[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!