Slashdot Mirror
Steve Jobs Patents "The Dock"
theodp writes "If you're a PC, you may be unfamiliar with The Dock, the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of a Mac and provides easy access to Apple applications. But don't count on it becoming a standard on the PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple — and inventor Steve Jobs — a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka 'The Dock,' after a rather lengthy nine-year wait."
you have to be kidding.. CDE has had this for years, if not decades..
I don't think this was covered on Slashdot and I wish I could find a better citation than this but it's been said that Apple has threatened makers of "docks" for PCs with lawsuits. I can't verify that but I do know that I downloaded and installed a beta program called Y'z Dock which was developed by a now defunct crew.
... but my default response to software patents is that they're broken. Those of you that use Windows will never know the dock because Steve Jobs doesn't want it that way. Also, I'm kind of pissed that "a PC" means Windows ... it means personal computer, does it not? Isn't my Linux machine a personal computer? I hate that. But that's a totally offtopic rant triggered by marketing from all camps.
The Y'z Dock software was really really slick and very comparable to Apple's. You can still find the beta distros on pages like Fileforum and other third party hosters (I won't link because you will have to use those at your own risk).
I don't think anyone in the community ever thought they could get away with mimicking the dock
My work here is dung.
You know, that area on the windows tool bar that gives you quick access to applications? Been there since Windows95 I think..
Reading the patent, it specifices a magnification effect on the icon the mouse is over.
Another example of prior art is HP's Dashboard. (It was a 'Program Manager' replacement for Windows 3.1. It's main design hurdle was that it was in the middle of the screen and thus you had to either keep minimizing apps, or resize them around the center program launcher if you wanted to quickly swap around to different applications. Once you got around it's quirks if was a very fine piece of software for its time.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Since when does the comma take precedence over the semicolon? Normally, that would be read as a list of four items: Ording, Jobs Bas, Lindsay Steven P., and Donald J. The fact that such vile abuse of punctuation is standard as the USPTO is irrefutable proof that the entire institution is corrupt.
Well, the dock can auto magnify icons when you put the cursor over them, and provides some useful shortcuts like being able to specify whether an item should be loaded on startup if you right click on its icon in the Dock. It's more analagous to the quick launch plus the task bar though because it keeps track of currently open applications and hidden windows too.
No, I don't think it's worthy of a patent, it's just a menu bar and probably a lot of the ideas in it have prior art. I don't really think software should be able to be patented anyway.. copyright is enough for me to protect distribution of complete applications. If someone else can copy my design and improve on it, then good for them..
I used to think the Dock was quite tacky when I first saw it, but now that I've set it up with only the applications I use regularly, I'm used to using it as a tool and have grown to like it. I just realised right now that I've disabled the auto-magnification of icons (I forgot I even did that) - that's probably the reason I stopped thinking of it as a gimmicky/tacky..
which is totally what she said
Can you even bother to read the abstract?
To provide greater access and consolidation to frequently used items in the graphical user interface, a userbar is established which includes a plurality of item representations.
Not the patentable part...
To permit a greater number of items to reside in the userbar, a magnification function can be provided which magnifies items within the userbar when they are proximate the cursor associated with the graphical user interface.
Ah, yes, there we go. The patent is for rollover magnification of the items in the dock.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
So basically, CSS Dock is now illegal despite the fact that it is just JavaScript (written using jQuery) and CSS? Great. Now when I'm doing web development, I need to make sure I'm not stepping on the patents of people in completely different arenas.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Since 1996. Apple was using it in 1985 right? This looks like it may have some harsh repercussions.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I don't know about Apple fans, but Mac users certainly don't "extol" the Dock. Most people disable magnification, move it away from the bottom of the screen, set it to autohide, and/or replace it with something else (and then complain because you're still forced to use the dock for some things, since a full API for replacing it is not available). Only absolute newbies use the horrible default configuration.
More like a mix of the quicklaunch and taskbar. You can customise it to hold whatever applications you want, and it also keeps track of all open applications, as well as minimised windows and the trashcan.
I only have OS 10.4 and it doesn't have any option of showing regularly used applications that I can see. Perhaps that's a 10.5 thing - either that or the wording of the patent is just overly ambiguous (since you can indeed customise it manually to show regularly used apps).
which is totally what she said
Which is odd, considering magnification is not enabled by default on new installs.
Well, yes, Steve Jobs (ever heard of him?) introduced the Dock at NeXT almost 20 years ago.
This patent is for the annoying magnification effect that was added in OS X only 10 years ago.
Good! That row of icons that I never liked will be relegated to the Apple desktop and won't clutter anymore the screens of any other OS :-)
/. story here
1. A computer system comprising: a display; a cursor for pointing to a position within said display; a bar rendered on said display and having a plurality of tiles associated therewith; and a processor for varying a size of at least one of said plurality of tiles on said display when said cursor is proximate said bar on said display and for repositioning others of said plurality of tiles along said bar to accommodate the varied size of said one tile.
Roughly, increasing the size of the icon which the mouse is over, and repositioning icons around it.
36. A computer system comprising: a display; a cursor for pointing to a position within said display; a userbar rendered on said display and having a plurality of tiles associated therewith; and a processor for varying a position of at least one of said plurality of tiles on said display when said cursor is proximate said bar on said display, in accordance with a predefined relationship between an effect width W, a default height h of said at least one of said plurality of tiles and a selected maximum height H of said at least one of said plurality of tiles wherein said predefined relationship includes a function S defined as: S=((H-h)/2)/sine(.pi..times.(h+2)/(W.times.2)).
Roughly, a bar in a gui where the position of icons nearby the mouse is modified according to the formula given.
65. A computer system comprising: a display; a cursor for pointing to a position within said display; a userbar rendered on said display and having a plurality of tiles associated therewith; and a processor for varying a position of at least one of said plurality of tiles on said display when said cursor is proximate said bar on said display, wherein said processor displays a label associated with said at least one of said plurality of tiles with a first predetermined fade-in rate when said cursor moves proximate said at least one of said plurality of tiles from another of said plurality of tiles, and with a second predetermined fade-in rate when said cursor moves proximate said at least one of said plurality of tiles from outside a region associated with said userbar.
Roughly, displaying the name of a program (by fading it in) when you run the mouse over the associated icon from outside the dock.
67. A computer system comprising: a display; a cursor for pointing to a position within said display; a userbar rendered on said display and having a plurality of tiles associated therewith; and a processor for varying a position of at least one of said plurality of tiles on said display when said cursor is proximate said bar on said display, wherein said processor displays a label associated with said at least one of said plurality of tiles with a first predetermined fade-in rate when said cursor moves proximate said at least one of said plurality of tiles from another of said plurality of tiles, and wherein said processor fades out said label when said cursor moves away from said at least one of said plurality of tiles using a first fade out rate when said cursor moves into another of said at least one of said plurality of tiles, and using a second fade out rate when said cursor moves out of a region associated with said bar.
Roughly, displaying the name of a program (by fading it in) when you run the mouse over the associated icon from another icon.
69. A method for displaying items in a graphical user interface comprising the steps of: providing a plurality of said items in a region of said graphical user interface, each of said items having a default height associated therewith; moving a cursor along said region; and selectively magnifying at least one of said items closest to said cursor to a first level and magnifying items proximate to said one item to other levels less than said first level.
and all boat docks across america?
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
Feh! There was a dock in Arthur (precursor to RISC OS) in 1986. It just shows; that even now, the Mac is still 20 years out of date...
Key pieces of this story:
It's Apple.
It's Jobs.
It's therefore NOT eligible for scrutiny.
Move along...
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Oh shit! This means we can't have icons both showing a task that can be opened and one that already is in one icon!
Oh well! I'm not sure how we'll survive, but those crazy developers are pretty resourceful, I'm sure we'll find some other way to launch applications and check if they're still open later.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I guess they're patenting the dynamically-sized bar. Acorn's RISC OS came out in 1989, and it had an icon bar for applications and devices. Arthur before it (1987) had one too. The only difference is that they were always full-screen-width.
I'm not uninstalling AWN or giving Apple any money to use it.
My dock wastes exactly as much screen real estate as my quick launch bar did in windows... 0. Auto-hide is a wonderful thing.
In 3.1 you had open "windows" that held within them a set of links to applicaitons. You could drag this around. It would not 'dock' to any adjacent objects though.
People used to say "IBM PC-compatible" or more simply "IBM PC" in casual chatting. I don't know why that went out of style
Because "Lenovo compatible" is the correct term since 2005, when Lenovo bought IBM's PC division.
I'm not going to read all 129 claims, but a quick glance seems to indicate they all include resizing an icon and moving the others to accomodate the resized icon.
I'm usually the one standing up to defend the patent system, but I've got to say, claim 1 is astoundingly broad. I'm stunned that the examiner couldn't find any prior art on this.
Of course, the real value of this patent is it has 129 claims, meaning it would cost a fortune to get a non-infringement opinion from an attorney. And that, of course, is the whole idea. Maybe you can invalidate some of the claims. Maybe you can be pretty sure you don't infringe some of the claims. But if they throw enough spaghetti at you, chances are they can get some of it to stick.
In case you have .sigs disabled: This post is not legal advice.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
That's an awfully trivial difference.
Which is exactly what makes it patentable in the United States.
I fear what this could mean for other operating systems because Apple has a reputation for being rather zealous about their software patents; as Microsoft might remember.
I don't know if anybody else remembers Apple's patent frenzy on people who used a 'Recycle Bin', let alone an entire GUI.
On a side note; in KDE you can simulate a dock by sizing your taskbar to 50% and putting nothing but icons in it and then enabling the KDE menu on the top, it'll look just like a Mac desktop.
I'm a Mac user and I do use magnification because it lets me shrink the Dock but the magnification means I can mouse-over and quickly find what I need. I also have auto-hiding on. Minimises the space it takes up on the desktop whilst maximising readability.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
The patent is specific enough to not be abusive. IMHO including specifics like User Bar and Magnification separate the patent enough to avoid interfering with other products.
To permit a greater number of items to reside in the userbar, a magnification function can be provided which magnifies items within the userbar when they are proximate the cursor associated with the graphical user interface.
I still don't see why a decorative aspect of an interface is patentable but...
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Good Lord, Steve. Just patent PURE SHINY EVIL and be done with it.
Authentic Apple iEvil! Not that ersatz Zune Evil, hahahahaha! Get only the best evil!
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I have just had a look at the patent and it seems to be *how* the "dock" is *presented*.
E.g. the patent constantly mentions things like *fading-in* the program name over a "tile" (icon?), *magnification* of a tile and it uses the term "bar" instead of "dock". The patent even specifies formulas!
Does this mean that a "dock" can be implemented by using different "effects" and formulas?
Also, the "magnification" seems to be specifically defined in the patent. I'm sure there are other ways this can be done without "violating" the patent.
Certain parts of the patent seem very narrow. It seems to cover direct clones of the Mac "dock".
If this is the case then this seems to be an expensive patent for a trivial issue.
I do wonder how this will affect the AWN project https://launchpad.net/awn personally I stopped using AWN because they could never get full screen windowing to work to my satisfaction, but I would hate to see a productive and lively OSS project shut down because of Job's intellectual greed.
"The dock has been part of the Macintosh OS and user interface since its introduction in 1984."
Uh. No. The 1984 Mac (which I owned and for which I also wrote software) most certainly did NOT have a dock. It had menus and windows and desktop icons... but no dock.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Calm yourself. The shuttle can still dock as long as it doesn't use the magnification feature of the dock. sheesh people.
Of Code And Men
Yeah, they met one-too-many fanbois... -.-
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Sorry but the Dock comes from NeXTStep which was demoed in 1987 and shipped in 1989 by NeXT Inc which was started by Steve Jobs after he was forced out of Apple. Later, NeXT was bought out by Apple and Steve Jobs returned to Apple as acting CEO.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
It's too obvious,
This is really all that needs to be said. While the icon zooming "feature" is admittedly a good function, I don't really think that Apple should be able to claim inventorship of something that could occur to, oh, any UI designer.
My mother is a patent lawyer and recently she's angry at the USPTO because they (presumably understaffed bureaucratic as usual) have rejected several of her clients' applications on the basis of originality, or obviousness, or specificity. Keep in mind that these are patents for like, chemical synthesis pathways and things. Things that required R&D at some point. I guess everyone, even the patent examiners, know who Apple, Inc. are though. And that's the difference I guess.
-- arstchnca
--