

Analysis: Apple turns the flamethrower on Android - yread
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/03/apple_htc_google/

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maurycy
Ahh, Apple. Do you realize that your only value for most of my friends is that
your OS is actually a NIX beast?

I wish someone had enough money to come up with decent UI on Linux (pardon me
but GNOME looks and _works_ horrible), better typography and write some
general, and widely working, framework for supporting Windows drivers.

It should not take more than $20-30m I think. Ubuntu, unfortunately, is not
aggressive enough in those, critical, areas.

~~~
wtallis
Did you miss the reports about the estimated value of the Linux kernel being
about $1.4 _billion_?

What makes you think that completely overhauling GUIs on Linux to create a new
desktop environment _and_ adding binary compatibility with a completely
different (closed-source!) OS would cost less than 2% of what it would take to
write just the kernel?

Developing a UI framework with comparable technical capabilities to what OS X
provides might be doable starting from the best of what's available at the
moment given your budget of $20-30m, but building a cohesive desktop
environment on top of that would be an extremely huge undertaking.

~~~
xtho
It will be 2 billions in ten years when linux + new gui has conquered the
desktop (or what is left of it) and mobile devices. The difference between 2
billions and $20-30m (or whatever imaginary sum you suggest) is called profit
(or rather some share of it).

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raganwald
_A system in which a software module called an event consumer can indicate an
interest in receiving notifications about a specific set of events, and it
provides an architecture for efficiently providing notifications to the
[event] consumer_

Hmmm, Smalltalk implemented this. All objects in Smalltalk implement listening
and notification. Apple licensed certain concepts from Xerox, so this may or
may not apply. How about Java? Do Java programs that use its notifications
violate the patent?

Or what about Javascript libraries? How about Windows programs? It seems to me
that event-driven architectures with listeners are everywhere.

This is the natural consequence of software patents. Just as the inner
workings of a physical engine can be patented, the inner workings of software
can be patented, which means things like patterns.

I wonder if future versions of books like the GoF patterns book will be
annotated with warnings that some or all of the patterns are covered by patent
and must be licensed?

~~~
vaporstun
I wish more people would read the actual patent claims before coming to
conclusions about them based solely on their titles. It seems that many news
organizations have articles claiming this is a ridiculous lawsuit based on the
titles which they claim are overly broad. If however they took the time to
read the patent claims, they would see that they are relatively specific. For
example:
[http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=L-IeAAAAEBAJ&dq=5...](http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=L-IeAAAAEBAJ&dq=5,566,337)

Now I'm not saying that software patents are necessarily right, but I am
growing weary of people making broad generalizations based on the titles of
these patents and having them perpetuated. That is somewhat like a book review
discussing the book's title and deciding whether or not it's a good book
without having read the book or having any knowledge of its contents.

In other words, leave it to the lawyers. If you went to LN (Lawyer News -
doesn't exist, but let's pretend for my analogy) and there was a lawyer
claiming that Javascript is stupid because it has the word Java in it and
therefore must have all the attributes of Java and he hates Java, we'd all
cringe at his lack of knowledge of the subject and wish he'd leave it up to
the Hackers who actually know what they're talking about to criticize.

~~~
sern
That patent is on NeXTSTEP's NSDistributedNotificationCenter [1], which
admittedly might actually be enforceable (I'm not sure of any prior art in
this regard).

That said, after reading the claims of a lot of the other patents Apple is
citing it is apparent that they are complete rubbish, for example [2] (the
observer pattern applied to a desktop environment), [3] (generic proxy objects
for IPC/RPC - Smalltalk/CORBA did it), and [4] (WTF???????).

1\.
[http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Cocoa/C...](http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Notifications/Articles/NotificationCenters.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000216)

2\. <http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=zIwLAAAAEBAJ>

3\. <http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=7d4aAAAAEBAJ>

4\. <http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=HrobAAAAEBAJ>

~~~
protomyth
When you say "rubish", are you going off the description or the actual patent
claim? Descriptions are always written in broad strokes and never really seem
enforceable.

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d4nt
The article starts with some naive and clearly exaggerated statements about
what might happen before finally getting to the real point, which is:

> The case will take years to resolve, but that's no bad thing for Apple:
> manufacturers are going to be hesitant to create Android handsets...

If Apple thought they could get a clean victory they would go after Google.

~~~
yardie
I think it's pretty clear they are going after Google. By going after one
manufacturer you put the brakes on the rest. Either it was a piece of HTC
technology that violated patent or it was Google tech.

BTW. I hate the idea of software patents and wish it ends badly for Apple.

~~~
protomyth
I would rather that law makers deal with the IP issues in a mature way then
wish ill-will to someone using the current system. We really need to get some
pressure where it matters (government). The courts do what they are told for
the most part.

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euroclydon
This article has the clearest description of a "patent arsenal", and it's
purpose, that I have seen.

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aurora72
What could the Free Software Foundation be thinking about this, I wonder.
Particularly patenting the hand gestures sounds really absurd.

Doesn't Apple know that one cannot proceed by clinging on the patents and
legal protections alone.

~~~
smokinn
_Doesn't Apple know that one cannot proceed by clinging on the patents and
legal protections alone._

They're doing no such thing. They're trying to slow others so that they can
stay ahead.

For the longest time I refused to buy new smartphones because I don't agree
with Apple's iPhone lockdown (If I _buy_ a product, it's _mine_. Nowhere does
it say I'm leasing an iPhone, Apple should have no say about what I do with
it.) and because multi-touch was a make-or-break feature.

By keeping manufacturers afraid of implementing multi-touch Apple keeps
consumers like me from going to them because they seem behind on the times.

~~~
robotron
If Apple thinks I'm going to buy an iPhone in the future because they're using
legal methods to hinder the competition, they are dead wrong.

~~~
JeremyBanks
They know that some people would be bothered by this but they don't have any
great reason to care as the competetive edge this might give them on the 99%
of their market which does not care would far outweigh the damage done by
bothering the 1%.

~~~
freetard
99% of their market doesn't even know about this trial, or even what software
patents are. Only the one 1% that is bothered about this knows about and
understands the issue. In the end it will be a big loss of money for Apple and
its shareholders and HTC too. A lose-lose situation, well done Apple...

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brianobush
From the geek mindset, apple is the new microsoft. Apple has nice products,
but seemingly agressive in their approach. Don't they realize that competition
is good? Of course not...

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joe_the_user
Hmm,

Does this action actually make Nokia's suit look like a pre-strike in a war
that Apple had implicitly declared?

~~~
freetard
It does indeed.

