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Apple Tries to Patent iPod User Interface
harlows_monkeys writes "Apple's
trying to patent several aspects of the iPod user interface. This one is particularly interesting because the claims are written in fairly clear and simple language, easy to understand by anyone. If this one is granted, it won't be because an overworked examineer was confused by deliberate obfuscation by the application (which is what I think happens for a lot of the ridiculous patents). About half the claims are for things that were implemented in prior players (e.g., Archos), and the other half are for things that are in many other common device interfaces (DVD players, PVRs) and the only novelty is that Apple put them on a portable music player."
If it was Microsoft doing this, we'd have seen a long judgemental rant with a biased link at the end. Good to see some things never change on Slashdot
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I am stupid when it comes to most things related to patents.
What does this mean, does Apple secure exclusive rights to the specific combination of all the features of the iPod or to the individual features?
If this patent is approved what would be the impact on the portable music player market?
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
I see one of the three people in the inventors list is Steve Jobs. I guess the guy standing with the whip behind the engineers deserves some credit, but this is ridiculous!
*grin*
It's a pretty slick interface and one that would also be easy to copy. I can't fault Apple for trying to protect against a horde of Asian clone iPods. If a patent is granted and Apple has the common sense to only enforce it in obvious cases of someone copying the interface, then great. If they get the patent and then sue anyone and everyone who has something that sort of works like the iPod, then that sucks.
M
iPod sales are going through the roof. So much so that Apple doesn't even have enough stock to supply it's European market. I think Apple is being very wise and protecting itself from the likes of Microsoft, who I'm sure would take advantage of any "deliberate obfuscation" to find loopholes and use the same interface when they decide to produce their own BillPod.
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Read the claims before your lame attempts are citing prior art.
Well, I mean, if you created something that helped a piece of hardware sell a lot, then you're going to want to make sure the world knows its yours.. and doesn't steal it also. Right?
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
What makes you so sure Jobs didn't have some sort of legitimate hand in designing the iPod?
My car uses a wheel for controlling it's most important features too. And it also isn't covered by anything in this patent. Why don't you at least try skimming the patent before posting the first thing that comes into your head.
Perhaps if I went searching through old articles, I would find someone posting that the Segway wasn't worthy of being patented, because it used gyroscopes, handlebars, wheels, and even a grip-throttle - all of which everyone knew had been around for ages in other devices.
Perhaps a flying car wouldn't be worthy because it used parts from cars and airplanes, both of which have been around in some form or another for a hundred years.
See where I'm going here?
If you take enough different ideas or things from enough different places, and put them together in a way that hasn't been seen before, and the result is something that significantly improves upon what had been seen before, to the extent that people look at it and say, "Wow, that's sure new and different," you've basically had an original idea. Sure, you've been standing on the shoulders of giants - but so has everyone else.
1) Apple can do no wrong. Drink the Kool Aid, bathe in the warm glow of the Reality Distortion Field, and shut up.
2) This patent seems to involve the graphical display of content and features of a MP3 player through a hierarchical menu structure and through playlists.
3) They are patenting a feature on a physical device, not a software method. They're not patenting the software. The technology they are patenting is embodied in a physical device.
4) A patent can be based on other work, even other patented work. If any previous art that Apple has built on is patented and that patent is owned by another company, Apple must still pay that other company. If a third party wants to license the technology, they must pay both Apple and the other company.
5) Patents mostly suck, unless Apple applies for them, because of 1).
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Thats no excuse for utter hypocrisy.
and can you blame them? Apple wasnt so patent happy back in the old days and look what it got them, they lost their interface design to the company making their Office software wh then turned around and made a 2nd rate OS based on it.. iMac is released and 4 seperate comapnies make a PC with EXACTLY the same design original iPod comes out and Dell and Rio make iPod clone that look EXACTLY like the iPod sans the good looking interface... one of them even uses Apples font! The company makes designs that then get hacked apart by cheap knockoffs... why is it not cool for a software/hardware company to protect its design , but perfectly fine for your shoe company, or your coffee pot maker to protect it... you really would be surprised how many companies protect their products by patening them... AND if they are patenting the thing I think they are, its the combination trackpad button setup of the iPod mini and rumored redesign on the 4th gen iPod they are patenting, not the player itself... which is understandable cause It really is a VERY good design
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
He already filed to get "You're fired!" trademarked.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
errr.. have you read the patent application.
Here is the summary:
That sounds an awful lot like a menu system to me.
I don't have an IPod. Could someone with some experience of them fill me in - is there anything especially clever and non-obvious about the design of the menu system that warrants patent protection?
Dan.
Please don't read the summary. The summary doesn't get any legal protection and is just there to give a general idea what the patent is about. If you want to know what they are trying to patent READ THE CLAIMS!!
It's times like this that I wish the flash tag was still around...
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Why can't we have outrage over all the non-innovative cloners not taking innovative risks to make life better for end users? Why can't we have articles like "dell refuses to innovate" or "Gateway poo-poos idea that would make things easier for end users because it was deemed too risky"? Why can't we have these kinds of articles in addition to "Apple sues dell for copying their innovation" or "Apple threatens gateway for look-and-feel infringement"?
Why can't we be outraged over Creative Labs or Diamond Rio or anyone else not being the first to make an ergonomically excellent hard-disk based portable mp3 players with a superior UI? Why can there only be outrage over Apple preventing these people from copying the UI that they themselves weren't willing to make in the first place?
Why can't we have outrage over Open Source/Free Software projects caring little about things like interface design or not coming up with innovative UI's? Why can't we have articles like "linux distribution spends $700,000,000 on dot-com buyouts and $50 on usability research" or "$DESKTOP_PROJECT coordinator tells HCI person with legitimate UI complaint 'quit whining about what you get for free' while telling industry pundit 'quit spreading M$ FUD About Linux Being Hard To Use'"? Why can we only feel outrage over articles like "Apple threatens $DESKTOP_PROJECT over copying Expose" or "Apple Sues Linux Distribution For Copying Aqua Theme?"
We shouldn't be pissed about Apple trying to horde and brutally protect it's innovations, we should be pissed about them being the only ones creating innovations worth hording and brutally protecting.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Find out who the examiner is and send him all the data on this and public domain stuff that does this, he has to accept valid information.
Come on slashdotters! You can do this!
you know, if Nintendo can patent a gamepad with a cross-shaped directional button (check it out, no other gamepad has it), I guess Apple can very well patent their scroll wheel.
This would be a good opportunity to ask something I've been wondering about patents for a while: to infringe on a patent, do you only have to violate one claim (in which case this patent covers everything which has a second-level menu, and should be thrown out as overly broad / prior art) or all of them (in which case, because it specifically talks about MP3s, you could happily take their UI and throw it lock stock and barrel into an OGG player)?
I find this so very funny. In fact it gets funnier every time I read it.
Head on over to folklore.org and read the stories posted there by ex-Apple employees (which alone makes them semi-qualified in the topic) about the Jobs-Gates rivalry and dealings.
People like you like to paint Apple as a poor little garage-run company who had its candy taken away by the mean evil Corporation, who then laughed all the way to the bank.
If you read through those stories (which I repeat are written by the very people who were there) you'll see how this is just a pile of apologetic crap. "Boo-hoo, M$ is evil we're so nice and cool and we want justice"
Here's a company (Apple) that has developers who rewrite entire graphics subsystems a few weeks before "ROM freeze"; assembly gurus who can fit an entire OS into a little fucking chip, and yet is apparently petrified by the threat of Microsoft revoking the license to "SoftBASIC". A goddamn BASIC interpreter, for fuck sakes. Right.
This is a company who willingly and knowingly signed over so much shit to Microsoft for some unseen reason. A company with an army or lawyers facing another army of lawyers. Yet it's all portrayed as some slick under-the-cover last-minute backstabbing deal by the evil Mr. Gates. One morning Stevie woke up and Microsoft had (as you so succintly put it) made a second rate OS largely by stealing it from Apple and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Riiight.
Here is Steve Jobs swaggering around the Apple offices holding his crotch and chanting "here we come motherfuckers", a beacon of strength and go-get-em bravado suddenly turning into the equivalent of one of those scared blinking anime dolls, taking it in the ass every time someone from Microsoft walks in the building. Riiight.
Revisionist bullshit. Apple knew damn well what they were doing, and they did it anyway.
Oh I won't contest that Microsoft plays hardball with everyone, nope. But in the case of Apple it was mostly their own stupidity that did them in.
Other than that, I find your defense of this appaling. But then again, this is Apple, eh?
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I could be wrong, of course, but I have yet to see any evidence that this applies to the iPod as we know it. That seems to be mostly an assumption.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Maybe I'm missing the point, but the scroll wheel interface has been done plenty of times on other devices, eg car audio, av gear, so why's it so patent worthy because it's on a portable MP3 player?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
hey, what kind of moblie phones do you exactly use in the US, rotary dial? My very first, gritty Mitsubishi from 5 years ago had a hierarchical menu (and clumsy too); only, it didn't have a sweeping animation on transitions ;-) Last week I played with an SE P800 and it does much more that place calls :-) The SE T610 is another one I've seen (nasty slow interface... shame, shame), don't you have these in the US (ugh, must be savages!)
My current gritty (and dog old) cell is a Siemens M30... it's a complete prior art: hierarchical, up/down/click to enter subsection thing... the only "design" attribute I give to the iPod is having a wheel adding a sexy circular motion to a very rigid UI. It's a kind of Zen thing I really like.
So, although typing on a TiBook I must laugh at Apple's claims.
Ciao
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
The wankers over in Redmond are about to release thier self-proclaimed "iPod killer" brick and since it's been proven time and time again that they aren't interested in innovating (just copying and/or smothering). So maybe it's a protective measure against Billy & Co. Apple has been Redmond's R&D lab for many years. Don't beleive me? Go here and read the part about "New graphics with the Desktop Composition Engine". It still goes on to this day.
I'd be a little worried if I were Apple. I mean, look at Microsoft's track record - they missed the boat on the GUI, office productivity apps, the internet and now the search engine. They missed the mark early on only to copy and then dominate those respective areas (don't you dare take Google away you bastards!). In typical fashion, Microsoft slowly looks at the digital music phenomena and says to itself "hmmm...there's something bright over here...let's exterminate it".
Apple may be setting themselves up to take MS to court if they end up having to. At least the EU has proven that they aren't blinded and seduced by corporate money like the current U.S. administration. Admittedly, I have no idea if a U.S. patent makes a rats ass bit of difference over in the EU.
If it was Microsoft doing this, we'd have seen a long judgemental rant with a biased link at the end.
No if this was Microsoft doing this we'd have gotten exactly what we got...
A short judgmental summery.
I realise the tin foil hats are in fassion for Slashdot it really is out of place when your defending Microsoft.
I don't actually exist.
I'm with you that this doesn't seem like a very patent-worthy innovation. But when you think about it, when you go to a fast food restaraunt or coffee joint, even the plastic lids on the cups are patented. They've been patenting things like that for as long as I can remember. And what's the difference from lid to lid? Basically just a little industrial design. If that's the standard, then yeh, I have to say the iPod is at least as innovative as the plastic lid I got on my last cup of coffee.
The Apple patent application has likely only been published for a limited time (it still hasn't even hit the 18 month mark). Any IP department worth salt regularly looks at the published applications and patents in the gazette to see if anything reads on their products and inventions.
So at this point Creative, Archos, and anyone else who thinks they invented the "invention" or publicly used/sold this "invention" prior to October 28, 2001 will be sending into the USPTO documentary evidence of that fact. That's what the publication of the application is for.
A landslide of credit goes to him for bringing iTunes to where it is today in a variety of categories (the most obvious being the UI).
I tried using itunes for windows a few weeks ago. My motivation was to try downloading the free songs I had won from my mass comsumption of pepsi products. After about a week of use I switched back to what I've been using for over four years, an open source project that used to be called freeamp, but because of a trademark issue is now called zinf (Zinf Is Not Freeamp). Zinf is open source and cross-platform, I use it in windows and in Linux.
Sure itunes looks nice, but I found the way it handled my music library annoying at best. I wouldn't use it even for the free music that I won. I really don't understand the fawning, sycophantic praise for anything apple generates.
For me... when I switched to iTunes (and Mac) completely about a year ago, it was about three things:
I understand that not everyone likes the iTunes interface and that for *some* people, it isn't the most intuitive. Every human is different and each views their experiences through a filter of their own subjectivity. Therefor, not everyone will like iTunes.
However, rather than assume the praise of the iTunes interface originates from a "fawning, sycophantic praise for anything apple generates," couldn't one just as easily surmise that the praise originates from the effectiveness of the design? For many people, the interface is *very* easy to use and the way iTunes organizes music is *very* intuitive. I think the overwhelmingly positive reviews are a testiment to this ease of use.
So maybe you could detail your troubles with the way iTunes organizes your library. or add something concrete and constructive to this conversation rather than blindly lashing at anything Apple.
constructive criticism: good
pointless complaints about a companies users: irrelevent
Taft
From all the descriptions here if granted that patent could apply to:
Any type of menu, XP Start Menu, Mozilla file menu etc.
They are also trying to patent the very playlists themselves IMHO Mp3's were the first format out that enabled playlists created from the tags in the songs.
I had expected to see a patent on the physical interface itself as I thought it was very unique and worthy of a patent. However the process of the playlists are hardly new and worthy of a patent at all.
If we admit that Apple's patent is reasonable, we should also admit that OneClick is reasonable.
Nope, sorry, totally different thing.
The problem most people here have with OneClick is that it is an incredibly obvious and simple idea that doesn't appear to have required any real work on the part of anyone at Amazon.
What Apple is trying to do with this design patent is protect the work of those that conceived of the iPod's unique UI. To suggest that imagining the thing in the first place isn't "work" shows an ignorance of industrial design and of aesthetics in general.
Frankly, I don't think that UI elements should be patentable. It's already extremely difficult to write software without infringing on a patent. I can't even imagine how hard it would be to design user interfaces without infringing on any mechanisms.
They aren't patenting particular elements of the UI like "menu" and "scroll wheel" (granted, the iPod's scroll whell is patented separately) -- but the combination in form and function that characterizes the iPod. You won't infringe upon this patent unless you're intentionally ripping off the iPod.
As one of the few companies with dedication to design, and one of fewer that gets it right consistently, Apple gets copied all the time. Why should they not try to protect their work?
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
That doesn't even follow. That is probably the worst attempt to make a straw-man analogy I've ever seen. "Oh god, Apple is patenting cats!"
You know, patents aren't the devil. Poorly awarded patents are stupid, but that doesn't make the process inherently something to mindlessly oppose.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
It's certainly part of the "Apple curse" that anything they build will get attacked by some members of the PC community, claiming it's only "liked because Apple fanatics praise everything the company does".
IMHO though, this just strikes me as jealousy. (Wow - someone actually has a business that's so well liked by their customers that they're excited whenever they release a new product?! That's just not right! We have to tear that down A.S.A.P.!)
The fact is, I *rarely* meet a non Apple user who doesn't at least say "Wow, that really is a nice app/feature/design!" if they really sit down and give the products and software a good look.
The Apple "iApps" are a prime example of this. The point isn't that you can't find flaws in them if you try hard enough. (The new iPhoto, for example, has a bug where photo previews often look blurry... Clicking away from one and back onto it again sometimes makes it snap into focus. Annoying!) But *overall*, they give users a usable, clean interface that's hard to describe as anything but "sensible".
Even if you don't personally like the way iTunes organizes your music library, the point is - it DOES organize it for you. Not every program does this, you know. It lets you create custom playlists based on all sorts of criteria, has the ability to cross-fade the end of one track into the start of the next (nice for playing MP3 songs ripped from "live" albums where normally, you hear a sharp cutoff when the audience is clapping at the end of a song), has easy, *built-in* ability to write to CD (as music or data format), and lots of other good stuff you want in a player. Plus, it's free.
On one hand, Apple created something that is truly easy to use. It deserves some protection so that it can extract revenue and continue to invest in future products that we can enjoy. Copying the iPod's concepts doesn't make the copier a good designer. It only helps consumers in the very short term.
The fact that Apple will create things and Microsoft copies them enough to fool casual consumers means that most people have more frustrating experiences with computers than they need to. As a result, Apple makes less money for making genuinely good products. If Dell and Microsoft can knock off anything Apple makes to the point that consumers don't see any reason to buy from Apple, Apple can't make money and the good ideas dry up. The industry as a whole takes the hit.
On the other hand, the concepts in the iPod (which actually incorporate some ideas from NeXT) will eventually become commonplace, so it would be silly to have them protected forever. Some ideas in the iPod are logical conclusions, but some are creative and quite unique.
This takes a very gentle touch.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas