[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.

[qu4z-2]

Perhaps it wasn't obvious, but clearly it was obvious enough that MS came up with it too.

[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".