Apple Never Invented Anything

http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/09/02/apple-never-invented-anything/

by chmars • 14 years ago

245 207 14 years ago

Whenever I'm using "enterprise" software or some equally-awful tool that's sold using a feature checklist, I can't help but think about Steve Jobs's line about how innovation is saying no to 1000 things.

edit: Well, a feature checklist and $50,000 worth of sales dinners, games of golf and "gifts that do not violate the professional ethics rules of the company buying said tool."

5teev2• 14 years ago

I suspect the worst software is the kind where the person buying it is not the person using it. This might also explain Apple's recent successes.

mdonahoe5• 14 years ago

Can you clarify the point you are making?

Are you saying that Apple is succeeding because their customers are their users?

Or are you claiming Apple software sucks, and every ipad sold was a gift?

anextio• 14 years ago

To quote Zed Shaw on how enterprise software gets sold: "steak and strippers".

eckyptang9• 14 years ago

"Enterprise software" is about selling a $10,000,000 piece of software to one entity which requires specific features (and usually complex logic).

Apple's mantra is selling a $1 piece of software to 10,000,000 people who require a simple piece of software.

The two are perfectly valid. In fact the latter would not exist if it wasn't for enterprise software (such as CAD systems, inventory, supply chain management etc).

greedo5• 14 years ago

Have you purchased any "enterprise" software lately? The idea that it's customized, bespoke software addressing specific requirements of the customer couldn't be farther from the truth. Here's how it works at my company. Some "architect" decides we need to have an Identity Management System and consults his latest Gartner report. He looks for the packages in the Magic Quadrant, and contacts the vendors. Then we buy what's the safest, least threatening application we can, for an exorbitant price. Hire consultants to help deploy it, discovering that it's a pile of dung that doesn't do what it advertises, much less what we actually need to do.

This happens all the time in the "enterprise" world. Whether it's sold by IBM, BMC, etc etc.

Don't conflate "enterprise" software with anything complex or intelligent. It's typically some of the worst software you can find.

zerostar072• 14 years ago

Do we to start another debate with an inflaming article?

thejayoj• 14 years ago

Where's the inflaming part?

greedo5• 14 years ago

He probably didn't read the article and missed the irony of the title.

marcusf• 14 years ago

It doesn't feel very inflammatory, just re-iterating a point that to some seems very contentious, that the composition of separate parts Apple does is innovation.

Anyway, I very much like JLG and I liked and agree with the articles push.

endlessvoid94• 14 years ago

A breath of fresh air.

drats• 14 years ago

I made this case last week.

"Apple products are like a good classy restaurant or hotel chain. They take ingredients everyone has and put a lot of work into fit and finish, they make the customer feel special for a slightly higher price."[1]

And I stand by it. I'll go even further actually, I think Apple is one of the least innovative big companies. Look at all the big research labs at Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM or Google. Anyone who seriously follows this stuff knows a) Apple doesn't have a profile in the academic world and b) knows enough computer history to know Apple is claiming things invented decades ago.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435504

stephencanon2• 14 years ago

It's clear that you didn't actually read the linked article, since it argues precisely the opposite.

klawed2• 14 years ago

in·no·va·tive/ˈinəˌvātiv/ Adjective: (of a product, idea, etc.) Featuring new methods; advanced and original. (of a person) Introducing new ideas; original and creative in thinking: "an innovative thinker".

This definition does not tie innovation to invention. I think it would be hard to argue that Apple's work is not original relative to their competitors. Apple out-innovates their competitors in marketing, in supply chain management, in product lifecycle management and in design. It's impossible to invent every (or even most) components of a general purpose computer. But to select the right pieces, assemble them in a way that maximizes user experience and market them in a way that makes them stand apart from competitors' products made with almost the same components - that's innovation, just the same way that Netflix' model for mailing DVDs (they didn't invent the mailbox, the postal service or the DVD) was extremely innovative.

001sky5• 14 years ago

Perhaps another example of original innovation: the swiss army knife. Look at a victorinox. Look at a knife, a corscrew, a scissor, a toothpick, and a tweezer sitting on the desk. Sometimes an act of integration is enough to be transformative.

iOS is a great example of radical originality, even if not a breakthrough technically. The Concept of the ap - a litewight, bandwidth efficient, modular, reconfigurable element integrated into the OS - was certainly original. It was also thus, highly innovative. It was reductive smaller, lighter, less complex.

Edit: clarity

gnaffle9• 14 years ago

I think it's better to compare Apple to a high-end restaurant. You don't get three Michelin stars just by making the customer feel special and having lots of fit and finish, the food also has to be something special.

Yet still, of course there are lots of people that will claim that those restaurants can't possibly be worth the price, and _has_ to be mostly about making the customers feel special, after all they use the same basic ingredients as the restaurant around the corner.

jlgreco• 14 years ago

"the food also has to be something special"

"those restaurants can't possibly be worth the price"

First off, there is more to a dinning experience than the quality of the food, so even if the food is the same a price increase can be justified. You could serve me a McDonald's hamburger for 20USD and leave me satisfied with the transaction provided the burger was not all that I was getting... That burger would not be worth 20USD, but that would not necessarily say anything about the worth of the establishment itself.

Regardless, the question is not if the expensive food at high quality restaurants is particularly good, but rather "What is the relationship between quality and price?"

In the case of high class establishments, the food is certainly good and the price is certainly high. Is that a linear relationship though? The 50USD burger is undoubtedly better than many 5USD burgers, but is it 10x better?

Furthermore, does higher quality food always cause the same sort of price inflation? Or is it possible that similarly superb food sold at undoubtedly higher prices at a restaurant without the other things that high class establishments offer would likely be cheaper?

I would even dare state that, to some extent, high price can actually be one of the desirable services that a restaurant can offer. If you happen to be more concerned with appearances than (in the grand scheme of things) a small amount of money, then being expensive for expense's sake can be a feature.

potatolicious3• 14 years ago

UI and UX are innovations. The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten everyone's lunch up till now.

"Fit and finish" is as innovative as a new algorithm, it's shocking how much of the industry still treats it as a footnote and a detail, despite the entire history of the tech world since iPhone 1 would indicate.

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

> The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten everyone's lunch up till now.

No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable, not innovative. The GP is correct in stating that Apple isn't innovative - they just take other people's innovations and monetize them by polishing things up and running effective ad campaigns to gain marketshare among the masses. And there's nothing at all wrong with that - if your primary interest is making money.

webwright• 14 years ago

Ugh, by this logic the first person to use drop-down menus should be the only person to use it (without licensing) for 20 years. Or a hover-event on a link. Or a hyperlink. Or real-time form validation. Or neverending scrolling instead of pagination. Or facebook style side menus on mobile devices.

Certainly there is UI innovation, and certainly it can move mountains-- I think arguing that fact is a straw man-- no one is saying that you can't be innovative with UI. We're just saying that most/all of it isn't worthy of patent protection.

erikpukinskis• 14 years ago

> UI and UX are innovations

As a UX designer, the idea that UX can be patented terrifies me.

It's like patenting a specific color of paint. shudders

arrrg2• 14 years ago

In the first two paragraphs you seem to say that they innovate while you deny that in the last paragraph.

Perfecting fit and finish is quite obviously innovation.

zizee• 14 years ago

Perfecting fit and finish is quite obviously innovation.

But is it patentable?

kybernetikos• 14 years ago

The way I use the word, I usually intend it to mean covering a completely new idea. For me, execution, no matter how superior can never be innovative. It can of course be important, world changing, profitable, etc.

If I say that the ipad is not innovative, I mean precisely that there was no element of it that was an implementation of a completely new idea, but I don't mean to suggest that what Apple did with it is not amazing and transformative.

So yes, for me, innovative is usually a very high bar.

Jobs saw the mouse at Xerox and knew it was an idea whose time had come. The first mouse was innovative. The first optical mouse was innovative. The first mouse that reduced the number of buttons to one or reduced the cost to $30 was pragmatic and clever but not innovative.

smartkids11• 14 years ago

Yes, but perhaps _making things easy to use_ and _sexy hardware design_ might have something to do with their success?

The problem with the research labs at those example companies you cited is that those businesses have little incentive to introduce innovation that would compete with "yesterday's ideas" that are driving their profits.

This is why Bell Labs was so unique. They could basically do whatever they wanted (you might try to make the same claim with your example companies, perhaps) _but_ ... they also managed to release these ideas into the market. And not always to the satisfaction of AT&T. People once had to pay for UNIX. Not anymore.

Xerox PARC is another well-known case where people were "set free" to work on whatever they wanted. But their ideas did not manage to trickle out to the market very well. Instead, Microsoft got one of their key people, Excel was born and the rest is history.

Apple is _not_ an idea factory. If someone called them two-timing thieves and told us to watch our backs, I would be inclined to take it seriously. (The fact that Apple is not the idea factory is why the lawsuits are so offensive to anyone who knows anything about the history of computers. If these sort of broad patents should go to anyone, it should be people like the ones who worked at Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. But maybe patents were not their priority. Maybe they were more interested in research, or playing computer games, than money. [How many UNIX patents? 1?] Go figure.)

But, Apple is a design house. An within IT, they do not have lots of competition in that area: e.g. design of hardware casings. In addition they go to great lengths to make the great ideas (namely the flexibility and stability of UNIX-like systems) easy to use. Another area that is lacking in IT: making the good stuff (like UNIX) easy to use.

Unfortunately Apple feels the need to abuse the patent system to stay on top. It makes me think if they didn't they might be in for a big fall. Maybe they are surprised at their own success? And nervous about losing the top spot?

Incidentally you could argue IBM started all this software patent nonsense. Not sure many programmers would agree with you, but the number of filings and issued patents by IBM, most of them before Microsoft even had a patent department, tells the story quite clearly.

You are not going to see much innovation released from "research labs" at the likes of Microsoft or those other companies. They will not keep their patent department in the dark. Those guys want to keep their jobs, not take risks. "Microsoft Research" or "Google Labs" are not Bell Labs or Xerox PARC. It's a wonder that something like Kinect was even made into a product. And you could see how nervous they were about it.

Today, the "labs" and the idea factory is the world wild web.

That's where the risks are taken.

Evbn• 14 years ago

RMS picketed Rob Pike over Bell's patent aggression.

tedunangst• 14 years ago

The funny part, considering how everyone complains about not really getting to "own" their device, is bringing up AT&T as a good guy. The company who literally would not let anyone own a telephone.

mtgx2• 14 years ago

I think you're referring more to invention than innovation. I think innovation is more about bringing something new and good to the market. The last part "to the market" is the most important part in the whole "innovation" process.

There are a lot of inventions, especially in those R&D labs you mention, but they rarely come to market, or are good enough for the regular consumer to use.

podperson7• 14 years ago

It's a heck of a lot more than "fit and finish". This is just another way of dismissing what Apple does as frippery.

A Mont Blanc pen is prettier than a bic biro, but it doesn't really write any better. A fabulous meal is probably not as good for you as plate of boiled vegetables.

Tichy• 14 years ago

Patents apply to the recipe, though, not the actual mixture.

ceejayoz• 14 years ago

There are multiple types of patent. One of them is a design patent.

belorn3• 14 years ago

Its an old idea to remove everything until just the essence is left. Apple succeed in identifying markets that was making over complex products.

The silly part is that complexity goes in cycles. New products need to differential themselves with old ones, so they add new features. After a while, you end up with a car stereo with 20 buttons, and suddenly a "new" competitor comes out with a clean design with just 3 buttons and the 20 button design looks ill-designed in comparison.

Stereos is one of the earlier examples, but you can see the same phenomena in web-design with today’s White and clean design vs the old dark and complex design.

gnaffle9• 14 years ago

I think simplicity isn't the only story, it's usable simplicity. If simple was the only game in town, Apple would only need the iPod shuffle and something like John's Phone (http://johnsphones.org/) to rule the world.

The iPod and iPhone has added lots and lots of functionality over the years, yet the interface has stayed simple. It's possible to add lots of new features in ways that doesn't make the interface more complex, however it's a big challenge.

belorn3• 14 years ago

You can add new features without adding interface complexity, but its harder to differential products if the user do not have any visible difference between ones old product now going for 15$, the competitors new 30-99$ products, and ones own new product going for 100$. Abstract arguments like "its faster!, more feature than before!" is much harder sell when the two devices look and feel the same.

One way is to sue all competitors and have the only store available presenting exclusive the new product, but that only goes so far.

As for the johnsphones, it has buttons. As interface goes, it still look complex compared to a smartphone. The most simplistic phone design is one with only one or zero buttons, like the Third generation iPod Shuffle if it had been a phone.

pippy• 14 years ago

>Software is all zeroes and ones, after all. The quantity and order may vary, but that’s about it. Hardware is just protons, neutrons, electrons and photons buzzing around, nothing original. Apple didn’t “invent” anything, the iPad is simply their variation, their interpretation of the well-known tablet recipe.

You can make cookies and cakes from the same raw ingredients, doesn't mean that the person who invented cookies also invented cake.

Also the 'Software is all zeroes and ones' argument irks me. It's the bridge between an expensive paperweight and a practical device.

stephencanon2• 14 years ago

I don't suppose you made it to the next paragraph where the author says:

> "By this myopic logic, Einstein didn’t invent the theory of relativity..."

i.e. he agrees with you.

AnthonyMouse• 14 years ago

I think the article is right in what it says but is wrong because of what it doesn't say. Apple succeeded where others had failed, and that is certainly commendable, but now we have a problem: Apple doesn't have a patent on "an iPad" meaning a device with all the individual characteristics that make an iPad an iPad and make it successful, instead they have individual patents on all the individual features.

But the individual features are the things that Apple didn't do. Yet that's what they sue over because that's how patent law is set up.

So now we see Samsung lose big in court and popular reaction is split, and here's why: People looking at the actual facts of the case are outraged that Apple could win that way because the actual grounds of the win had nothing to do with copying or Samsung's actions and everything to do with the fact that anyone with a million over-broad patents on obvious "inventions" and laws of nature and mathematics can win in court against anyone who produces a computing device, arguing that any actual copying on the part of Samsung is irrelevant. On the other hand, we have the people who look at the result and the fact that Samsung's devices do actually look entirely too much like Apple's and think Samsung got what was coming to them, ignoring that in order to do it Apple had to adopt a long list of bully tactics that they've now demonstrated that they or anyone else with a sufficient patent arsenal can successfully use against their competitors (including those whose devices aren't intentionally copied, because there are too many patents to possibly even attempt to avoid them all).

Nobody seems willing to say that Apple should potentially have some remedy against Samsung for actual copying but that what they got is the wrong remedy in the wrong way, not least which because the same tactics can be used against anyone whether they've done anything wrong or not.

robertskmiles• 14 years ago

Agreed entirely. To make the metaphor accurate, the chef would then have to sue someone else who was making mayonnaise by a similar recipe.

swombat2• 14 years ago

If no one else could make mayonnaise successfully and a chef came up with the process for making it, that chef should damn well get some kind of protection from the IP system for his innovation, invention, or whatever the hell you wanna call it.

That is, after all, what will make him want to share his methods instead of keeping them a secret. That's the fundamental principle of the patent system: you share, and we give you a temporary monopoly defended by law.

This patent system is obviously broken, but in the mayonnaise case it wouldn't be.

nemesisj• 14 years ago

I really agree with what you just said. Mirror my own thoughts very closely. Laid them out in a blog post here: http://peebs.org/thoughts-on-samsung-apple-and-patents

pooriaazimi5• 14 years ago

I didn't read the article getting the feeling that JLG is arguing software/UX patents are all right. I read it as an argument to those imbeciles who believe "Apple Never Invented Anything" and they "merely" took what others had invented before and smashed them together and got themselves an iPad. Go to #bycottapple at Google+ and you'll meet them.

pge• 14 years ago

I think this article makes some good points but overlooks the crucial question - what inventions are patentable? Like a great chef that combines known ingredients, apple has made excellent products, but apple has not produced new innovation that is worthy of patent protection. Apple's path to success should be winning customers, just like the chefs he describes, not through patent litigation.

The examples given by the OP actually support this point. It's true that Einstein didnt discover relativity first - both lorentz and poincare had worked out the mathematics, but Einstein articulated the concepts best. I often use this case study as an example of how innovations often arise independently from different inventors simultaneously because the conditions are right. The other famous and illustrative example is newton and leibniz inventing calculus independently.

As a VC, I see this all the time - the market conditions are right for a new idea, and suddenly 4 or 5 companies appear doing variations on the same thing, none aware of the others. Let good execution and the market decide which one is best, not the date on a patent filing for something each came up with on their own.

babesh3• 14 years ago

Einstein understood the meaning. Poincare and Lorentz just understood the machinery. That is a fundamental difference that let Einstein go beyond special relativity to general relativity. Big, big difference. The difference between friendster and facebook.

ThomPete3• 14 years ago

Apple invented the ability to take geeky stuff and turn it into cool stuff for normal people.

That's a pretty big feat in itself.

cheald3• 14 years ago

That's called "marketing". It's not really new.

upinsmoke2• 14 years ago

Other companies don't do marketing then?

lttlrck4• 14 years ago

neither is "inventing" or "innovating" or "manufacturing"

Your point?

mdonahoe5• 14 years ago

You are right, but Apple's definition of marketing doesnt end with the billboards or the tv commercials.

Every time you see someone wearing those white earbuds, that's marketing. When your mom is always on her ipad, despite 20 years of lessons from you on how to use a computer, that's marketing. When you are sitting in an airport and you notice the glow of the Apple logo on the back of someone's Macbook Air, that's marketing. When the same dude is still using his macbook, 6 hours into a flight without a powercord, that's marketing. When you walk into an Apple store, and you feel the aluminum unibody... when you unwrap the sturdy yet smooth packaging and the bottom slides out to reveal the device... when computer boots directly to a gray apple logo on a white screen, instead of a DOS prompt for a few seconds, that's marketing.

It takes a lot of work to do Apple style marketing.

ThomPete3• 14 years ago

There is no other company that can market a company like apple.

No other company can just show their product without having to say anything about it. That makes Apple unique in such a fundamental way which is exactly why they are the most (or one of the most) valuable company in the world.

al_biglan• 14 years ago

This is the same argument aimed at Microsoft in the 90's. next big tech company will get the same thing in 20 years. Meh.

noirman• 14 years ago

Of course Apple did not invent anything. Steve Jobs did.

cromwellian4• 14 years ago

One interesting point is he brought up Einstein's invention of relativity. Notice that in the scientific community, humanity has been building upon previous work for centuries with no copyright or patent protection, and nothing more than honor, citation, and shame against plagiarists.

The fundamental defense made by many is that without patent protection for software, people would not put much effort into innovating.

1) If you look at science, open source, fashion, food, and other areas where humans continually build on culture, you see plenty of continued innovation without insane legal protection.

2) The amount of effort pales in comparison to the monopoly granted. You could make the argument for say, pharmaceuticals, that if it takes 10 years from lab through human trials and hundreds of millions of dollars, that a 2-decade long protection period might be needed. But there is no FDA for software, and Apple actually spends far less on R&D than other companies, and with $100 billion in the bank, you can't claim that haven't gotten an incredibly good return in their investment.

Therefore, it is insane to grant 20 year protection to Apple for stuff like pinch gestures. 2 years maybe. But 20? It's absurd.

mbell2• 14 years ago

> One interesting point is he brought up Einstein's invention of relativity.

He didn't invent, he discovered. I'm not just being pedantic, I think the approaches signified by these two words goes to the root of the differences your describing.

Peaker• 14 years ago

I believe patents apply to discoveries in the same way as inventions.

mtgx2• 14 years ago

Apple could say they "discovered" how to do pinch to zoom well or something.

cromwellian4• 14 years ago

Do you invent, or do you merely discover an optimum in solution space? This is really just semantics that changes nothing, regardless of what you want to call it, there is a history of people spending decades of effort to describe new math, new models, new mechanisms, all prior to patent protection.

That reforming copyright and patent laws will reduce innovation is unproven scaremongering. There are other industries that don't litigate like this, but none the less experience a wide diversity of innovation. With the exception of Nathan Myhrvold, most innovations in field of cooking have not been patented. You don't go to a restaurant and get a patented entree, the chef cooks up new and original recipes by copying and tweaking recipes of those that came before.

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

Just to keep things fact based, the recent court case against samsung did not cite the "Pinch-to-zoo-after-finger-contact-has-been-broken-and-restarted patent of 7,812,826.

You can read that patent here: http://www.google.com/patents/US7812826

And, even thought that patent was _not_ referenced in the case, you will see it's a particular multi-touch behavior _associated with pinch-to-zoom_ that apple is claiming a process invention against, not pinch to zoom. It's actually quite clever.

See: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/30/3279628/apple-pinch-to-zoo... for good details on this myth.

Note - others have patented Pinch-to-Zoom far before Apple came to the stage.

vacri2• 14 years ago

You don't have to contest the patent for it to be suppressing others' design. I once worked for a company that made a humidifying air pump. We had to have the water tank held in with a removable flap rather than a door because our main competitor had patented 'holding the tank in with a hinged flap/door'. Sure, you could fight it in court, down the track, after hardware design (which is much more expensive than people realise). Or you could move onto the next problem and have a slightly inferior product. Patents on trivial things stifle innovation.

ender7• 14 years ago

Thank you for linking those articles, that was very helpful.

That said, Google was lucky that there was a loophole in the patent definition. Imagine a world where Apple had actually obtained an airtight patent on a system that listens for single- or multi-touch gestures and switches between scrolling and pinch-to-zoom appropriately (which is essentially what the patent in question does). So, you'd be free to implement pinch-to-zoom as long as it doesn't infringe on that. Good luck.

(the point here being that, de facto, Apple would essentially have a patent on pinch-to-scroll. In real life [not in the proposed alternate universe] this is almost true -- there are loopholes, but you have to hire a patent lawyer to find and/or confirm them).

podperson7• 14 years ago

> But 20? It's absurd.

If pinch and zoom is such a trivial thing then invent some other thing to use instead.

The patent system by-and-large doesn't pick and choose patent durations based on the kind of patent.

Theoretical physics and patentable technology are quite different things and the comparison is not helpful. Before patents we had a guild system where people who made almost anything -- pottery, telescopes, pots and pans -- would obfuscate their techniques and if possible their products. Knowledge of key manufacturing processes was a trade secret. This is the world that we'd be in without patent protections.

cromwellian4• 14 years ago

Trivial doesn't mean valueless. A "1 click buy" patent is trivial, but forcing everyone to "invent something else instead" (e.g. 2 clicks) is stupid. And what if 2-click is patented? Then the next guy to come along has to have a 3-click system, or some obfuscation that convinces a jury.

Pretty soon, consumers are confused, because every website they go to has a radically different user interface brought on by patents on ideas that should be basic commodities.

When we had the guild system, we also didn't have universal public education, and instantaneous near zero cost publication of ideas.

Plus, you analogy makes pinch-zoom patents look even worse. You can keep how it is implemented a complete trade secret, and from looking at it for a few seconds, I can produce an equivalent implementation.

Apple has already obfuscated their techniques anyway. Why not release iOS as open source then, if it's protected by patents? The reality is, these patents are read by no one except lawyers, and in many cases, they under specify the implementation by being very abstract.

I really don't see how anyone who writes software for a living can defend these things and defend the status quo of not even supporting reform. You are asserting that something like an XOR-cursor (another dumb patent) is equivalent to a manufacturing process deserving 20 year protection?

linuxhansl• 14 years ago

pinch-and-zoom is a good idea. But it is just that: An idea.

Its invention cost no money and society as a whole is not served by granted exclusive monopoly over it to any entity.

The entire discussion is turning to be absurd. Is pinch-and-zoom (and friends) all that separates Apple from the competition?

In other industry manufacturers learn from each other (seatbelts, suspensions systems, transmissions, etc), but somehow when it comes to software and electronic devices we want to stop progress and grant monopolies to every oh-so-little idea.

surrealize3• 14 years ago

> Knowledge of key manufacturing processes was a trade secret.

So, without patent protection, pinch-to-zoom would have been a secret and the rest of us would never have been able to figure it out? Or, without patent protection, no one would have put in the R&D effort to come up with pinch-to-zoom?

Obviously not.

The benefits that patents are supposed to provide to society just aren't benefits at all in this case. So, as a society, we ought to figure out a way to change the law so that it provides benefits where needed without doing more harm than good. It's clearly doing more harm than good in software right now.

Riesling• 14 years ago

> If pinch and zoom is such a trivial thing then invent some other thing to use instead.

But isn't that the exact problem.

p&z is so trivial that any other thing would be less trivial which would be counter intuitive for human-computer interaction.

fffggg• 14 years ago

Regarding the expense of clinical trials, it's important to note that the scientific results of a clinical trial are not protected by either patent or copyright. Pure research data cannot be restricted under any form of IP. Factual data without a creative element is explicitly exempted from both the patent and copyright system.

A published paper on the results of a trial may fall under copyright, but the factual observations and conclusions cannot be.

The "clinical trials are expensive" argument is incredibly disingenuous.

kyro• 14 years ago

I don't think you're aware of the sheer magnitude of revenue that pharmaceutical companies make. They often mark-up their drugs by 1000%.

erichocean• 14 years ago

I've sold software with a crazy markup too. Something like 100,000,000%! Because it's very cheap (far less than a penny) to duplicate the software, but I sold it online for $99.

Pharmaceutical companies do the same thing. It's not the pill that's expensive, it's designing it. Same with software.

huxley• 14 years ago

You'll need to remove fashion from that list, patent litigation is becoming much more common:

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/12/design-patents-and-t...

http://www.elle.com/news/fashion-style/lululemon-sues-calvin...

mamcx• 14 years ago

Actually exist statements from Apple that say "We invent this" when in fact not?

Because my perception is that people accused apple of that, but I don't remenber them saying that...

echaozh• 14 years ago

I don't even think medicines should be patented. I think government should fund the R&D and then let all companies manufacture and sell it at a low price. Then it is even better than medicare.

The government can sell the production method to other countries for a profit though.

ekianjo2• 14 years ago

Yeah I am sure government is the right place to fund innovation! (See how the NASA has been productive vs SpaceX for example) - and why don't you let the government run the production of cars, as well ? Oh wait, we tried that before. That gave Skoda and the Trabant in Eastern Europe. Clear examples how professional government sponsored innovation was.

No, thanks.

briandear• 14 years ago

That's not government's role unless you're in Soviet Russia. The free market drives more innovation that government ever has. The Lada and the Yugo are great examples of what happens when central planners try to run things. Besides, if people aren't going to profit from their hard work, what's the incentive for hard work? I don't write code everyday for the good of humanity, I do it to try and build something someone wants to buy so I can improve my lot in life. Besides, if companies don't profit, they won't do and then you have a downward economic spiral of decreasing tax revenues and ever increasing tax rates to fund the government's work which then drives even less economic activity because the incentive is reduced.

The role of government is to protect life, freedom and property. As soon as the government gets involved in microeconomic transactions, the efficiency declines. Comparing the US Postal Servie and Amtrack to Southwest Airlines and FedEx illustrates this perfectly. The government should regulate markets only as much as necessary to ensure that the markets function. They shouldn't be running the markets themselves.

The lack of tort reform is one of the key drivers to the insane cost of drugs and medical care. When a drug company has multi-million dollar exposure for every drug they produce, it's going to raise the cost. OB-GYN docs pay several hundred thousand dollars per year in malpractice insurance because one mistake has them on the hook for multi-million dollar punitive judgements.

Government should be a referee, not a player. It should provide a safety net from complete destitution, but not serve as an insurance policy against failure. The GM bailout is a great example of what government should not be doing.

When the government starts meddling in private business (i.e. pouring money into it,) it distorts the market and makes it much harder for innovative new players to enter the market. The Tucker car from the 1950s is a perfect illustration. The big three in Detroit threw around political muscle to effectively shut down a car company that built safer cars. If government had stayed out, we would have had seat belts and pop-out windshields years earlier.

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help" are still the scariest words one can hear in America.

richardw3• 14 years ago

It's not a 20 year monopoly. Many Android manufacturers are paying Microsoft for their patents. What prevents them from licensing Apple's patents?

I don't care which phone I use, because they're (mostly) all pretty good now. But wow, I remember the Microsoft WM5 heap that I had just before my iPhone. It was a testament to terrible UI. It had more widgets than my old Palm5 but was somehow far less usable. Not some rubbish knock-off, the premier phone from HTC running the software from the world's software monopoly, and it was terrible. I made vows never to use another Windows phone again after that. Version 5 and it was still crap. With the iPhone, Apple's first version knocked it out of the park. First try. And changed the industry, yet everyone thinks it was all obvious or people should be able to use their ideas freely.

There is obviously a balance between Apple-owns-all and everything-goes. Apple should benefit from their patents like every other company does, but others should be able to license them under reasonable terms. Until we finally dump all software patents, this seems like a reasonable compromise.

PS. - pharmaceuticals usually get a full-on monopoly for the full period. Software makers usually cross-license, so there is a difference.

PPS. - Apple's 100bn in the bank just show how far behind everyone else was at the time. Took ages to catch up.

guelo2• 14 years ago

Apple hasn't offered to license their patents, they want to kill Android.

BTW, I liked my WM5 phone.

eckyptang9• 14 years ago

Einstein didn't invent relativity - it was already there. That's why people in the scientific community rarely get miffed at people. They're not innovating or inventing - they are discovering.

There need be no software patents on the basis that software takes time to reproduce and that is your guarantee. The implementation is where the cost is. If the idea is obvious and trivial (like pinch gestures), then you probably don't deserve a head start.

Thrymr• 14 years ago

People in the scientific community often "get miffed at people." They rarely sue anyone for it, however.

smartkids11• 14 years ago

It's possible that innovation, specifically scientific progress that leads to innovation, actually relies on scientists sharing stuff with collaborators that patent lawyers would not want them to share. The patent lawyers might often be "the last to know". It's possible that many scientists often put their own scientific goals, which stand to enrich the scientific community as a whole, before the business goals of the employers they work for. Something tells me that Apple's patent lawyers do not have this problem with Apple engineers.

Not that I consider software developers to be scientists but I wonder if there are any Apple engineers contributing to open source projects or even just publishing the occasional research paper.

Doesn't Apple have rules that keep all their employees from talking to anyone outside of Apple under threat of immediate termination?

No FDA for software. You can say that again. There's also no Medicaid, Medicare or health insurance that pays for it.

hastur• 14 years ago

yaaaaawn

so what's new

they did other stuff: made things better, connected in new ways, etc.

i still don't like their stuff - for aesthetical reasons

so what

get a life

jpincheira• 14 years ago

Come on. Shut up. I use Windows on a Dell laptop and I can tell you that's not true. (Pun intented)

smartkids11• 14 years ago

The iPaq was/is a fantastic device. You could attach peripherals. Try doing that with an iPad. I could put an entire OS on a CF Card and assuming I could boot from the card, the expanded functionality is limited only by the hardware specs. They are durable. I've seen consumer electronics businesses still using them to track inventory.

I wish HP would revive the iPaq.

My only imagined use for an iPad is as a portable display. I want the Retina quality, but I have a more powerful hardware to attach and I need a real keyboard. There's nothing the iPad can do that my open, unlocked hardware cannot do.

I believe it was even possible to attach a real keyboard to an iPaq. That's the kind of flexibility I want. I can get data into and out of the device in any number of ways, without hassle.

mdonahoe5• 14 years ago

People like you are not a large market, unfortunately.

> There's nothing the iPad can do that my open, unlocked hardware cannot do. Your open, unlocked hardware, cannot survive two days with my mother.

smartkids11• 14 years ago

I understand the comment. Of course the thought has crossed my mind. But I'm not so sure there's any evidence to support it.

I actually test some of my ideas with people like your mother, and surprisingly (why should I be surprised?) they have little trouble catching on.

What's really amusing is that these things that I have them doing are things that many nerds cannot themsleves do. I've got them using systems and techniques that many nerds won't touch because they think it's too "hard core". It's hilarious.

There are lots and lots of unfounded assumptions about what users can and cannot do.

There are facts, supported by evidence. And then there are assumptions. One requires a bit of work. The other is effortless: you just hit "Submit".

greedo5• 14 years ago

There's this wonderful thing called Bluetooth. Better than connecting your iPaq to via cables, you can use a BT keyboard with an iPad.

smartkids11• 14 years ago

If Bluetooth isn't working for some reason, then cables would not work either, so it makes sense to remove the option to use them.

Bluetooth always works flawlessly, unlike cables.

It's also proprietary and far more secure than cables.

It's a good thing that Apple iPad can't use cables.

In fact any device that is smaller than iPad and can accept both cables _and_ Bluetooth is less useful and just plain bad.

wallflower• 14 years ago

A better article on the Counternotions site, "Why Apple doesn’t do 'Concept Products'"

"Concept products are like essays, musings in 3D. They are incomplete promises. Shipping products, by contrast, are brutally honest deliveries. You get what’s delivered. They live and die by their own design constraints. To the extent they are successful, they do advance the art and science of design and manufacturing by exposing the balance between fantasy and capability."

http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/

drblast• 14 years ago

This article is unintentionally an excellent argument against patent protection for Apple's products.

If Apple is a company that uniquely has the talent and taste of a good chef, the patent protection is unnecessary. They will be able to continually outdo other companies that don't have the same talent.

Arguing that a company has so much talent and is so successful that it needs legal protection seems absurd to me.

csmeder2• 14 years ago

I think the point he was making was: once you see a master chef make mayonnaise you realize the reason you failed. You tried too hard. And now you can make mayonnaise.

Tablet makers (iPaq, MS, etc) tried too hard. Apple showed them don't try too hard. And now they can make tablets too.

So yes, the excellent chef can be the first to make mayonnaise, however, with out patents on mayonnaise so can everyone else now. The idea of a patent is that the master chef spent years learning to not mix the ingredients too hard, now that he has showed the world the way to make mayonnaise, the only thing stopping the world from stealing the fruits of his work are patents.

The point being if Apple never created the iPhone and iPad we would still have phones like the iPaq and the clunky MS tablets in the year 2012. I whole heartily agree with this.

If it wasn't for Apple, every other phone and tablet company today would not be making anything of the flavor of the iPhone or iPad. Android and Win Mobile Phone are of the flavor of Apple.

So why is it right for them to taste like "L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon" (Apple) in the year 2012 if they would still taste like "Taco Bell" (MS, iPaq, etc) in the year 2012 if it wasn't for Jobs' iphone and ipad. Obviously with out a parallel universe for us to visit together I can't prove this to you. However, I do feel the overwhelming facts of 20 years of failure by iPaq, MS, etc show the trajectory they were heading for and we can guess where they would be in the year 2012:

- Stylus pen, or clunky touch screen that you have to press very hard.

- Lots of ram, lots of CPU power.

- Very heavy

- Very large and thick

- Poor quality materials

- Mediocre software that does not come any where close to the current android software.

- Buggy software

- no App store, lots of viruses and other security issues.

- Expensive and running full Windows 8, no RT version.

So if the products Samsung and MS were selling today fit the above recipe, I agree Apple shouldn't be suing them. But this isn't what is happening. Apple is being robbed blind. Every technique and recipe Apple created is being meticulously stolen and engineered into Android and windows phones. These are recipes that Jobs, Ive and the whole Apple company put years of effort into, they poured their heart and soul into these recipes.

The reason so much of the tech media don't see it this way is they have no taste buds. Most people have terrible taste buds. Well, they have great unconscious taste buds but their conscious taste buds are almost worth less. So they see things like the iPaq and those old MS Tablets and think "Well Gee golly, that food sure was tasty, sure android is tastier but not much tastier, apple doesn't really deserve much credit for androids improved taste."

As some one with excellent taste buds (I am a UX/Product designer, I have predicted the success and failure of almost all major tech product that have come out in the past 10 years, you can read the comments in my HN history as I defended the iPad to almost 99% of HN thinking it was stupid when it came out, I predicted the failure of the Zune, I predicted the success of Apple as whole back in 2004, and predicted MS' current decline) I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty how different iPaq and android taste.

What android and Win Phone are doing is sneaky. It is so sneaky you don't realize how many subtle but important details they have stolen. They can do this because you don't have the conscious taste buds necessary to notice it.

These details may be subtle but they are far from small. If you ever watch a grand master play chess. Every time he makes a great move you think to yourself "Gee golly that was an obvious move". No. No, it was not. Once you see a chess move you can no longer look at it objectively. The way to objectively judge a chess move is to try to figure it out on your own before some one shows it to you. After spending hours and hours and more hours looking for this move before finding it, you then fully appreciate the move.

The tech media is watching a chess game from the sidelines Apple is the grandmaster, Android and windows phone are the people building a database of the grandmaster's moves to beat people at chess.

Most people won't be able to comprehend or believe the next sentence: A non Expert Chef or food critic (Expert Product Designer) will never be able to appreciate the Gigantic chasm between the taste of Apples products and any of their competitors, however, on an unconscious level everyone will be drawn to Apples taste so strongly that if the competitors don't copy it, soon Apple will have no competitors still in business. This is the natural Monopoly the iPod almost had for a few years. In 2010 "The latest research by NPD Group claims that iPod had a 76 percent share of the MP3 player market in US in May this year."[0] This monopoly would have been true if Samsung, Google and Microsoft were not spending the past 5 years perfecting their ability to hire Expert Product designers to steal Apple's recipes. From 2001, when the first iPod came out, until about 2010 MS, Google and Samsung went through a phase of denial, trial (trying to steal ideas) and then finally some succes (actually stealing ideas). It took them about a decade just to get good at stealing ideas from Apple. The Zune was an example of how hard it is to steal ideas from apple. A non Expert Product Designer would think the Zune was good thievery, however, it was a sloppy job, it wasn't until windows phone and android, that these companies started to be good at stealing ideas.

[0] http://www.ithinkdiff.com/the-ipod-has-76-percent-of-mp3-pla...

You are going to hate me for saying this, and you won't agree with me but the truth is that: you don't on a conscious level know what is going on. You are Unconsciously Incompetent. And Android and Win Phone are using this to their advantage. Its the same way Europeans stole land from Native americans. The native americans were Unconsciously Incompetent when it came to the idea of "Owning Land". They saw the land as owning them. Thus they signed documents that seemed to have little importance. This is what Android and Win Phone are doing. They are using you to steal from Apple.

That said Jiro [1] doesn't patent his Sushi, he simpley makes the best sushi. And he does quite well for him. If I was Apple I would spend a lot more of my time in the kitchen making the best Sushi in the world and a lot less time in the courtroom.

[1] http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/

Note: I am sorry if I come off as arrogant by calling myself an "Expert Product Designer" and claim most people won't understand what I understand, but I don't say this out of arrogance, rather out of fact.

I have spent more than a decade to be as competent as I am in Product Design. This is not small feat. In college I was a talented student when it came to Physics, in particular my introduction to Quantum Physics and special relativity class. If I had chosen to pursue the path of Quantum Physis I am quite confident I would be an Expert Quantum Physis today.

And if this was so, it would not be arrogant for me to say such things as: "light is both a particle and wave, most people will never appreciate how amazing this is, only expert Quantum Physis', such as my self, will come close to appreciating this statements full glory." This would not be arrogant, rather it would be a fact.

The sad fact is that "Product/UX Design" doesn't get the same respect as the hard sciences. From my point of view it should. I use just as much if not more of my brain power to wrap my head around design solutions when I am designing a product as I did when I studied the particle and wave form duality of light and the intricate details of space and time learned through special relativity.

notatoad• 14 years ago

So what's the takeaway here? Are you saying that apple deserves to own the concept of, essentially, not being shitty, just because they were the first to make a good tablet? yes, Steve jobs' vision inspired his competitors to make better products. That is the single most fundamental tenet of capitalism: Competition drives all the players in a market to do better. Apple does not have a legal right to remain the market leader: they've show the competition what competitors want, if they want to remain the leader it is their responsibility to continue to produce better products. If every market leader could sue their competition for making decent products, thugs would get pretty stagnant pretty fast.

fkdjs2• 14 years ago

And iOS has robbed Android blind (notifications).

Anyone can come out tomorrow and write their own search engine. Like Bing. Hell, Bing has even been caught red handed copying. Yet still Google makes money. Anyone remember Google suing Microsoft over that? Nope.

Maybe Apple needs to find a better business model whereby they can thrive and out-innovate before their competitors do so? That's what Google has to do, is Apple the special kid needing special treatment? What if Google started getting mad and suing every search engine competitor for infringing on their instant search patents, and other search patents? And without google, you'd be searching and hoping like you did in the 90's. Imagine that, a company that innovated, innovates, and doesn't try to sue their competition silly!!

If I hear one more primadonna talk about how Apple is getting ripped off, I'm going to explode. Please, get over yourself.

cageface• 14 years ago

Right, because once that chef figured out just the right twist on those common ingredients no other chefs in the world were allowed to make mayonnaise any more and we would have no fine cuisine without extensive IP protection enforced by law.

Oh, wait...

pooriaazimi5• 14 years ago

It's a metaphor. You don't take them seriously. They're just there to tell a cute little story and you move on to the real thing. Certainly iPad involved a little more than a twist.

ekianjo2• 14 years ago

Most people here seem to argue whether or not Apple have the rights to hold patents on what they did (and whether that should grand them protection). But where this argument is flawed, is that protection from being copied is not only centered around the patent system. There are multiple ways you can protect your inventions, through trade secrets, supply chain efficiency that nobody else can reproduce, through a software environment which is worth more in its whole than the sum of its parts.

We know Apple is already using all the above techniques to protect their business. They have an excellent supply chain, they obviously have preferential trade partners which enable them access the new technologies first before anyone else, and they have a iOS system which is well rounded for its purpose.

Net, they really do not need to leverage their patents protection. That could be an indication that they do not think they are going to be very innovative down the road, and therefore they just want to keep competitors as far as possible until they pull their act together again... or that they have too many lawyers with too much time on their hands to investigate how much harm they could do with claims based on air and smoke.

When a company resorts to such practices, it is usually not a good sign.

yogrish• 14 years ago

I was under the same opinion as the author. While the Apple Vs Sammy was going many ppl said every feature iphone existed before. But, iphone has the right mix of them in right proportions and that has made it Tick. W.r.t Patenting rects with round corners etc, I too disagree with Apple. Violating Trade dress by Sammy is not acceptable either.

aresant• 14 years ago

There was a clear before and after when they launched the iPhone

By NAILING it apple managed to popularize existing tech like the modern touch-screen interface, the app develeper economy & handheld computing.

So enough with this apple hasnt done anything bs, the reason they print money is they keep making future tech accessible, I hope the iPhone 5 (6?) lives up to their record.

MaysonL• 14 years ago

Note this: Apple spends substantially less (as a fraction of revenue) on R&D, and gets substantially more, in terms of outstanding products, compared to every other tech company. What is it that they're doing so well?

hazov• 14 years ago

Nothing besides of polished systems and good hardware. But I do not like the type of signal this can show to the tech companies around the world: that their patents of new tech that are life changing for everyone are worth less than a pinch zoom on a touch screen, now I don't think it was a obvious gesture but I do not think it should be covered by a patent. There should be a better way to protect new UI elements.

greedo5• 14 years ago

Do you have some links referring to this? Specifically the R&D expenditures for Apple's direct competitors? Say, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Samsung's smartphone division? You can't lump all of "tech" into one basked and compare it to Apple. You have to keep it aligned with companies that are in the same industry, and then exclude the extraneous R&D like Samsung's washing machine or refrigerator business.

Uchikoma2• 14 years ago

Got to love HN, if someone copies a startup pixel by pixel and business modell, hulla, the lynch mob readies it's pitchforks. If someone copies a freelancers design, website or logo, woha, people run amok. If someone copies Apples UI, hardware, apps and app market it's "Apple Never Invented Anything."

pooriaazimi5• 14 years ago

Did you even read the article?!

Uchikoma2• 14 years ago

My comment was about the HN comments not the article. Did you even read my comment?!

jawr• 14 years ago

Slightly off topic, but I was under the impression that Ford didn't invent the automobile, Benz did.

epo• 14 years ago

God, this is depressing, lots of whiny fandroids who can't even f---ing read.

These morons have taken the article title as a literal synposis, it is being ironic (and yes, we know that Americans famously don't get irony).

The authors (one of whom is a former Apple exec) are arguing that what Apple did was invention and does indeed deserve protection from the legion of lazy wannabes who would just otherwise simply copy from the smartest kid in class.

Apple Never Invented Anything

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