Slashdot Mirror
Apple Tweaks iOS Animation In China In Attempt To Avoid Sales Ban (theverge.com)
Apple released a tiny update to iOS this week designed to avoid a sales ban in China. iOS version 12.1.2 contains software changes exclusive to China that are designed to circumvent Apple's patent dispute with Qualcomm, which won an initial sales ban over claims that Apple violated a pair of its patents. The Verge reports: The update changes the animation for when an app is forced to close, according to MacRumors, seemingly avoiding a Qualcomm patent around app management. Previously a closed app would slide off the top of the screen, but it now shrinks and disappears into the middle of the screen. Last month, Qualcomm won a court injunction that banned Apple from selling iPhone models including the 6S, 6S Plus, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, and X. iOS 12.1.2 The patents related to how software resizes pictures and manages applications. This fix appears to change application management, but it's currently unclear what, if anything, has changed about the process of resizing pictures.
The 'busy' animation was of a tank repeatedly running over a person again and again in a circular pattern. For some reason the regime objected to it.
This is funny af. We criticize Chinese companies for allegedly stealing patents and then two of our own companies use are having a patent dispute? Over a theoretically relevant patent that originated outside China? Good luck with that Qualcomm. I hope you have accounted for all your wasted legal fees
If this constitutes a valuable piece of intellectual property which deserves the protection of patent law then I suspect evolution has run its course and humanity is about to become extinct. Either that or the next populist dictator could do worse than round up the entirity of the "tech" world and execute them posthaste.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Qualcomm was the one filing suit not Apple.
How is a stupid animation new or novel.
What in the world made this patentible.
Oh! I know. Over worked patent examiners who let anything through with a big enough pile of paper.
BULL$#1T
I first read the headline as "Apple Twerks...".
I think I may have been spending too much time browsing Instagram.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Qualcomm is having to sue everyone. Because like Tivo they are no longer relevant, and just hold a lot of patents.
Especially now that their quarterlies have hit their stock price. Is anybody fooled by this stuff anymore?
I seem to recall similar totally ridiculous patents. Didn't Apple sue Samsung at great length about, what was it, bouncing when you couldn't scroll any more? Or was it rounded corners? This sounds like payback.
Really, this patent issue is well and truly out of hand.
Can I patent the wheel, please? How about a box?
"Cats like plain crisps"
Not that these transitions have been used in movies since the 1930s or anything.
But they're on a phone now, so that makes it totally fucking original.
Their second attempt violates the looney toons ending sequence, probably a copyright violation vs patent
Try to approach it from an angle of hard physics and logic, in the real world, and what you end up with, is that it only constitutes of a concept to take money from people, without working for it (like those people themselves had to, to get that money), by way of creating a otherwise illegal monopoly for the purpose of enforcing otherwise illegal artificial scarcity, that transforms something of infinite abundance, that would otherwise naturally be worthless, into an imaginary "good".
Its core is the deliberate confusion of ... ... and ... with information, that is copied without repeating the work.
1. the act of work with the result of that work,
2. a work with a mere copy of a work,
3. physical matter/energy, that takes work to recreate,
You could use that precise logic, to put your $100 on a photocopier, call this particular serial number your "property" that you "worked hard for, you fucking pirates!", and demand that shops accept your copies to pay for things that they had to work to make. Or sue them for trillions of work hours and write laws that put them in prison for as long as literal actual murderers. ... mwahahahahaha ... pay *him* only *once*! As little as you can. While stating that you do all of this to protect him!
Oh wait! No, to fully emulate them, you would also have to not work yourself, but have some other dummy do the actual work, and
Having worked in those businesses for way too long, I can honestly say that it's both the result and the cause of massive cocaine abuse, with a dash of LSD.
Obviously, everything you built on top of that, can only be surreal nonsense.
Unless someone comes to their senses about all this patent, copyright, Intellectual Property insanity, there will come a time in the future where you won't be able to create anything new because there will already be a bazillion hazy, wide-reaching and / or totally bullshit patents ( and patent trolls ) standing by to cash in on your work.
You'll end up having to pay off so many people it won't even be worth the effort to bring your idea to market.
Seriously ? A patent on an window close animation ?
THIS is what Qualcomm is whining about ?
"I hope you have accounted for all your wasted legal fees"
Of course they have - you're paying higher prices because of it. "Always screw the consumer" ... tech corporation's motto.
But is suing those who do. Specifically apple because of their disagreement over royalties isn't it?
Hurr hurr hurr.
Seems a total ban is excessive for someting like this. I hope there is something more to te story.
Still there is an engineer that had to draft the spec
and document it, and write the code.
Hey dude, your a dumb ass, this is not innovation, but easy shit any coder could do even in the 80s.
What a prick of an engineer to think he can claim this patent, who is it, hes gotta be a be a dick head wanker.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That all the people who contributed to Compiz and Beryl could sue the shit out of everyone, Apple and Qualcomm included, for stealing various UI animations. That was always the great thing about open source. Apple has always known how to leach off the community the most and the Darwin community, who stood up to them, will always remember that nearly all tech companies are douchy assholes that don't deserve any bailouts when they finally see rock bottom.
I don't understand, Zynga has a business model of shamelessly ripping off other games, and it's all fine. How can a single animated sequence be protected, when it's OK to rip an entire app?? I really don't get it.
Hey dude, your a dumb ass, this is not innovation, but easy shit any coder could do even in the 80s.
This is a misunderstanding. There is no patent on the code. There is a patent on the action. And there are many things that get patented that _could_ have been done in the 80s, but nobody came up with the idea of doing it.
Of course it is Qualcomm's bad luck that today, with developers used to lots of graphics effects, any decent developer can on the spot replace this apparently patented animation with one that isn't patented out of the million possible animations. Or at least not patented by Qualcomm.