Apple: Dumb As a Patent Trolling Fox On iPhone Prior Art?

theodp (442580) writes "GeekWire reports that a Microsoft researcher's 1991 video could torpedo Apple's key 'slide to unlock' patent, one of 5 patents that the iPhone maker cited in its demand for $40 per Samsung phone. Confronted with what appears to be damning video evidence of prior art that pre-dates its 'invention' by more than a decade, Apple has reportedly argued that the sliding on/off switch demoed by Catherine Plaisant is materially different than the slide to unlock switch that its 7 inventors came up with. Apple's patent has already been deemed invalid in Europe because of similar functionality present in the Swedish Neonode N1M." The toggle widgets demoed in the video (attached below) support sliding across the toggle to make it more difficult to swap state (preventing accidental toggling). The video itself is worth a watch — it's interesting to see modern UIs adopting some of the idioms that testing in the early 90s showed were awful (e.g. Gtk+ 3's state toggles).

Comments

Re:Yes, yes it is.

[MachineShedFred]

You're mostly right here. The thing with Apple being about integration and design, is that they are really good at it. A lot of people like to crack on them as not "innovating" or whatever, but when it really comes down to it, the people crying about innovation are much worse at what Apple does, and like to wait until Apple figured out how to make it and market it, and then repeat it without spending all the R&D cash. The PC industry has been doing it for decades.

If it's so easy to integrate and design a product, then why is history so replete with absolutely fucking terrible devices, and implementations of "obvious" technology? If Apple doesn't bring any innovation to the table, then why aren't these supposedly innovative companies eating Apple's lunch?

Sure, Apple has a failure here and there; but they're success rate is FAR higher than just about anyone else.