Slashdot Mirror
New iPhones, new Galaxies: Who's the Bigger Copycat? (yahoo.com)
David Pogue: Apparently, a lot of people hang their identities on what phones they carry. An iPhone person might feel personally affronted when a Samsung Galaxy gets a great review, and vice versa. Apple and Samsung just introduced their new fall 2018 smartphones, and it's clearer than ever: all smartphones have pretty much the same features. Therefore, it strikes many people as searingly important to remember which brand had those features first.
OS Features: Apple invented the touchscreen phone as we know it. The original 2007 iPhone brought us multitouch (pinch to zoom), an on-screen keyboard, auto-rotate, lists that scroll as though with momentum, and the apps-on-a-Home-page design that we all use to this day. Not surprisingly, then, Apple wins this category, having introduced 13 ideas, compared to Android's 10 (and Samsung's 1). The screen is the first thing you notice when you turn on a phone --how big, bright, and gorgeous it is. You can read the full review here. The final verdict: Apple leads the invention category, with 44 innovations, according to our calculations. Google's Android comes in second, with 31. And Samsung brings up the rear with 12 innovations. Now, if you count the number of times each company is listed as a Follower in the spreadsheet, you discover that Apple also seems to have stolen the most ideas. In part, that's because I'm pitting Apple against Google/Samsung (its phones use Google's software). As a result, no feature ever lists Google and Samsung as innovator+follower, or vice versa; they're always a single team.
OS Features: Apple invented the touchscreen phone as we know it. The original 2007 iPhone brought us multitouch (pinch to zoom), an on-screen keyboard, auto-rotate, lists that scroll as though with momentum, and the apps-on-a-Home-page design that we all use to this day. Not surprisingly, then, Apple wins this category, having introduced 13 ideas, compared to Android's 10 (and Samsung's 1). The screen is the first thing you notice when you turn on a phone --how big, bright, and gorgeous it is. You can read the full review here. The final verdict: Apple leads the invention category, with 44 innovations, according to our calculations. Google's Android comes in second, with 31. And Samsung brings up the rear with 12 innovations. Now, if you count the number of times each company is listed as a Follower in the spreadsheet, you discover that Apple also seems to have stolen the most ideas. In part, that's because I'm pitting Apple against Google/Samsung (its phones use Google's software). As a result, no feature ever lists Google and Samsung as innovator+follower, or vice versa; they're always a single team.
They both are still "innovating" things that were present in Nokia phones 10 years ago.
Brilliant.
I think most of the readership here is aware that neither Apple nor Google/Samsung invented the multitouch screen. Those go back to 1982 at the University of Toronto. Engineering prototypes for multitouch phones outside of Apple before the iPhone. What Apple did was bring it to market first. Really, the article is cajoling us to think everyone else is hanging their identity on this stuff, and then giving it the shallow treatment and missing key history. At this point... this isn't worth our eyes.
List of impressive smartphone innovations:
- Skyrocketing prices for marginal incremental improvement
- Devices costing $500-$1000 dollars lacking user replaceable batteries
- Removal of widely used physical interfaces for self-enrichment / courage
- Artificially low amounts of internal persistent storage completely out of whack with current technology coupled with refusal to provide SD expansion
- Crummy battery life
- Phones so thin they snap like graham crackers in your pockets
- Lack of usability / physical buttons
- eSIMs
- Locked bootloaders, operating systems and carriers
- Preloaded to the hilt with malware
Keep up the good work.