[recoiledsnake]

I wholeheartedly agree that Apple's innovative in getting technology to actually work in a user friendly way and combining them with excellent design but is that process patent worthy is the real question at hand.

For example, how different is the homescreen of the iPhone from this? http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI... Compared to that, Windows Phone with Metro is much more innovative.

Another problem is that many people attribute things to being invented by Apple because they first hear of it from Apple(and because they don't use non Apple products). For example, I remember when Apple introduced hybrid graphics with a way to switch between the integrated Intel gpu and a discrete Nvidia/ATI GPU. Sony had that working before Apple, but a LOT of folks thought it was Apple that innovated it. Perhaps Apple added more polish to it, but they certainly were wrong.

Polishing and going the last mile is very tough(see OEMs with half baked software and hardware) but does it deserve patent protection? Apple innovated and got awarded with becoming the most valuable company in the world with more than 100 billion dollars in the bank with which they can invest further in innovation instead of indulging in petty patent extortion over petty things like the bounceback effect or linking phone numbers in emails to the dialer.

[czr80]

Design is not how it looks, design is how it works. When you truly internalise that you'll see why that screenshot is irrelevant.

[recoiledsnake]

Design is both how it looks and how it works. If you take the Desktop WIMP UI, and try to come up with a way to redesign it work with only touch instead of mouse and keyboard, you'd roughly be already halfway to the iOS homescreen in terms of design. Instead of clicking on a icon, you touch it and the app opens, swipe to see multiple homescreens since desktop space is limited on a phone, add in a dock at the bottom. Contrast that with Metro. So that screenshot is NOT irrelevant.