novel UIs that are actually good and arguably better than iOS. In particular, WebOS had the best notifications.

WP and WebOS prove Apple's notion that it is possible to compete without an 'iPhone Skin'.

Apple does not sue Palm/HP or RIM, because they are not threat. They are almost non-players.

The only lawsuit Microsoft had against Android vendor was Barnes and Noble. Which was settled out of court (by investing into B&N to shut them up). Other vendors license things like exFAT and ActiveSync. Some vendors (notably Motorola and Sony) do not pay anything to Microsoft.

Apple isn't currently suing HTC, LG, or other manufacturers of Android phones.

What?

They are suing at least Samsung (the most successful Android vendor) all over the world.

I meant aside from Samsung.

Then again, Samsung is a much more significant competitor than all of them.

I guess that arguably trying to get HTC banned from importing any of their phones into the US isn't "suing" them, but it's still pretty damn hostile to both them and to competition in the smartphone market: http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/06/apple-htc-patent-lawsuit-us-ba...

IIRC, HTC settled up and is paying a license fee. There is no way for Barnes and Noble to be the only one paying, since it is widely known that MS makes more from Android makers than it does from Windows Phone.

I wrote "lawsuit", not "licensors".

There was only one lawsuit, and it was settled before information was leaked. Others license voluntarily, but we still don't know, what exactly. It is just educated guess that it is exFAT and ActiveSync, because exact licensing conditions are under NDA.

"What Apple did do was market this newer form factor very successfully"

No, what Apple did was to bring its 20 years of experience making OSs to a mobile phone. Most of the iOS libraries are the same that in macOS.

Those are incredible low level-very efficient and smart work tested by millions of people on the real world for years, and very good designed.(Apple have really great designers not only on the outside)

The quality of this thing was(and is, Windows internals are sh*t, I had disassembled both, it always was about shipping fast and rough, fix later attitude) much bigger than anything else in the market at this time.

Google did the same porting Linux to mobile.

Say what you may about operating systems then and now, but with experience I can tell you this, these devices were phones first and computers second. They are computers first and phones second now.

[Warning - Personal anecdote. #include<grain of salt>] Even in Nokia land, SonyEricsson land, what ever crap may have happened on the system you were ALWAYS able to attend phone calls. Even if the whole damn os came crashing down because of a rogue game, an incoming call was never missed or cut off. Once phone functionality became 'just an app', there are a lot more cases (personally) of the incoming phone calls flat out not responding because of some random rogue app. Both iOS and Android (early revisions) are equally guilty of this. Note, I'm not talking about dropped call or poor reception which may be a network issue. I'm specifically addressing the "code" part of the phone where functionality just did a 180.

/end-rant

You bring up an excellent point, which accurately describes my first experience with a windows smart phone. I didn't get back onto smart phones for a while (buying my next only three years ago), once the crop of non-smart phones finally hit rock bottom for my personal tastes.

I do despise how often my phone fails to act as an actual phone. I also despise the lack of hardware buttons to answer calls. The most frustrating aspect of a smart phone, is trying to answer a call while an app is going nuts, the screen won't swipe, or the damned buttons that aren't really buttons don't work.

I'm generally the bastion for cutting edge tech whenever I buy any gadget. I don't mind spending ridiculous amounts of money for that _one_ specific feature or niche that I want, because I'm not going to spend money again for a very very long time.

Believe it or not, my first Android smartphone was only bought last year, and that too, because there weren't premium dumbphones. Most of them were cheap plasticky crap. Even Nokia seemed to have lost focus so I thought, "Hey why not?" and jumped in. It was hard to transition from blind messaging and blind dialing to actually giving a damn to what's going on, on the screen. I mean, it's just a slab of glass. They could've atleast had hardware Send and End keys like the HTC HD2... Otoh Google wants to go completely buttonless.

I'm sick of that "LG Prada was there before" meme. The fully functioning iPhone was presented by Jobs on January 7, 2007, and "accidentally" LG announces the same design less than a month before? It's simply impossible that LG didn't actually have to produce something for the coming iPhone and in parallel just made their clone. That's the reason LG remained quiet afterwards.

Accidentally announced 1 mth before? Reference please. I believe it was longer than that, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada#iPhone_controversy

The reason this IS so important is because it re-enforces the "emergent technology" argument that many forget, which is the antithesis of what many argue...

Do you recall Knight Ridder had something looking almost the same as the iPad... In the video from 94, the speaker talks of emergent technologies enabling the future, not "first to market".

Society should outright reject any notion that emerge t technology is patentable, regardless if the "evil corporation" driving the insanity is Apple, Samsung, Google, etc

Did you ever hold the LG KE850 (Prada) in your hands or even tried to use it for extended periods of time? I developed for it at that time (J2ME) and let me tell you it was not in the same league as the iPhone.

Did you ever use an LG Prada? Worked nothing like iOS. And yes, they did reinvent the smartphone. The first smartphone that had a full unix-based operating system. The first to use multitouch. The first to use accelerometers. A lot of firsts. The individual tech might have existed before (excepting multitouch which Apple invented,) but the application of those technologies into a phone was entirely new. Stop trying to Apple-bash after the fact. Apple's genius wasn't 'marketing' it was design. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player -- it was the first that let you have 1000 songs in your pocket. Stop short-changing Apple. After all, you certainly haven't invented anything of note. You build something innovative that consumers love to use and then you can call Apple's genius one of marketing. Every Home Depot has the tools and supplies to build the White House, that doesn't mean that architects are just really good at marketing because they didn't think of wood and paint first. Ignoring the synergy is to ignore the nature of creativity.

> Further, there have been no bold re-imaginings of the smartphone in Android-land (sorry, a better notification system doesn't really qualify).

That just shows how little you know about Android. To take one example, Android's Intent system is amazing. It is one of the big things that makes Android so customizable and flexible. It enables wonderful features like generic sharing (and, impressively, replacing the share menu itself). Intents have worked so well that Google and Mozilla (among others) are bringing them to the web.

Android still isn't as polished as iOS but unlike iOS it isn't partying like it's still 2007.

And letting other devs take a crack at improving some of the core functionality has helped Android leapfrog Apple in some very important ways. Just look at the innovation going on in third-party keyboards. After using Swype or Swiftkey going back to an iPhone keyboard is like pulling teeth. But Apple's paternalistic software model precludes this kind of thing which is why it's so important that they're not allowed to use the legal system to destroy competition in the smartphone space.

Attack the argument, not the author. Intents are a great idea. Does that mean they are a bold re-imagining of a smartphone? Not at all.

If the tables were turned

I'm sure there are examples of Apple following the pack. For example, an App Store is similar to apt (or other package managers) in Linux-land. Podcasts where included in iTunes after someone else invented them (I think). Apple produce Unix servers after other people were selling unix servers.

That's how the tech industry works, we all copy each other, to some degree.

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