How did so many get this so wrong? I fear it betrays something ugly about the way tech reporting works–and doesn’t work–these days. Depth, expertise, and reflection are all lacking. So is serious research. If you are going to write about a patent case, it’s a good idea to read the patents in dispute. Reading patents is not a particularly pleasant business. The language is tedious, legalistic, and often deliberately obfuscatory; you want to give the Patent Office the required information while giving away as little as possible to your competitors. But reading the claims, the critical section of the patent, isn’t all that difficult. There are a total of 101 claims for the three patents and they fill about five printed pages. Yet I suspect very few of the people who wrote about the trial actually made the effort. If they had, they would have known that the range of gestures covered was much narrower than has generally been reported.
I’m not sure where the idea that pinch and stretch was at stake originated. It seems to have crept into the trial coverage at some point and become part of the folklore of the case. And when the jury announced that it had found infringement by Samsung on all three utility patents, a large number of writers seemingly assumed that one of those covered the gesture. In the case of rounded rectangles, Samsung’s obfuscation certainly contributed. So did a general hostility toward the entire patent system in the tech community, including tech writers, which created a readiness to believe in the most absurd interpretation of the outcome.
Apple Never Invented Anything
Drugged or sober, the proud iPaq owner falls into the following point: The basic ingredients are the same. 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.
By this myopic logic, Einstein didn’t invent the theory of relativity, Henri Poincaré had similar ideas before him, as did Hendrik Lorentz earlier still. And, come to think of it, Maxwell’s equations contain all of the basic ingredients of relativity; Einstein “merely” found a way to combine them with another set of parts, Newtonian mechanics.
[…]
So, yes, if we stick to the basic ingredients list, Apple didn’t invent anything…not the Apple ][, nor the Macintosh, not the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad…to say nothing of Apple Stores and App Stores. We’d seen them all before, in one fashion or another.
The sincerest form of jerkery
But it’s not just Samsung that’s sussed out the natural evolution of things. No, no, no, no, no. A world of five nos. Take Ultrabooks for example. Lenovo’s COO Rory Read told us a year ago that the fact that Ultrabooks all look exactly like the MacBook Air was …
“…just a natural evolution of the space.”
Natural. Evolution. See? It’s simple. And natural. And evolutional.
Forms evolve over time and they just naturally evolve into designs Apple happens to not necessarily invent but certainly popularize. See? What could be more natural? Or evolutional?
The Macalope Weekly – Macworld
No weekend is complete without my dosage of laughter from The Macalope weekly column.
Why Microsoft Got its Logo Right
This year has seen a full immersion into Microsoft’s now publicly catchy Metro design philosophy that favors flat colors, light sans serif usage, and user interface elements on a grid — an approach that is hard to be in disagreement with as it saves us from the 1980s, 90s, and early 00s Microsoft design philosophy which never get an official name, but let’s just call it Hideous.
One of Apple’s Best Ideas Ever, Made Worse
“The beauty of the MagSafe connector was that Apple had found precisely the right balance between attachment and detachment. Strong enough to hold the connector in place, weak enough to detach if it gets yanked.
The MagSafe 2 connector fails that balance test. Badly. The magnet is too weak. It’s so weak, it keeps falling out. It falls out if you brush it. It falls out if you tip the laptop slightly. It falls out if you look at it funny. It’s a huge, huge pain.”
Everybody hates Firefox updates (3)
“After years of aspiring to improve software usability, I’ve come to the extremely humbling realization athat the single best thing most companies could do to improve usability is to stop changing the UI so often! Let it remain stable long enough for us to learn it and get good at it. There’s no UI better than one you already know, and no UI worse than one you thought you knew but now have to relearn.”
Just go and read the damn thing. In fact, if you’re developer, print it, frame it and stick it on your office room.
Everybody hates Firefox updates (2)
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the fundamental disconnect between the developers and the users. I think it comes down to: Software developers have a perverse habit of thinking of updates/new releases as a good thing.
It’s hard to convince a software developer otherwise: their salary depends on outputting a constant stream of updates, so of course they think updates are good.I used to believe it. Only after I heard from dozens of different users that the rapid release process had ruined Firefox did I finally get it through my thick skull: releasing an update is practically an act of aggression against your users. The developer perspective is ‘You guys are going to love this new update we’ve been working on!’ The user perspective is ‘Oh god here comes another update, is there any way I can postpone the agony for a few more days?'”
I’m reading this post and thinking that is just too good to not quote. ((Can i copy an entire post or would that be too rude?))
Also related with this previous post.
Everybody hates Firefox updates
“I’ve heard this story a lot in the last year.
I used to be proud to say I worked (or had worked) for Mozilla, but a careful listener might detect a certain sheepish quality that has crept into my voice lately when I name-check my former employer. And this is why. Even on the opposite side of the world, it’s always the same story: ‘I used to love Firefox’, but ‘I switched to Chrome because my extensions stopped working’ or ‘I switched to chrome because Firefox kept asking me to restart’.
I’ve had this conversation with dozens of people across three continents. Not one person has had anything good to say about the rapid release process. Nearly 100% of my highly unscientific survey volunteered the information — unasked, unprompted — that the rapid release process had ruined Firefox for them.”
+1!
I still have to understand what’s these “features” that were supposed to get to the users faster. Hey Mozilla, Firefox’s features are the Extensions!!! I keep upgrading firefox, breaking compatibility, disabling extensions and i haven’t found a single “new feature” to talk about.
The new Microsoft
Andrew Kim – Minimally Minimal
I find this proposal amazing. Very well conceived, it doesn’t completely deviate from the past but it is definitely light-years ahead.
What i find most interesting is that i’ve seen a dozen or so of new design proposals for Microsoft or Microsoft products in the last 6 months. That means two things i think: a) everyone “senses” that Microsoft is in trouble and fighting to stay relevant; b) that most of its products need a serious redesign to remove clutter, excess decoration and garish colours and just simply be more friendly. What i find most amazing is how that message has managed to miss Redmond completely. Don’t they browse the web sometimes?
Headphones
“I’ve always cared about the headphones that I use, but if I am honest the depth of that care extended mostly to price and design alone. I wanted something priced higher than grocery store checkout line level, but far less than an audiophile would pay — mostly I just wanted my headphones to look cool.
There was also another thing: I liked the Apple headphones back then. I liked them for the same reason everyone else did back in the day: they told the world you had an iPod.”
Ben Brooks — The Brooks Review
Sometimes it’s really hard to deny that some “apple users” are all about “form” and show-off and not much about “function” and substance… (( just a quick note to say that while i sometimes disagree with Ben, i do very much respect him and his opinions. ))
That being said, is interesting to see how people approaches to the stuff they buy are so different. I would hardly ever pay more for a “coolness” / aesthetic factor to my products. I like them to be nice and beautiful. And a very, very small premium on that is acceptable. But that would never be my main differentiating factor. Nor the high price. If i can get them as cheaply as possible, then i’m on.
What I would pay more for, and i do, is for the quality and fulfilment of their general output/function. I also bought a couple of headphones (( in case you’re interested they are the Ultrasone HFI-780 really good headphones and strongly recommended! )) last month. But aesthetics wasn’t even on the assessment card. They are audiophile grade, albeit entry-range, and what i’ve checked and read to buy them was specifications, user reviews by other audiophiles and the appreciations on some expert magazines. And the killer feature in this case was the really great price as i got them on a stock-cleaning sale.
I went trough the manufacture pictures and i carefully inspected every picture to try to understand the kind of headphones they were and what kind of materials they used. But aesthetics and “coolness factor”? Didn’t even crossed my mind.