[oskee80]

Even if Apple was the first company ever to have a disappearing scroll-bar on a mobile device, I'm amazed something like that can be patented. To me it seems like a common sense evolution when shrinking things down to mobile proportions.

"You know there isn't much screen real estate here, so lets get rid of the bar, and only show the scroll head when you are scrolling. Good idea!" Why should someone be allowed to patent that?

It's like the first website ever to say, "We really have a lot of menu items here... I know, let's group them into sub-menus that 'drop-down' when you mouse over them?" Boom, drop-down menus are now patented, pay up if you want to use them in your website. Sure there were drop-down file menus on computers before this, but I'm the first one ever to do it on a website.

Can someone explain why the two are nothing alike and I'm an idiot for feeling this way?

[mhartl]

You are not an idiot for feeling this way. The patent system is horribly broken.

[ybother]

Windows had disappearing scroll-bars since the early 90's. It was called scrollbar.display=auto.

[Volpe]

That meant they disappeared when there was nothing to scroll (correct?)... not disappear when not scrolling.