[H_L]

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.

[corin_]

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.

[nirvana]

Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.

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.

[georgemcbay]

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.

[GHFigs]

Both arrived at these solutions at the same time because the wide availability of capacitive touchscreens

Strange conclusion, given that the original Microsoft Surface does not use a capacitive touchscreen.

[corin_]

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.

[nirvana]

Right, given the flammability of wood, fire was an obvious next step.

This is nonsense. It is just rejecting innovation out of hand by claiming that it was obvious.

Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.

[nirvana]

>"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.

[taligent]

Well this comment is ridiculous.

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.

[nitrogen]

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.

[corin_]

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.

[qu4z-2]

Timing may not be as simple as "first".

[vidarh]

> 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:

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/Linux-For-Devices-Article...

(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.

[flatline3]

Your tablet used scroll bars. Why?

[nirvana]

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.

[stanleydrew]

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!

[SimHacker]

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.

[vidarh]

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.

[nirvana]

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.

[lilsunnybee]

At least (s)he wasn't resorting to ad hominem. How about you keep things on topic when debating?

[antidoh]

"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.

[nirvana]

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.

[corin_]

> Touch means finger touches.

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.

[hnriot]

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.

[nirvana]

> 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.

[vidarh]

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.

[nirvana]

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.

[nivla]

>What's next? The Mac stole from windows?

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 !!

[antidoh]

They also took the multi-button mouse and made it (arguably) better.

[nirvana]

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.

[eropple]

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.

[tomjakubowski]

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.

[antidoh]

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.

[nirvana]

So you're claiming that Apple licensed Palm OS for iOS? Or did you misunderstand what I was claiming?

[antidoh]

" And do you get off the hook for repeating this nonsense simply because it fits your anti-apple ideology?"

Ideology? It's just a phone.

[DanBC]

iPhone - 2007

Nintendo DS - 2004

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.

[nirvana]

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.

Nintendo DS is not running iOS.

[dasil003]

Apple didn't invent touch UI. Ever been to a restaurant in the last decade?

[mbreese]

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.

[nirvana]

You misunderstood what I was claiming. I was rebutting the claim that Apple just assembled the iPhone from off the shelf pieces.

Some restaurants do have iOS devices in them.

For you to claim that Apple didn't invent a touch UI, you would need to show that someone prior to Apple shipped iOS on one some device.

That's not the way Apple works. Apple doesn't license someone else's operating system.

Apple created iOS.

[nivla]

>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!

[nirvana]

So, you're claiming that Apple licensed their touch UI from a koisk manufacturer? Do tell?

Because if you're not saying that you're not being honest about what I said.

[lotharbot]

> "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.

[mark_integerdsv]

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.

[eropple]

Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.

How does the LG Prada exist in this strange world of yours, then?

[nirvana]

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.

%99 of the features would be missing.

[ktizo]

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.

[joezydeco]

100% agree. I used a touchscreen kiosk back in 1982 at EPCOT. It wasn't resistive, could have been capacitive, probably was infrared or surface-wave.

[nirvana]

And thus it is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

You're making the "graham invented the telephone so there was nothing invented to make the cellphone" error.

[regularfry]

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.

[nirvana]

Right and Graham invented the telephone so there was no inventions going into making the cellphone.

[ktizo]

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.