Open the iPod Bay doors, Steve. Ahem... you make it in China for $22 even tho your profit's Galactic

It's pretty arrogant for Apple to claim the rights to the concept of a "rectangular flat computer with a black border".

Then again, I've seen some pretty bold patent claims in my day.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-06-29/samsung-sues-apple-over-iphone-ipad-and-ipod-technology.html

...in regards to the touch screen navigation/gesture technologies. I don't know enough about it but I'm gonna take a guess that Apple didn't invent that stuff.

I don't know I don't have any of these fancy things

It's about the specific way the user navigates and operates the touchscreen in relation to a particular device.

I just have to wonder if Apple has done what other companies have done in the past - buy a collection of patents and then claim ownership of insanely broad concepts that have been in use by others for years.

It's the same as with the Iphone. There were prior smartphones. Prior touchscreens. But no one put it together in such an effective, attractive, consumer-pleasing device before.

I get that Apple is getting heavy handed as it comes up in the world, all too much like the other megacorps we've seen. Microsoft, anyone?

But it is a little funny when Apple comes out with its take on something which becomes a market-changing, intergalactic smash hit to the point where everything that comes after it has to be some kind of response to the Apple product, and people try to say

1) Well, the Apple product wasn't that innovative, really, it's been done before, etc, and

2) Now here's our slavish clone -- don't complain about its slavish cloniness.

If the Ipod was nothing new, and Iphone was nothing new, and the Ipad was nothing new, and Apple never invented anything, why is everyone trying so hard to duplicate everything about them?

"why is everyone trying so hard to duplicate everything about them?..."

Marketing. Great products may remain forever undistributed due to poor marketing. Horrible products may become the most popular trend of the decade due to marketing. The Pet Rock was hardly innovative, sleek or stylish yet still ended up suing manufacturers of newly-made similar products. :shrug:

And as I don't like either Pepsi or Coke (or Apple or PC, or whatever the trendy, new marketing war is this year), I don't really have any emotional investment one way or the other.

Pet rocks sell for a week, for a $1. People aren't snapping up Ipads at $6-800 a pop because they're helpless before Apple's "marketing." They aren't tossing them in the trash after the novelty wears off. It's a bit ridiculous to even draw the comparison between a disposable fad, and products which have changed the marketplace forever.

It's also kind of a moot argument to make anyway. Companies attempt to clone Apple products because they are incredibly successful. You can choose to assume that's because consumers are idiots, but that doesn't change the fact that it's the product, not the "marketing" that other companies are so desperately copying.

It appears to be about more modern concepts than stylus-to-screen navigation. Touch-screen technology works when something conductive touches the screen - the ideal thing being a human finger.

This suit, at least according to http://gizmodo.com/5833924/we-hope-apple-wins-the-patent-wars">Gizmodo, is about swiping through images. And this leads me to bring up that that concept is very comparable to one called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Flow">CoverFlow - one that Apple did not invent but, instead, purchased the patent for it. As well, one that Apple abused from the utility end.

All I'm saying is Apple deserves props for being inventive and forward-thinking but that doesn't mean they're innocent of patent trolling.

Assuming Apple doesn't own the entire concept of thin, flat, portable computing devices, which would seem a pretty huge stretch, the details of how to make it work well would fit into the typical things Apple does very well. They didn't invent the touchscreen or the smartphone, but they made the only touchscreen smartphone anyone wanted to actually deal with.

Ditto the Ipad. Prior tablet-y devices (including Apple's) were clunky and unpleasant to use. Remember all those touchscreen "personal organizers" ... and how bad they sucked?

Apple is very, very good at making hardware that's smooth, intuitive, and pleasant to use.

I think all the carping about whether Apple "invented" this or that from scratch is beside the point. No one "invents" a complex, high-tech device from the ground up. They synthesize useful products and make them work properly. Fill in gaps. Make it actually function.

So if Apple's saying Samsung can't make a flat, portable rectangle that surfs the web and uses "apps," I think they're dreaming. If they're saying Samsung can't can't make a tablet with an interface that works exactly like an Ipad, even if the way an Ipad works is the most intuitive way to do things, they're probably right.

And you invalidate your argument within your argument. How can a company claim rights to intuitive gestures?

Edit:

I'd go further and say you've put your finger on a big part of anti-Apple bias. Apple keeps creating devices that feel like the normal, natural way to use technology, to the point where people have trouble even recognizing that it's not just the way things were always done. Or the way they'd just "naturally" be done. Hard to find a smartphone without a touchscreen and little App icons on the front now, isn't it? But it wasn't always that way.

Lord knows if I mention computer mice and GUI, the floodgates will open with people screaming about how Apple stole it all from Xerox and so forth, but the fact is a lot of the ways we use a lot of tech devices now first worked WELL in an Apple product, and now we wouldn't think of doing it any other way.

That's not only innovation and invention, but it's among the rarest and most valuable in the tech world, as far as I'm concerned. All these boxes we carry around and work with all do essentially the same things. But making them work well with *people* is no small feat.

But did Apple "invent" the technologies or did they merely buy up a bunch of semi-related patents and are now claiming they own the concept? After all, they didn't invent CoverFlow. They bought the patent and then abused the utility side (the math/algorithms) of that technology to the point that the holders of the utility patent sued them and won.

Apple has to prove they hold the utility and design patents to swiping, pinching an scrolling for a touch interface and Samsung has to prove prior use of those patents/technologies.

IMHO, It's well past time to overhaul the patent approval process completely. We need bring in people who can distinguish between money grabbing and true innovation.

Just saying. It is perhaps a frivolous suit because the value of the iPad is largely in iTunes--this is why HP's touchpad recently failed, we are told. They should get some credit for high design, I suppose. Yet, one wonders why Apple cannot find a way to manufacture their products in the U.S. since they are now richer than the U.S. government. But, maybe the two don't go together.

As I recall, Microsoft didn't have to pay Apple anything for the mouse interface that they "borrowed" whole-cloth from the Macintosh.

The point of the article, I think, is that to the extent Apple would claim intellectual property rights to every conceivable flat, tablet-y looking computing device, Samsung would argue that the idea is too basic and too old to be patented. Don't think Apple's going to win that argument, whether 2001 has anything to do with it or not. I don't think the same logic applies to a movie depicting someone using hand gestures to operate a computer making any implementation of hand gestures with a computer somehow un-patentable. Someone had to figure out how to do that. Everyone arguably knew "how" to make a tablet computer -- just not very well.

The mouse wasn't deemed un-patentable either. Apple never owned it, although I think it has held various related patents as the device evolved. Microsoft assuredly paid someone for the rights.

I'd disagree iTunes is the main value of the iPad. The "App store" is surely a huge contributor to its success, but the form factor, performance, and interface are as much a part of the appeal. People are using it in ways that are either impossible or far less useful with either a smartphone or a laptop, regardless of iTunes.

I should totally patent the way people gesture to type on a keyboard.

Maybe the next guy won't do this?