Photoshop 1.0 Recreated On iPhone

Dotnaught writes "Photoshop co-creator Russell Brown asked Ansca Mobile to re-create Photoshop 1.0, originally introduced in 1990, for the iPhone. The resulting app, created in three days using the Corona SDK, was distributed to 50 attendees of an event celebrating Photoshop's 20th anniversary. Programmer Evan Kirchhoff in a blog post explains that Ansca took the project on to prove its claims about how Corona makes iPhone development faster."

Comments

Photoshop without patent problems!

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Photoshop from exactly 20 years ago - the only way to reliably avoid software patent problems!

Re:Photoshop without patent problems!

[SCPRedMage]

Poorly.

Re:Photoshop without patent problems!

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

how do patents work in america?

Easy. You write something that you think it too long and complicated for a patent examiner to fully undertand in the 17 hours he/she will be allocated. Then it gets granted and for twenty years you can threaten anyone that developers or distributes software that does anything resembling your patent. (You, the writer of a patent, are a protected innovator. Those guys writing software are nasty pirates - watch out!)

When someone receives your threat letter, they become formally aware of your patent and they now risk triple damages plus paying your lawyers' fees! Win! To avoid this, they could ask their own lawyer for a certificate of non-violation, which costs $40,000. So, if the original letter (which cost 39c to send) asks for $35,000, there's a good chance you'll simply get your money. (As explained by patent attorney Dan Ravicher in this presentation)

Or, you could contest the patent and kill your company by spending 5 years paying legal fees and having a cloud of uncertainty around your business making you untouchable for investors. (As is the case with the 1-click patent)

But, don't worry, patent law does contain a consideration for the public: the nightmare ends after 20 years, so that's why we're all really excited now about Photoshop 1.0 finally becoming patent-free. I hear there's a great operating system that will be patent-free in 2015!

Re:Photoshop without patent problems!

[Evan Kirchhoff]

To be clear, this was done for the official Photoshop anniversary event, and demoed by Russell Brown at that show. The number of copies we gave out afterwards was limited by Apple's ad-hoc install process for iPhone dev accounts. A wider release would obviously involve some lawyers signing off on things, not to mention all the interface style guide violations in putting 1990 Mac UI on iPhone (I have no idea how App Store reviewers would react to that!)

Re:Photoshop without patent problems!

[toriver]

You forgot the other way:

1. You write a confusing patent application that will take two years to process. You submit it in year X.
2. You keep amending and altering that application every year so the process starts anew. It still shows the X year of filing.
3. Someone who is actually innovative invents something. You rapidly amend your patent so that it describes that invention.
4. The patent is eventually awarded, and you sue the actual inventor for infringement because as everyone can see, you held a patent since year X on that particular idea.

Re:Photoshop without patent problems!

[WrongSizeGlass]

Knowing Adobe they'd rebrand it as iPhone CS 1 and want to charge $379.99 for it.

I suppose Adobe Download Manager would soon follow ... oy carumba!

So now

[Anonymous Coward]

you can edit your photos while driving

Re:Control area

[Evan Kirchhoff]

I lost a little respect for the developer when I read that. Pixels are meaningless as they are affected by the display's DPI. Considering Verizon doesn't even sell the iPhone, obviously their style guidelines are specific to some other hardware.

Yeah, I knew I wrote that part a little too quickly! More specifically, Verizon was recommending that figure on circa-2008 guidelines aimed at their earliest iPhone-style touchscreen phone, which had a DPI that was more or less the same as iPhone, so it's a reasonable rough-and-ready number to cite. (I was at Adobe working on FlashCast, aka "Verizon Dashboard", at the time, so I randomly happen to remember that guideline.) The iPhone HIG is obviously a better reference, but in this app it's sort of moot anyway because the real limit was "as much touch area as we can squeeze out of 20-year-old WIMP GUI". If I can figure out how to boil all this into a few words, I'll clarify the article.

That's not Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a neat tribute, but that's not Photoshop.

It's just a Photoshop startup screen and a fudged reproduction of the "Levels" tool.

I don't see that taking 3 days on the project was a great achievement. He could have probably done it using Apple's developer tools in the same time period.

Again, I'm not poo pooing the idea or execution. It's sweet and I'd enjoy messing with it on my own iPhone. But it's not Photoshop and I don't think that it effectively demonstrates that their product speeds up iPhone development.

The description implies some advantage in memory-management with that image-swapping and masking going on in the demo, but I'd have to reproduce the demo in Xcode and run the two apps side by side to figure out if that's so and I suspect that for an app of that modest complexity any difference that would make would be imperceptible on all but the earliest iPhones.