I think Steve Jobs was probably justified in his furious reaction to Android.
disclosure: Android user, I dislike many aspects of iOS, namely the restrictive policies of the app store, and the totally broken app sharing UX.
iOS was more of a copy of palm (which in turn was a copy of Newton..) than android was a copy of iOS.
The biggest innovation was realizing capactive screens made things much nicer, and made browsing possible. But it is hard to fault Google for copying their browser when Apple themselves based it on LGPLed KHTML; the license dictates that they share.
In what way? Inaccuracy and the inability to use a stylus or wear gloves?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66RBfrBgL2E
edit: surprised at the downvotes. Is there a capacitive screen even remotely comparable to the accuracy and pressure response of a 4 year old resistant N900? I'm open to examples.
Look, I love capacitive screens. But nothing beat a stylus for accuracy when you've got a 2.4" QVGA touchscreen, and for certain tasks that was a lot better than a 3.5" capacitive one. That was when I used my M600i (then my P1i) for managing my entire life.
Now, with the advent of 7" tablets I use that instead, for that sort of high info density work :)
Capacitive stylii are terrible. All the downsides of needed to have something in your hand to poke at a screen with none of the accuracy that a stylus with a resistive one had.
If you need a stylus to read mails, use the web or normal stuff, you'll probably need a better UI, not a stylus
Per your other posts, you said you were having difficulty with touches registering on the iPhone; if that's the case, I can't imagine any circumstance in which the iPhone would seem better to you, but that's not the typical circumstance (though I do have a friend who has MS and the screen doesn't recognize her either).
Still, for those people who have the typical experience with capacitive touchscreens, the difference is like night and day.
Those are edge cases though. On the whole capacitive screens are better, but they do have downsides.
I don't know what this means, and have yet to experience it. The only difference I've noticed between a capacitive iPhone and a resistive N900 is that my touches frequently don't register at all on the iPhone.
I was an continuous palm user from 1998-2006, I owned four different treos, (and a handspring).
Trust me when I say there was almost no relationship (let alone "copy") between the Palm and iPhone. Except, maybe, they could both make phone calls.
I watched the Apple keynote, swearing that under no circumstance would I ever purchase an apple toy - 2 minutes after I touched the iPhone/Google Maps (even with it's crappy GPRS/EDGE network) I was heading to go line up at the Apple Store.
Bullshit. I used tons of Palm devices and iOS has basically nothing in common with PalmOS.
The only thing in common between the initial iPhone and a Palm device is that they have a large touch screen.
The difference was the quality of the apps and hardware. The screen was gorgeous, it had horsepower for web-surfing and youtube, it had multitouch and used it reasonably well, and it cost about the same as a decent Palm since it came with a service agreement.
Steve Jobs is justified in being angry because he feels ownership of his ideas. Is anger is held impotent because we recognize that a healthy degree of copying is good for innovation. Both of those are OK.