In my opinion, the Lightroom edit in the OP is the best. Many of the replies with Darktable edits look extremely bad. Some have extreme color artifacts.
Highlight reconstruction was a major and well-known shortcoming in versions they were using. Better highlight reconstruction for large blown-out areas was finally added in darktable 4.0.
Swift is absolutely an afterthought on non-Apple platforms.
Apple doesn't even provide ARM slices for the official Swift Docker images (https://hub.docker.com/_/swift?tab=tags) which makes server-side development on their own cutting-edge M1 (ARM) machines basically impossible.
The jump from 3840x2160 to 5120x2880 is nearly 2x, in pixel count. That is not just a 'tweak existing technology' kind of jump.
TCON's that can handle a single logical 4K display are just hitting the market, and Apple has one shipping today to handle 5K. A timing controller may be simple tech, but it's cool that they're so far ahead of the curve.
It's a big jump in pixel count but a 2X increase in bandwidth can be brute forced / tweaked out of existing technology similar to DL DVI or DP MST. IMO that doesn't diminish it at all because lots of technical problems have somewhat obvious solutions but actually making it happen is still difficult and expensive. Even more so if you want to avoid making any ugly trade offs in the process.
No. Under Time Dilation, everyone on the node is affected equally. This gives you more reaction time, but your opponent gets the same benefit.
Edit: I see what you were saying now. Actually yes, I believe that there have been cases in which capital ships are tackled in TiDi systems. This puts them at a disadvantage since the corporation who captured them can quickly respond, and it takes them much longer to try and escape tackle.
Is this an attempt to spark some inane conspiracy theory?
A suggestion that Aaron's involvement as a 'source' made him a target of the government, so his suicide was not actually a suicide but rather a targeted attack?
That was my first reaction: -if- this were true, it would 'help' the DoJ 'explain' why the prosecution was so vigorous. (Tying Swartz to something they've spent years bad-jacketing.) A similar move is the claim he FOIA'd tapes of Manning in custody. Looks like the Big FUD Machine's running.
"The stock has been artificially inflated for too long and this was bound to happen some time."
Actually, Apple's P/E ratio has been fairly modest for a long time, especially compared to other tech companies that don't rake in as much cash. Microsoft's P/E is nearly 15, compared to Apple's 12.
Maybe not a putdown, but it's silly to view Apple's defining characteristic as their ability to assemble a device from available parts.
If that ability is what makes them successful, then their rival phone manufacturers should be even more successful since they often use faster processors and bigger screens and more RAM than Apple.
It's not about the ability to put them together, it's about deciding what to put together, when to do it, how to market it and of course a big part: what software to put on it.
I'd never say "all Apple do is" about this, just that it is what they do, and they do it better than anyone else.
Microsoft developed the "old" Surface (now called PixelSense) at the same time Apple was working on the iPhone. Both were released in very early 2007 after years of R&D work. Both had multitouch UIs of the type you seem to think are so innovative. Both arrived at these solutions at the same time because the wide availability of capacitive touchscreens (which neither MS nor Apple invented, mind you -- capacitive and multitouch tech was being done in lab environments back in the late-70s/early-80s by CERN, Bell Labs and others) made such UIs an obvious next step to anyone paying attention to the field.
Apple made billions off the iPhone while MS made peanuts off the Surface solely because of how each tried to bring their respective takes on the product to market. I give Apple all the credit in the world for knowing how to package technology up for mainstream use and bring it in at a price point the masses can afford, while Microsoft was dicking around with giant table size systems (primarily because being burned by the stylus-touch tablet market early, they had stupidly convinced themselves that general consumers didn't want touch at all) but you're totally wrong about this tech being completely innovative and non-existing before Apple came down from the mountain and presented it to us, because that isn't how it went down at all.
For someone who seems to have so little grasp on the real history behind all this stuff you should be careful about calling other HN readers out as you do in a post below this one.
His parentheses made you miss the rest of his sentence.
> Both arrived at these solutions at the same time because the wide availability of capacitive touchscreens (...) made such UIs an obvious next step to anyone paying attention to the field.
He was saying that capacitive was inspiration to both, not used by both.
If timing and marketing is all that matters for market success then Apple should NOT have been successful with iPod or iPad since they weren't the first MP3 player or tablet. And they definitely didn't have the experience of companies like Sony when it comes to marketing.
You criticize others about grasp on real history when you seem so quick to ignore it yourself.
The question isn't whether Apple was and is successful. The question is whether they deserve a ~two-decade monopoly on concepts that were incremental improvements on ideas developed by others. The parent comment in particular is meant to address a previous comment by nirvana that claimed "touch-oriented UI" was invented by Apple.
I agree that it's about more than just timing and marketing, however I'd definitely suggest that Apple's marketing was superior to Sony's and played a big part in their success. Not the only part, but a big one.
>"Microsoft developed the "old" Surface .. at the same time Apple was working on the iPhone. Both were released in very early 2007... had multitouch UIs of the type you seem to think are so innovative. "
>"Both arrived at these solutions at the same time because the wide availability of capacitive touchscreens"
There are many errors in this claim.
Capacitive Touchscreens were not widely available at that time at all, which is why the early iPhone ripoffs used resistive screens.
This is also why the Microsoft PixelSense used CAMERAS.
Quoting from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PixelSense"It is a 30 in (76 cm) 4:3 rear projection display (1024x768) with integrated PC and five near-infrared (IR) cameras that can see fingers and objects placed on the display."
For emphasis:
"and five near-infrared (IR) cameras"
>"For someone who seems to have so little grasp on the real history behind all this stuff you should be careful about calling other HN readers out as you do in a post below this one."
I think its hilarious that people would accuse me of having "so little grasp on the real history" when you just claimed that the Microsoft PixelSense used "widely available" "capacitive touchscreens".
So, which is it, did you know that it actually used cameras and thought you could lie and get it by me? Or were you genuinely ignorant of the "history behind this stuff" and just repeating what you'd heard from someone else because it fits your ideology and you live in the Reality Distortion Field where Apple never invented anything?
Seriously. 9/10 of the "rebuttals" I see on Hacker News are of the quality of the one you just posted... and not only were you blatantly and obviously wrong in a way that you wouldn't have been if you'd ever bothered to research any of this, but you accused me of not knowing my history based on a made up claim of your own.
The bottom line is you're following an ideology, and because that ideology has supplanted reasoning for you, you believe-- with the conviction of a religious zealot-- what you hear that fits your reality distortion field. And thus it is inconceivable to you that I might actually know what I am talking about.
IF you'd just said "Didn't the microsoft surface use a capacitive touch screen?" that would be very excusable. But even then-- and even if it HAD-- it wouldn't support the claim that Apple never invented anything, or specifically never invented a UI for iOS.
Unless you're also claiming that somehow the iOS UI is the same as the microsoft one... which would again be absurd and easily disproven.
See the thing is, you aren't even arguing on the topic-- you're just throwing out (false) claims to try and create cover!
If you were the outlier it would be one thing, but on any of these threads you can find hundreds of people posting this kind of easily disproven nonsense that doesn't even address the issue.
This level of discourse is just terrible. Please make arguments, please make them to the actual point. Even if you'd been factually right, you wouldn't have been addressing my point at all.
> Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.
I worked on a tablet in '99. I wrote the widget library (we used Nano-X plus a custom widget library and font loader to keep memory usage down - this was a unit with 32MB RAM...) and managed the developers who wrote the apps that are featured:
(the names on the people in the phone book are names of actual employees of Screen Media at the time, actually - I'm there too)
Notice how it is described: Not as something new, but as another entrant up against another product. Even in '99/'00 our touch based tablet was not a new idea.
In fact, one of the companies that Screen Media was co-located with was a touch screen importer and distributorship that served as our major go-to guys for ideas and information about what the touch screens of the time were capable of - we didn't invent any of the ideas of this type of touch screen UI because we could go to our local touch screen distributor and ask what was common practice in the market already. The only remotely new thing (and at least Ericsson, and probably others, beat us there too) was to apply it to a tablet type device rather than a kiosk.
We did use resistive touch screens, not capacitive, but the UI was most definitively "touch oriented" - there were no hard keys on the standard unit at all. Web browsing, phone functions, address books, e-mail, was all done via touch.
The tablet used a port of Opera, and Opera subsequently introduced gestures in 2001, but while gestures was then new to browsers, that was not considered anything revolutionary either - just applying existing, known technology in a novel way.
The idea that a "touch oriented UI" didn't exist before Apple developed it is fiction.
The device you linked to has a touchscreen and a UI, but it is simply a desktop widgets and metaphors with the minimal adaptations necessary to make it work with a touch screen.
None of the key metaphors or widgets Apple developed for iOS are present in that device.
To claim that Apple didn't invent anything in iOS, and use that device as an example is to claim that there was nothing new in the iPhone because Alexanger Graham Bell had phones before.
It is absurd. And to me, all it says is that you're desperate to rationalize this belief that Apple never invented anything.
Remember: I'm rebutting the claim that Apple just assembled off the shelf pieces, like legos.
I think you should take a step back. Honestly, you are making even people who agree with you cringe.
You are replying to a very informative post from a person who directly worked on a touch-screen device. What about that post made you think it was "desperate to rationalize this belief that Apple never invented anything"? I am trying to determine how anyone could read that post and come away thinking it was desperate.
And you are making giant leaps in your arguments. The comment does not claim that Apple never invented anything in iOS or elsewhere. He is rebutting your claim that Apple invented the "touch oriented UI". You ignored him and fell back to some more specific claims about widgets and metaphors (perhaps you should have been more specific to begin with?).
I will close by quoting from another of your comments in this very thread. You would do well to read these as a reply to your own reply above.
The bottom line is you're following an ideology, and
because that ideology has supplanted reasoning for you, you
believe-- with the conviction of a religious zealot-- what
you hear that fits your reality distortion field. And thus
it is inconceivable to you that I might actually know what
I am talking about.
See the thing is, you aren't even arguing on the topic--
you're just throwing out (false) claims to try and create cover!
Oh bullshit. We were doing finger operated gesture user interface on the Palm in 2000 (pie menus on virtual buttons for consumer electronic IR remote control interfaces). Lots of people were using touch screens with finger gestures. The Palm included a stylus, but if the interface was designed correctly you could certainly use it with your fingers, and pie menus (self revealing gestures) worked just fine, and there is lots of older prior art and research about touch screen pie menus and gestures.
It didn't take much to allow using the Palm with fingers - I used to write on it with my fingers rather than the stylus because I found it more convenient and still accurate enough.
Yes, and the telephone existed before cellphones, but that doesn't mean the cellphone wasn't innovative. Your argument doesn't address the point, and is a bullshit rationalization for a claim you can't support. I refuse to believe you are so stupid as to think that is a rebuttal.
"a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them."
Hmmm. I'm still using my Palm Centro phone, which used to be a Treo, which used to be a Palm PDA, which used to be a Palm Pilot. All of those have a touch oriented UI, and most if not all of them pre-date iPhone by years.
So now I guess we can watch the debate about whether Newton or its competitors pre-date each other.
None of those have a touch based UI. Touch means finger touches. Very different from a stylus which is only touching one or two pixels at a time. This is very easy to sense because the stylus pushes two layers together physically and effectively is closing swithces. A touch is much difeferent, a finger is an amorphous blob over many pixels of a varying shape, and Apple had to figure out how to resolve that into a single pixel you intended to touch (so not the center) and ignore other things like knuckles on the screen, etc.
This is a major invention and a major difference, and that is just one part of what made the iOS touch UI.
This is the fundamental problem- you and others say nonsense like this, and I don't know if you're simply not well informed about the nature of these technologies, or you don't care and are making arguments because of ideology that you think will work propagandistically. I mean, I guess ofr many people they don't care that they aren't the same thing, they can just pretend like they are in debates like this, right?
I really don't know which. I keep hearing people claim that Apple stole from Xerox[1] and here you imply that the palm might have come before the newton and that it is up for debate.
What's next? The Mac stole from windows?
Seriously, what level of basic understanding of the history and nature of these technologies can I expect here on Hacker News? And do you get off the hook for repeating this nonsense simply because it fits your anti-apple ideology?
[1] I shouldn't need this footnote, but due to the aforementioned ignorance or dishonesty, I do. Apple licensed Xerox's early research into what later became the GUI by selling them pre-IPO Apple stock which made Xerox a pretty penny and would be worth over a billion now if they had never sold it.
According to who, you? Feel free to argue around the technological improvements Apple have brought, but to argue that everything everybody has always called "touchscreen" isn't that... makes no sense.
And even by your strange definition of a "touch based UI", were Apple the first company to create capacitive touch screens? Hell, I don't think they were even the first to create phones using them, if I remember correctly LG beat them to it with the Prada? Not to mention how many people used Palms etc. using their fingers rather than a stylus.
As to working out how to ignore stuff like knuckles touching the screen... wonderful, I'm sure Apple did a great job in this area. I haven't used enough devices to really have an opinion of whether they were the first to perfect this, but it's irrelevant. Nobody is claiming Apple haven't done some stuff better than other companies - but even if you can definitively say that they created the first really good touch based UI, that's not the same as creating the first touch based UI.
You know what I expect from HN? Civilised discussion. All I've seen from you is rudeness, arrogance and a holier-than-thou attitude that could be summed up by the last part of your profile description.
Of course touch means finger touches. Writing with a pencil or stylus isn't called touching. This is pretty basic stuff, it just seems as though you have some axe to grind with this poster and want to nit pik at semantics, but in doing to it just looks rather childish.
I'm not sure that's true. For example, in the Tablet PC space, a touch screen could mean that a screen responded to a stylus, finger, or both, but usually, just the stylus! And even before the first iPod came out in 2001, screens in PDAs were referred to as touch-screens.
Handspring Edge, 2001:
"THIS WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER PHYSICAL DAMAGE TO
THE SURFACE OF THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING CRACKS OR SCRATCHES ON
THE LCD TOUCHSCREEN OR OUTSIDE CASING."
A review of Treo 650 suggests the finger worked on large areas, 3 years before the iPhone was released, but the UI buttons in the PalmOS were unchanged from small ones created 10 years earlier for stylus-access only. (In this light, Apple's innovation was to require action buttons to be at least 40x40 pixels with enough spacing from each other in their new iPhone OS, now called iOS.)
http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/palm/treo-650.html
"Extensive use of touch screen allows finger access but you will need the built-in touch pen for pulling down menus and making selections."
One could argue that Apple should not be allowed to sell a phone without a keyboard since they're improving on the Treo 650's design, just like Samsung should not be allowed to sell a phone with a larger screen and multiple physical buttons since they're improving on the iPhone design.
My overall argument was not about the terminology, but the claim that Apple invented touching with your fingers - so not sure why you picked this one point to disagree with me on if it's a childish semantic.
But if "touch means finger touches" in the tech world then what do you call devices designed to be used with a stylus? Not touchscreen? And in general English "touch" doesn't mean "with fingers" either.
> I remember correctly LG beat them to it with the Prada?
You remember incorrectly. Regarding the Palm as well. In fact, your claim is a lie. It doesn't rebut the point I am making, and instead is making a post hoc ergo proctor hoc fallacy in order to knock down a strawman.
>You know what I expect from HN? Civilised discussion.
A key component of civilized discussion is reading what someone says, thinking about it, figuring out what they said and why they said it. Then thinking about where their error is, if you disagree with them, and presenting an argument to the point that addresses that error.
It doesn't involve spewing logical fallacies and then characterizing them in a derogatory fashion.
>All I've seen from you is rudeness, arrogance and a holier-than-thou attitude that could be summed up by the last part of your profile description.
One of the problems with Hacker News is that people often interpret the act of thinking differently, or presenting evidence that disagrees with the belief they'd like to hold, as "rude, arrogant and holier-than-thou" or other derogatory terms that they then feel comfortable throwing at people.
I can't count the number of times on this site I've gotten personal attacks, such as yours, responded by not calling them names (as I have not called you names in response) and merely illuminated what they were doing in the hopes that they could see their errors (I named your logical fallacies above, for instance) only to have it escalate.
Unlike you, I don't expect civilized discussion from Hacker News, because as a minority, I've found that the voting mechanism gives bullies a feeling of superiority and free reign to attack others.
I often leave this site for months at a time because I've been subjected to stalking, personal threats, harassment, and name calling.
But here I am in a thread where I know I'm the minority. I haven't gloated, I've tried to explain. When I've seen repetition of very obvious fallacies, I've asked, with genuine wonderment, if people are simply not aware of these things or not. (I mean, really, you cite the LG Prada... are you not aware of the details of that phone? You say "If I remember correctly", so it sounds like you could simply be repeating what you've heard from others.
Do you realize that almost all of the claims made in this thread of prior examples of work that negates the assertion that Apple is innovative are being made by people repeating claims they've heard elsewhere without understanding the context? (There's only two possibilities when someone tells a falsehood-- either an intent to deceive, or an error. I'm presuming an error here, which I suspect is what you call "arrogant", but the alternative is to presume dishonesty.)
So, yes, I'm not ashamed of my profile description. It's an explanation of why I'll just drop out of discussions and why I won't just roll over and repeat the falsehoods that would garner me much more karma.
Do you realize you never made an argument against the point I was making? You expressed some conclusions that, even if they were accurate, don't argue against my point.
For there to be discussion, you'd need to address my point, right? But you didn't. Near as I can tell you responded because what I said didn't agree with your ideology (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to be the motive, since you didn't respond to the point.) And in an ideological response like that, you're going to cite "proof" that usually amounts to talking points. "The palm had it!" "The Prada Had it!" But that isn't argument.
You didn't notice that the "it" is not the same, and that the it your talking about is not the same it I'm talking about.
"I can't count the number of times on this site I've gotten personal attacks, such as yours, responded by not calling them names (as I have not called you names in response) and merely illuminated what they were doing in the hopes that they could see their errors (I named your logical fallacies above, for instance) only to have it escalate."
That says everything about you, nothing about me or this website. Look through the rest of the comments on this thread, notice how you're the only one getting into arguments while others are simply discussing and disagreeing with each other.
Notice how you're the only person I've written negatively about yet you're not the only person arguing for Apple - maybe, just maybe, what I wrote is about you, not about my hatred of Apple. Oh, and while my hatred of everything Apple fits your narrative beautifully, I'm actually a proud owner of two iPods (currently), an iPad and a macbook. Nowhere in this thread have I even come out in support of either side, all I did was debate a point in the discussion and pointed out that your attitude wasn't one that could win anyone over.
As it happens you're wrong in this topic, but the way you argue you wouldn't get many people to change their minds if you were right. And the fact that your comments in the past have led to stalking and threats... Clearly I'm not alone in my opinion.
Incidentally, you're now the second person I've ever criticised on HN, rather than just disagreed with. The first was a neo-nazi who proudly displayed swasticas on his website. I'm not an asshole, I don't call people out on their attitude because I disagree with them, I reserve it for people I consider need telling. It's fine if you disagree with my judgement of you, but don't be under any illusion that it isn't a judgement and is just my wanting to win the argument.
So, Apple licensed iOS from another manufacturer? Really? Who was it?[1]
That's the only way I could be "wrong about this topic". You didn't even notice that you weren't responding to what I said, but instead knocking down a strawman!
And despite that and your insults, I granted you leeway and responded in a civilized manner. And for that, you insulted me again, and then compared me to a neo-nazi with more insults.
I would guess you're trying to make me angry, but you're so far off the mark I'm mostly just perplexed.
Hacker News would be a better place if people focused on arguing to the point and not the person. I've responded to the point, you should too.
[1] I was rebutting the claim that the iPhone was assembled from off the shelf components, like legos.
I wrote on my Palm Pilot Pro in '98 using my fingers. I preferred it to using the stylus, because it was faster and more comfortable for me. (Incidentally, when I left the job where I used the Palm at the end of '98, it was to work on developing a touch based tablet which had no stylus at all - see one of my other posts in this thread).
The stylus on the Palm was optional for better precision. It was by no means necessary. Not only could I write reliably with my fingertips on a Palm Pilot Pro, it was precise enough with my fingers to play games and draw stuff with it.
> This is the fundamental problem- you and others say nonsense like this
It's quite rich that you claim this when you yourself are making spurious claims about how these devices supposedly couldn't be used reliably with fingers. I can only conclude that you yourself do not have firs thand experience with these devices, or have forgotten how they worked.
The idea that the palm was a touch based UI is simply false. You needed a stylus and the UI was designed for a stylus. You could do some things with fingers and some apps were designed for finger use, where it was appropriate.
The reason you needed a stylus is because the technology was not advanced enough to detect finger touches with the accuracy that the iPhone does.
Even if Palm had all of the algorithms that apple developed for iOS, the ARM processors in those palms was not fast enough.
To claim that Apple invented nothing new because you could get a Palm to react to your finger is frankly a lie. It is a shameful lie, because when you let your ideology drive you to dishonesty, you've lost all integrity.
I have given the specifics of how and why my claims are true, but you ignore them, and you post dishonest stuff like this.
I genuinely don't know if you are simply ignorant and repeating what you've heard from others how are lying, or you're lying yourself, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter.
For the record, I have owned Palms and Newtons and Compaq's stylus driven device (iPaq I think it was) etc.
None of them could be used completely by fingers and all of them were designed to be used reliably by styluses.
I never said they would not react to finger presses at all, and I never said they couldn't be used in a limited fasion with finger presses.... so pretending that I did is yet another dishonesty.
None of those have a touch based UI. Touch means finger touches.
This is dishonestly revisionist, given how common it was to see people thumbing through applications on Palm devices. That Palms came with styluses doesn't mean that they weren't touch-friendly in a lot of ways, and that should be taken into account.
Since I don't know, I thought I'd ask -- were Apple the first to create a multi-touch UI for a phone? That would seem to me to be the major innovation in touch UI if that's the case.
Apple was neither the first to create a multi-touch user interface (the first consumer multitouch device I know of was the Lemur, but I'm sure that was predated) nor the first to put it in a handheld PDA-ish device or a phone (LG beat the iPhone to market with the Prada--which, incidentally, also used very few physical buttons in favor of software buttons).
The entire argument in favor of Apple's patents is bullshit, and nirvana has a history of bad-faith fanboyism on the topic.
Hm, I'd argue it's not that obvious, otherwise companies would just try to miniaturize everything hoping that there's a market for it. Companies won't typically make this leap because it's fairly costly and their product manager may not get a bonus that year if the product is a flop. It's only obvious to you because everything is obvious in hindsight.
Whether something is obvious or not is irrelevant to this discussion.... the fact of the matter is, Apple created iOS, they didn't license it. The point I made was that Apple created that component, it didn't exist before. It was not off the shelf (as others were broadly claiming.)
Further, "obvious" is silly since nobody did it before them, and it is a post hoc ergo proctor hoc argument.
>"Apple was neither the first to create a multi-touch user interface (the first consumer multitouch device I know of was the Lemur, but I'm sure that was predated) nor the first to put it in a handheld PDA-ish device or a phone (LG beat the iPhone to market with the Prada--which, incidentally, also used very few physical buttons in favor of software buttons)."
The LG Prada was single touch and it did not have a touch UI. Just a gimmick screen that would let you launch functions. IT wasn't even a smart phone, it was a feature phone.
>The entire argument in favor of Apple's patents is bullshit,
Its only "bullshit" that the facts of reality don't fit your claims.
>and nirvana has a history of bad-faith fanboyism on the topic.
I do have a history of citing facts that deflate ideological balloons in response to people like you who lie about history and call me names.
It really is a shame that you choose not to be honest. I mean, that guy was asking a legitimate question, and you lied to him!
> The LG Prada was single touch and it did not have a touch UI. Just a gimmick screen that would let you launch functions. IT wasn't even a smart phone, it was a feature phone.
On this you are correct. I was thinking of the Prada II, which was multitouch. My apologies. That does not necessarily make Apple's use of multitouch the novel concept you assert, however--to me, Surface, Lemur, etc. make shrinking it down to PDA size (whether or not a phone radio is in the device or not) an obvious progression.
The rest of your post is more of the curiously self-absorbed nattering we've been seeing throughout this thread, however. "Ideological balloons" is funny--I own three iOS devices and two Android ones, I have no ideological allegiance either way. I do, however, have a rather strong aversion to using the court system instead of competing and I find it ridiculous that something like the iOS "bounce" at the end of a list is a patentable effect. I am not impressed by Samsung's attempts to copy iOS, either; I find them to be lacking in creativity, but I do not find a lack of creativity to be grounds for rent-seeking and legal action.
I also have a strong aversion to your style of posting, however--your brand of obnoxiousness is something I came to HN to get away from--so I will not be replying to you again. I am sure you will enjoy the last word.
Apple did not license iOS from someone else who invented multi-touch. I was rebutting the claim that they just assembled the iPhone from off the shelf parts, like legos.
You're so focused on your ideology that you're making an argument against patents (the context where obviousness would be relevant) in response to me saying Apple created iOS.
I find your need to characterize me, rather than address my point, and your dishonesty about the point I was even making, a form of obnoxiousness that I can do without, so feel free to ignore me. '
But don't pretend like I've done anything wrong here- you lied about me, and you characterized me and you called me names. Thus I must conclude you come to HN to be in the google distortion field, unpreturbed by anyone who would bring up pesky facts you don't like. And since I dared to make an argument you can't rebut, you feel fine insulting me.
You made the error, buddy, and you're blaming me for it. Shame on you.
Precisely they used capacitive touch sensor (used on touchpads mostly at the time) instead of resistive standard used on PDAs; in practical terms this was a switch from notebook-like experience (which invites writing and checking small boxes) to magazine-like (smooth, glossy surface inviting sliding pages and large Nokia-like UI plus gestures to remove accuracy/finger-hiding problems). This way, multitouch rather just come in bundle with capacitive technology. BTW this is why I see the whole stuff as a mainly target group revolution -- simply way more people buy magazines than notebooks.
Actually Mac did borrow a few usability from Windows too.
1. Finder Sidebar: Windows Navigation pane
2. The Mac Path bar: Windows Address bar
3. Back and Forward navigation buttons in folder windows
4. Minimizing to document windows into app icon
5. Screen Sharing: Remote Desktop Connection
6. Time Machine: Backup and Restore
7. System Preferences: Control Panel
8. ActiveSync and Exchange 2007 support
9. Command-Tab: Alt-Tab
10. Terminal: Command Prompt
While most of these are so obvious and can also be called prior art, standing in Apple's shoes, its an innovation by Windows, they had it in their OS before Apple. If you find the above list funny you know that Apple tried to sue Microsoft for having a GUI. A GUI !!
Your response is non-responsive. None of these features were stolen in the original Mac UI from 1984 from windows because Windows did not exist in 1984. My point was people were claiming someone "stole" from something that came out later.
Also, most of the things you list appeared originally on the Mac, or the windows "equivalents" really aren't and haven't caught up to the mac.
The only thing that the Mac did take from windows-- that's on your list anyway-- is Alt-Tab.
> most of the things you list appeared originally on the Mac
Since you seem like a fanboy who loves to make up facts without any basis. Let's iterate over the list one by one in more detail:
1. Finder Sidebar: Windows Navigation pane -> Appeared in Mac = Mac OS X 10.3 Panther = Two years after the Navigation pane appeared in Windows XP.
2. The Mac Path bar: Windows Address bar -> Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard added an optional Path bar at the bottom of folder windows to display the path of any selected file or folder. Double-clicking a folder in the path opens that folder. This feature first appeared as the Address bar in Windows Vista, which began appearing nearly a year before Leopard shipped.
3. Back and Forward navigation buttons in folder windows -> Microsoft first put the Forward and Back buttons of Web browsers into its folder windows with Windows 2000. Oddly, Apple first included only a Back button in the original Mac OS X. It wasn't until version 10.2 Jaguar that a Forward button appeared.
4. Minimizing to document windows into app icon -> Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard adds an option for minimizing, which is turned off by default. Instead of creating a new icon in the Dock, you can have a document window minimize into the application icon it belongs to, as Windows has been doing with taskbar.
5. Screen Sharing: Remote Desktop Connection -> Appeared in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard which was already implemented in Windows XP.
6. Time Machine: Backup and Restore -> Really? Do I really need to prove that System Restore and Backup n Restore appeared before Time Machine??
7. System Preferences: Control Panel -> Before Mac OS X, Mac system settings were found in a set of separate files. Microsoft put all the settings in one convenient place. For Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah, Apple stole Microsoft's idea and called it System Preferences.
8. ActiveSync and Exchange 2007 support -> Macs have long been second-class citizens to Windows when it comes to Exchange Server. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard added native support of Exchange Server's 2007's group scheduling, contact, and mail services.
9. Command-Tab: Alt-Tab -> Well you agreed to that.
10. Terminal: Command Prompt -> Windows has had the command prompt integrated since the very first version. Apple finally added Terminal finally after the 9th version.
Love your products and be loyal to your manufacturers, that is one thing but please don't turn off the logic side of your brain!! If you are going to respond to this comment please backup your statements too.
To be fair on 10, both OS X and Windows got that from earlier predecessors. And for 7, I'm pretty sure I remember System 7 and earlier having single Preferences folders, just like Windows 95's Control Panels. No idea which came first, but it's a pretty obvious idea once you strap a GUI on top of a config file. I'd be astonished if there wasn't a similar idea in every single GUI environment out there.
My fingernail works just fine, and with much finer control than my blob of a finger on an aPhone or iPhone. Apple added some cool stuff, but I definitely interact with my Centro's screen by touch, with very little error.
Who is saying that Apple invented the touch UI? This is a false argument. Apple's patent is on a very specific type of touch interface and the interactions with it. Apple-style multi-touch interfaces did not exist before the iPhone.
And if they did, you could be damn sure that whoever did invent it would have been suing Apple left and right.
Come off it, there's no such thing as "Apple-style multi-touch", there's only multi-touch, and it doesn't belong to anyone.
It's disappointing to see people actually siding with Apple here. Is it brand loyalty that blurs people's judgement?
The fact that icons are sized and spaced similarly across these devices is because most people have a similar index finger size. It's obvious what the ideal icon size and placement should be on any touch device for optimal touch usability.
The legal defense of "obvious concept" is absolutely true. There are limits to how design can optimize details such as icon display, and touch input. The concepts Apple are trying to own simply do no belong to them due to their obvious nature.
Slide to unlock, the page bounce, the icons, all of it is obvious stuff once you have the hardware pieced together.
As a result of this lawsuit, Apple has lost me as customer. I am not rewarding childish hypocrisy. I do not respect billion dollar playground fights in the courts because someone else made a similar phone that has icons and multi-touch. What a waste of time and money.
A poster previously in the thread has said that touch screens did not exist before Apple used them; then when presented with a bunch of touch screen devices has said that touch must only be fingers.
But to address your point: multi touch OS
iPhone - 2007
Minority Report - 2004 (design ideas, not working implementation)
Having read some of your (very many) posts (that were made after mine) it appears you're now saying that Apple does not just assemble existing parts to create iPhone - that innovation happened in software and hardware to existing stuff and that iPhone is not possible without that innovation. (I think this a fair paraphrase of the most important point you're making; please let me know if I've got it wrong, and realise that I made a mistake and that I'm not lying to distort facts).
If we limit conversation to the sentence fragment "assemble components like lego" then most people would agree that Apple does more than that. It's unfortunate that someone in this thread used that phrase; it's unfortunate that you wrote such a broad response.
So, now we discuss whether what Apple (and it doesn't need to be Apple, my view would be the same about other companies) did amounts to patentable innovation.
We're not going to agree on that bit. But for me that's fine. You think the money and research and work that Apple did, and the result, is a significantly different implementation and so is patentable. I think it's a refinement upon existing technology.
It is, it is not an off the shelf component that apple just bought and assembled as other people were claiming.
I think its funny that people are responding to what I said, pretending I said something else, and then others are attacking me for saying what I didn't say... and you're saying I said it!
I guess it doesn't matter what I say does it? Everything gets distorted by the google distortion field.
After spending way too much time reading all of these comments, I think I have figured out the difficulty behind most of this subthread:
You're simply not clear or precise enough in your comments and statements. It takes you awhile to fully explain what you mean, and in the interim, rather than immediately realizing what has happened and making yourself more clear, you convince yourself that everyone else is crazy for not understanding exactly what you mean.
Please don't take this as a personal attack. I am merely observing. I don't think anyone here is out to get you. Most people are well-intentioned and are arguing against the precise statements you've written, not the ideas in your head. If you can't see that, then there may be no hope. But I'm hoping you will re-read some of this thread and come to the same realization.
Here's a quote from you:
Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented
UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.
This statement is horribly imprecise if, as I now believe, what you intended to convey was something like:
Apple does not merely put together existing pieces of
technology like legos. They created iOS from scratch,
which represented a significant amount of original work
in the area of touch oriented UI.
If you slow down a little, and really read what you are about to post to ensure that it reflects the thoughts in your head, I think you'll have a much more successful time debating with others here on HN.
You've shifted the goalposts from "touchscreen" to "touch screens only include things operated by fingers". The DS fits that requirement. Note that makers and sellers of touch screens don't make the distinction that you claim is obvious.
You're now claiming that Apple licensed the Nintendo DS OS and put it in the iPhone, which is so false I don't believe you believe it, and I suspect you've simply become confused about what the discussion is about.
I never said there was never a screen you could get a reaction from by touching before the iPhone.
Never said that at all.
I said that to build the iPhone Apple couldn't just use off the shelf components, they had to invent new ones.
People have shown many examples of touch oriented OSs developed independently of Apple, released before iPhone.
The screen existed before iPhone. The software to drive those screens existed before iPhone. Integrating that combination into an "OS" has existed before iPhone. And the idea of multi-touch surfaces was shown in a movie (where characters interacted with both big screens and small portable devices) before iPhone was released.
You may say that I have ignored the rest of your post that I quote above -
> And having seen them, other companies can't replicate them well at all because they don't do the research.
> Calling them a lego assembler ignores all the real innovation they do.
Step away from the keyboard. Calm down. Maybe you'll realise that people don't feel the need to say "I agree with this bit" because they assume that they not talking to a rabid troll who'll accuse everyone of lying.
>Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.
Umm... I guess you never used a kiosk before the Iphone then. Calling someone lego assembler is not necessarily a bad thing. You can put two and two together and create great things but people are bound to copy great things and make it better. That is how innovation drives forward. Ever heard of the phrase "Reinventing the wheel"? Well, if everybody had patents on their "wheel", then everyone else has to waste their time and resources on reinventing the wheel. Like, Reddit was 4chan and Digg put together with better improvements. Putting two and two might make u a lego assembler but the end result isn't that bad!
> "you're claiming that Apple licensed their touch UI"
Obviously nobody in this thread is claiming such a thing. Perhaps they misunderstood your earlier point (or perhaps you made it poorly) and thus their counterpoints are irrelevant, but that is not the same thing.
You should be more charitable and less trollish in the way you choose to disagree with others.
Just like to add that there are innovations in terms of manufacturing that affect the marketplace at large that are solely due to Apple requirements.
I'm talking about Gorilla Glass (factory funded by Apple so the inventor of the substance could churn it out for iPhones) and now Retina displays. Did Samsung build their own Retina production plant?
I also don't buy that essentially saying: "go find your own way to do this." Stifles innovation. Quite the opposite IMO.
You're claiming the LG Prada runs an OS that Apple licensed from LG for the iPhone? Do tell. Apple didn't invent iOS? Really?
By the way, the LG is not multitouch, it isn't even a smartphone. IF Apple had licensed it -- necessary for the claim that Apple just assembled lego blocks-- the iPhone would not work the way it does.
Bespoke touch oriented UI systems have been around for a very long time, some of them surprisingly sophisticated and innovative. A mate of mine used to do interfaces for touchscreen information kiosks, for instance.
Except it's not irrelevant, because the user doesn't care whether it's capacitive, infra-red, or little gnomes perched on top of the screen translating your finger movements into magic spells. Apple didn't invent capacitive screens, nor did they invent multitouch. They packaged them cleverly and used what leverage they had at the time to force the price down.
There were phone handsets with buttons on before cordless phones, so as far as the UI goes, there was little major invention initially.
The main inventive requirement in touchscreen phones is in making small, thin, cheap touchscreen modules. The UI concepts that then run on those kinds of devices have however been the subject of design studies for decades before that, and have been implemented in various forms on commercial touchscreen installations.
Also, much of the graphic polish of many of these devices seem to draw a direct lineage to stuff like the old praystation series of websites by Joshua Davis and his experiments with tsunami menus and inertial scrolling elements.
Everyone is missing the point here. The problem isn't that these cameras are old tech and using outdated CCD censors. If these were the best images we've seen to date of Mars, you're right, there'd be a "Good Enough Factor" — the best images we've seen from a NASA mission, but not as good as modern DSLRs. Understandable.
You are comparing the very first initial images from Curiosity with the final processed images from Viking. Also, the haz-cams on Curiosity are there only to help Curiosity see where it is going. Whatever design trade-offs they make, they need to make the priority be "don't break the 2.5 billion dollar rover that is supposed to last for over a decade."
If you use a low-res camera to take 1000 images of the same thing, you can use software to make a high-res image from those.
False dichotomies are fun and all, but let's be honest. Does it really either have to "die a hero" or "become the villain"?
The whole point is that Twitter has become the villain, and that App.net is providing an API infrastructure, not a closed social media experience owned by advertisers.
In my opinion, the Lightroom edit in the OP is the best. Many of the replies with Darktable edits look extremely bad. Some have extreme color artifacts.