Slashdot Mirror
Apple Files Patent for Translucent Windows
jpkunst writes "John Kheit at Mac Observer reports on US Patent Application No. 20040090467, published on May 13, 2004, in which Apple filed a patent application for 'Graduated visual and manipulative translucency for windows.'" Begin the hunt for prior art! It's a challenge to find a non-Apple translucent window that isn't just a snippet of desktop wallpaper pasted in the background.
Or are we all going to change our stance because its Apple?
It'll be interesting to see how the opinions on Slashdot differ from if any other company tried this sort of garbage.
OS/2 Warp 4 Betas offered translucent windows. The feature was removed from the final release for performance reasons. Hardware just wasn't quite there in '95 to support that feature. As least that's my recollection of it.
I know that the enlightenment window manager had translucent windows in the late 90's. Anyone have a time stamped picture from way back then? Perhaps in the internet way back archives...
Applying more and more sophistocated graphical rendering techniques to graphical user interfaces should not be patentable. The reason they weren't used twenty years ago isn't that NO ONE thought of it, its because of performance advances since then.
How unique is software in being incumbered by BOTH patents and copyright?
Last I checked the anger around here doesn't seem to be outrage at companies holding patents. It's outrage at companies using patents.
Apple patents practically everything they work with but very, very, very rarely uses any of these patents. In fact if you look at their intellectual property actions, some of them are kind of morally dubious but they almost never involve patents. Even when they're making legal threats against things which actually violate patents they hold-- for example, Aqua skins for other OSes-- they tend to choose to base their legal complaints on means other than patents, other forms of intellectual property.
Since history shows that Apple tends not to use patents they hold, I don't see any problem with them holding a bad patent. This is probably just the old "defensive patent" technique, where someone patents something just to make sure no one else can claim it was stolen, or to build up a "patent shield".
Of course, it's very easy that someday all the big software companies could choose to start using their defensive patents offensively, and the patent shields would become a shieldwall blocking any small companies from entering the business. But at the moment that's just a hypothetical, and Apple has no more or fewer frivolous patents than any other large software company, pretty much. We don't get pissy at those other such companies, for example IBM. Therefore not getting pissy at Apple would appear to be the consistent thing to do?
But the prior art search is still a good idea! It's good to have these things as clearly documented as possible in case spurious claims ever did wind up happening.
Apple is a company owned by their shareholders; the same with Microsoft, IBM, etc. And their behavior isn't all that different, except one little detail: one of them is a monopoly.
If some kind of behavior is legal (even if someone don't like it too much) for a smaller company, one that owns 90%+ of the market can't behave the same way.
now for the "control both the hw and sw" myth... Apple just uses an older business model, where they assemble a machine and it's OS (hw is basically a PC's, with the difference of an IBM/Motorola RISC chip).
But this is true, that Apple "is not your friend". The same with MS, and IBM and HP, Dell, Sun, etc. Companies are not "friends", they are businesses and they will choose one course of action over another to make $$ or, at most, sometimes to win some goodwill (and probably someone is measuring this in $$ terms).
Time dependent translucency?? Wow, hook a timer to ramp the window translucency up or down. That took about 10 seconds of work. If I control it by the phase of the Moon, can I patent that?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This isn't simply "translucent windows." Hell, you can do that in WinXP and 2000 with third-party software. This is different:
"Information-bearing windows whose contents remain unchanged for a predetermined period of time become translucent. The translucency can be graduated so that, over time, if the window's contents remain unchanged, the window becomes more translucent. In addition to visual translucency, windows according to the present invention also have a manipulative translucent quality. Upon reaching a certain level of visual translucency, user input in the region of the window is interpreted as an operation on the underlying objects rather than the contents of the overlaying window."
If you're going to go looking for prior art, that's what you need to find: windows that become more translucent as more time passes where you're not doing anything to them, and that eventually become so translucent that when you go to click on them, you're instead able to click on desktop objects behind the window.
While I don't think that this is particularly deserving of a patent, it is neat, and so far as I can tell, novel. It's not just "translucent windows."
Yes, someone who RTFA!
For crying out loud, they are attempting to patent a very particular behavior of a window. One that I have NEVER seen used in an OS or app before, so I doubt you will find prior art specific enough to invalidate the patent.
This does do something interesting though... give people a peek into what is coming up in MacOS X 10.4
worse even because they control both the hardware and software
And you think that Microsoft dont control both the hardware and the software? (and that's not all else they control either!) Im amazed you are that shortsighted.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
translucent windows. Its a system where windows become more translucent as time goes on, and you can actually work with the window underneath.
This is not obvious, and simply having windows that are translucent probably not violate this patent.
Translucency is simply a color modification is not patentable. What they are talking about is a process for adaptive translucent windows that alter not just appearance but condition as well.
That being said...most software patents suck.
Microsoft, IBM, and others have been stockpiling their software patents for years.. and now of late, it seems, that Apple has decided to join the fray.
I just want to know when we're finally going to go nuclear (nuculer?) with the back and forth patent infringment suits - because that's when the shits really gonna hit the fan.
And i wonder - has is not already begun? IBM, while clearly in the right wrt SCO and Linux begs the question... they "launched" a few tactical nukes in that little debate with their 8 or so patent infringment suits... while we cheer them on... should we not do so with a bit of trepidation?
Software patents are screwy and stupid... and its not going to take much pushing and shoving for all hell to break loose...
or is that for all lawyers to start raking in the dough as the cost of the judicial branch makes the US military budget look like a blip on the radar. We'll have to start cloning humans just to make enough lawyers.
Do you think that it will be "Global Thermonuclear War", where one side who's far less defenseless as SCO will actually shoot back - and then everyone starts shooting at everyone with patent infringment suits? Or will it be more gradual?
Either way... i think i should ditch this communications and networking gig, and go become a lawyer.... it soon may be the only actual viable non-outsourced job left in America by 2010.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Those programs actually manipluate a data structure in the Win32 API which was designed for transparency. The prior art for those apps could go back to the creation of that aspect of the API.
are we all going to change our stance because its Apple?
Well, yeah. It's called reputation and it doesn't appear out of thin air; a company needs a good PR team and competitive products to earn it.
Don't worry though, the system is self-fixing - if they annoy their customers beyond a certain point or start behaving like really bad kids, you'll get more Apple-bashing than you can handle. After all, and IIRC that was what happened in the pre-Jobs-comeback era, when the Apple is dying trolls ran rampant.
Sailors. Oh man!
READ THE FUCKING PATENT. It's not enough just to be translucent. It has to allow stuff like becoming transparent to user input over time as well.
Patents are supposed to be for specific implementations, not conecpts. In software specific implementations (the code) are already covered by copyright and trade secrets. Here it is being used to say that noone but Patentholder may make something that does X. Only in computing do we allow such control of concepts.
What if everything was done this way? "Sorry FooCo has a patent on cars with three doors, you can't put that rear door on your truck." "Sorry BarCorp has a patent on methods of displaying text on a screen, you'll have to stick with the teletype or license from them."This is why software patents just don't make sense.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
The existence of a patent can have a chilling effect on innovation, even if you don't use it (would you build your house on a remote-control landmine - even if the person that planted it promised they wouldn't press the button?).
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.................
Apple had a relatively new look and feel in the personal
computer arena.
Microsoft said hey, we should license this.
Apple said OK, license it for Windows 286 and/or 2.0 and
continued to develop the interface.
Apple continued to develop the interface while Microsoft
continued to develop the interface to DOS.
Apple made great strides in the gui department while Microsoft
continued to develop a new version of Windows with these
unlicensed enhancements.
Apple cried foul, Microsoft released Windows 3.
Apple sued.
Why are the patenting this? its new and they would like to implement it in their products without concern or loss in R&D
as it is quite clear that Microsoft has no problems rolling innovation into their products, problem is it isn't their innovation.
JMHO and some will take this as flame bait but as long as the software model is 'we charge you to use this';
for profit businesses need some form of remedy to protect themselves from the Microsofts of this planet.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Here it is - Vitrite
This isn't time-dependent, but it is very handy.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
They even defend against that in the blurb. Eterm just pastes a relative bit of the desktop background in it. Move your "transparent" Eterm over another window, and what do you see? Your desktop background. Move a transparent OS X window over your browser window, and what do you see? Your browser.
To anyone with ordinary skill in the art, making a translucent window gradually opaque is obvious. Patents are not (well, at least, should not be) granted to the first person to say or do a thing, but to teach others something truly novel and useful, advancing the art in some profound way. This application does no such thing and should be severly narrowed to precisely what they are doing or rejected outright for obviousness (or even silliness).
...so typical, it almost seems like a troll. I believe this is what the grandparent poster was looking for.
but if Apple doesn't patent this some other company might. Given Apple's involment in the open source community with Darwin, http://www.opensource.apple.com/ , I would rather see them with a patent for this than some company based on patents only.
This is the usual Apple apology. Apple is the "good" company, and otherwise "bad" behavior is OK for them to pursue, since an evil company might patent it first, and we all know that Apple never does anything evil. Oh, and they're involved in open source, too, which makes them even more of a "good" company, unlike some other evil companies who aren't involved in supporting open source at all.
It's all fairly typical of the excuse making by Apple followers who otherwise masquerade as FOSS zealots in other threads.
"I hate to offer this as prior art, but Everquest has had time-dependent transparency for over a year. I personally think it's a pain in the ass, but it works."
However, Mac OS X has been out (with transparency) since the public beta in Sept. of 2000, which is more than four years ago (nearly five now).
I do remember an extension for Mac OS 9 which made transparent windows however, and this was way back in 1995 or 1996 - something like that... Don't remember what it was called.
"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving." -Lao Tzu
Nice. Someone who READ the patent instead of just commenting on the stupid summary. This is a VERY SPECIFIC method of USING translucent windows. Not just "a patent on translucent windows."
This is essentially a patent on a context-sensitive user interface, where windows become more or less opaque based on how many windows are open and how many are layered, and whether or not the user interfaces with them. I imagine this would look very cool and be fairly usable.
it's as dumb as patenting the fading of music as the next song is about to be played. In the process of setting the translucency of a window you will still move the translucency over a certain amount of time no matter how small that time is. Whether it is done automatically or by scrollbars THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT A COMPANY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO PATENT.
did you forget to take your meds?
I can do this in WinAMP - the window fades out when I don't use it for a couple of seconds.. .. when did they put that feature in?
Neko
Apple must do this. If you look at the "new" features of longhorn, nearly every one has been done by Apple for years with OS X. Apple has been using translucent windows, expose window management, drop shadows for windows and auto discovery networking....all of which MS announced as breakthrough technologies that THEY are rolling out in Longhorn. These are just a few examples there are more.
Apple has been bitten once my MS knocking off the GUI and other Mac elements. This time around it will not be so easy. Remember it is also up to Apple if they wish to enforce this patent, or with whom they wish to enforce it.
Modifying one variable with respect to another is one of the simplest trick in the programmer's book.
Idle sensitivity and transparent windows have been around since the beginning of computing.
Combining two totally obvious ideas in an obvious way does not warrant patenting. There are a million ideas like this one...should I be able to patent all of them?
Rotating desktop background color with respect to time of month?
Changing the size of a window with respect to free disk space?
Activating a program when your computer is idle for a certain amount of time?
Minimizing windows when they're not used for x minutes?
The point of an invention is that they're supposed to have done some WORK. Merely choosing an independent and dependent variable is the legal equivalent of calling SHOTGUN!
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
And the whole reason I should have to do that is, what now? So companies like Apple can monopolize things that other people have done before/could easily come up with themselves/is so fucking obvious the patent examiner should be shot...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
You misunderstand what the "bad" behavior is. Holding the patent isn't it. It's what gets done with it.