You still don't understand what a design patent is, do you?
We know and understand exactly what design patents are: they're bullshit for companies who don't have real inventions to patent. This one in particular is exceptional bullshit.
--Jeremy
Yep, as I suspected. You have no idea at all. Carry on.
The point is not whether or not Apple was legally right in doing this. The point is they were assholes for doing so. And I don't like doing business with corporations that are not nice.
No, the point (as put forth by the OP) was that Apple patented rounded corners, and meant "method patent", which is not what Apple did.
The point wasn't anywhere near whether Apple was being an asshole about it - yes, they were - the whole lawsuit has got way out of hand, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't correct false statements.
Your analogy, typical of most car analogies, is slightly flawed.
The modifier took a Cougar and altered it. Apple's iPad is not simply a modified prior tablet.
A closer analogy would be a car with no syncho on the transmission, and then Apple coming along with a car that had syncho making it much more pleasant to use. However, the concepts of a manual transmission and synchronising input and output shafts are not new. Combining them to refine a product was at the time, however.
The iPad wasn't Apple's "invention", nor did they claim to have invented tablets. They did innovate in that area though, creating a tablet (not a new concept) that was easy and pleasant to use, especially in the way it dealt with I/O. Previously tablets had all been compromised because the UI was shoehorned in and you had to mimic a keyboard and mouse. Now, a touch-sensitive input system designed for the human hand is not new - again, Apple did not invent this - but they did marry it with a tablet device and create a product that worked.
That is textbook innovation, especially when they're being panned for it in the run up to product release (very famous public criticism of both the iPhone and the iPad as "guaranteed flops" before their release).
Let me be totally clear here - Apple rarely invents anything itself. It doesn't work that way. What it does do, and does almost better than anyone else, is identify concepts and technologies that work well and combine them into products that people love to use. Sure they don't hash out 3G radio protocols, or even work on the glass that goes into the iPhone - they simply licence what they need or buy the company. This doesn't mean they don't innovate though.
It also doesn't mean that everything they do is the right way to go - their track record with input devices is pretty spotty, for example. The hockey puck mouse, the Mighty Mouse and the Magic Mouse are all pretty woeful in my opinion (although some people love the Magic Mouse), but the Magic Trackpad is one of the very best things I have ever used. In no sense did Apple invent or create the concept of a trackpad, or even the mouse (most famously).
Yes, it is well understood that you Apple acolytes have twisted and stretched the word "innovation" so much that you have actually adorned the Crapple shit-slab like Hannibal covering his face with his victims' skin (Clarice!). We all get it. The answer is, no, Apple is not an innovator. They imitate and it is shameful that they have perverted the patent system to the point that they actually get protection for stealing other peoples' ideas.
That's your (extremely eloquent - did you type all that out by yourself?) opinion of course.
You really should look at the definition of the word "innovation" though. An objective look at the history of Apple's products shows a great deal of innovation, especially in the refinement of previously released products such as all-in-one computers, tablets, smartphones and portable music playing devices.
You also forgot to log in - perhaps ask your mom what your slashdot password is, assuming you're allowed to have an account.
You fucking imbecile. None of what you say refutes the fact that Apple was allowed to get away with patenting round corners. As a matter of fact, you have implicitely agreed. Then you have the gall to compare a fucking Apple fondle-slab to one of the most storied designs in American automotive history? GTFO, troll
You still don't understand what a design patent is, do you?
Have you even looked at the patent in question? Here it is in all its rounded corner glory. They patented rounded freaking corners. If you want to get specific, 4 rounded corners on a rectangle. Like the world has never seen that before.
Yes, that's the point of a design patent. It doesn't have to be something new, just a design specific to your product - the iPhone happens to be a rounded rectangle with a dock connector on one edge. That's what's laid out in the design patent.
It's not a method patent, as you seem to be wailing and gnashing about. Of course "the world has seen that before" - the purpose of a design patent is not to mark out totally new, never seen before things; that's what method patents are for.
Apple didn't "patent rounded freaking corners", they submitted a design patent for their product in much the same way that thousands and thousands of other design patents are submitted, like that of the Ford Mustang. Zomg! Ford patented a transportation device with four wheels and an engine! Like the world has never seen that before!
That's called "cutting off your nose to spite your face". Apple is one of (maybe the?) biggest customer of Samsung's components. Cutting them off would be a huge financial hit for Samsung.
Citation needed
I see you didn't read one comment further down in this thread, which is understandable since you can't seem to figure out how to log in.
It's true though. Even *IF* this had a malicious intent, what could that person/those persons have done?
There's no name associated, no personal information, nothing but a picture you could have randomly taken anywhere and gotten some random person in a specific location.
"1) The Apple Store is not a "public facility" it is private property."
Just because something is privately owned, doesn't mean it can't be a public space. The Apple store is open to the public, so it is a public facility.
The OP was clearly calling Apple "tyrannical" for daring to dictate what was allowed in a "public" space, as if it had no right do do that. Apple's retail stores are, by definition, private property.
How many people log into Facebook and such on Apple Store computers?? For all anybody knows Apple is key logging and screenshoting everything you do!
Besides, is this seriously a privacy issue? He's not collecting personal info, just pictures. It's not like security companies are not out there RIGHT NOW trying to te store security cams to your personal info.
This is a harmless kids prank... Move along....
Wow.
I'm not even... I don't know... the stupid... it burns...
1) The Apple Store is not a "public facility" it is private property.
2) he wasn't using his own equipment, he was installing software on Apple's machines.
3) Apple doesn't "forbid" you from using your own cameras and recording equipment in their stores to "record what they witness in plain sight", it just frowns on you effectively installing hidden cameras to capture people's images without them knowing.
Yes, highly "tyrannical" of a private business deciding that installing hidden camera and spyware software on computers owned by them in a place of business owned/rented by them without asking permission (of either Apple or the unsuspecting customers) and trying to handwave it away with a "it's not mentioned that this sort of behaviour is explicitly forbidden therefore it's ok" was something it was not happy about.
Mmm. I'm sure Apple is quaking in its boots that an Apple hater is thinks their decision to put a stop to a guy secretly recording its customers using its own display computers with spyware is a bad one.
I have yet to use a Windows PC that works as well as my Mac. Even the Windows Bootcamp installation on my Mac sucks compared to OS X.
Ditto, but I'm just heading off the argument at the pass. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and in this case the Q is the hardware on the premium side of the line in comparison with other products.
Whether that premium is worth it is another discussion entirely (for me, the decision to go for an iMac made sense, it may not for someone else).
Samsung should just stop selling components to Apple... Let them invent & manufacture that stuff themselves.
That's called "cutting off your nose to spite your face". Apple is one of (maybe the?) biggest customer of Samsung's components. Cutting them off would be a huge financial hit for Samsung.
I should mention, for the record, I think this move by Apple is massively overstepping their authority. Leave enforcement of court rulings to the courts and regulatory agencies. No need to go all vigilante.
You could do it for less with an original Apple TV (before the second gen mini one) and a reasonable amp for less than the Q. It is in fact what people have been doing for some time.
Adding a native Android version of XBMC is great though, but using the Q puts you in that potentially perilous territory occupied by Apple users: "You are only using that hardware for the name/novelty/etc, you should use [$cheaper_option] that works just as well".
Still, if you didn't have a dedicated home theatre amp setup, the Q could be good I suppose.
It wasn't a vulnerability, it was a deliberate design decision that came to bite them in the ass. It was the default behavior and was described as such, only now that it was exploited is it considered a vulnerability.
Making excuses for Google is bad, but then so is making excuses for Apple. Worse so, in this case.
How can you say that is wasn't a vulnerability?
The setting was specifically designed to block third party tracking cookies, but you could get around that by tricking the browser into thinking the cookie was first party with the invisible form submit trick. The only reason Google were doing this was to set tracking and advertising cookies on people's machines who had the "do not track me with advertising cookies" setting checked. If they didn't have that setting on (eg, had the "accept all cookies" option checked then they wouldn't have needed to take deliberate action.
I'm not excusing Apple's security hole - it's clear that the security model was broken by someone not considering that advertising companies like to think deviously, and a really obvious method would be to try to trick the browser into allowing the cookie under the more permissive criteria. Apple absolutely should have checked to see what would happen in situations such as that.
However, when you boil it down, Google deliberately went out of their way to get around people's privacy settings in a "Do Evil (tm)" way, and the excuses I've seen on slashdot trying to justify that behaviour have been staggering. I think the winner was the guy trying to claim that because Apple makes it the default setting on Safari that Google was justified in ignoring it because "how could google know what people really wanted?"
Firstly, no one is saying that all PCs should be dumbed down. That is the Chicken Little argument I referred to before on slashdot that the "elite" come up with as an excuse to bash less technically literate people or products that they see as a threat to their nerd cred or whatever it is that has them up in such a flap about it.
The second is the "Mac for those in denial" comment. It's an obvious troll, but the product line has a specific name. What you're saying is "There's the Chevy car, the Ford car (Mustang, for those still in denial)..." Apple makes Macs. They happen to have much in common with PCs, but they do have some subtle differences - mainly in the EFI/boot department and in the firmware on the GPU - that do set them apart.
Although, I guess if you want to troll and lump all computers together because you can't differentiate them, or you somehow think that it's "denial" to consider a Mac to be anything other than a PC, then fair enough. Do you think PCs are inferior to Macs then? Given how you seem to want to categorise them. At some point you must have considered the Mac to be superior, given that users are now apparently "in denial" about them being PCs now?
The third is that just because people want an easy to use computer means they should have bought "an email box" from "1998-1992". This is clearly not what people want, hence the market for such devices going away. What people want is a device that browses the web, can do email, facebook, light gaming, messaging and skype etc and that does this without all of the downsides (malware, big software updates, anti virus software suites, etc).
This doesn't mean that they don't want you to have a PC that is as complex and annoying to maintain as humanly possible. The two situations are not mutually exclusive positions.
Quite. If you believe all of the hype and propaganda about Apple hardware then there's ample reason to just buy the hardware and forget about the OS. I had 3 Mac Minis for this very reason.
They were the most suitable at the time. They were relatively cheap.
That changed in my case. I could see it still being true for someone else.
Why is it necessarily "hype and propaganda"? Can't it just be "product advertising for a product that doesn't work for me"?
Or can I call Samsung's advertising for the S3 or the Note "hype and propaganda" since it's equally as specious as Apple's?
Just to let you know: You're a troll and a douche bag.
I know two wrongs don't make a right, but this is tame in comparison to vast amount of "Mac users are dumb idiots who can't use a computer" stuff that we put up with on here. Calling Win 7 a downgrade from OS X might be a little bit... flammable (I consider it more of a side-grade), but it's hardly worthy of being called a douchebag.
Slashdot Mirror
You still don't understand what a design patent is, do you?
We know and understand exactly what design patents are: they're bullshit for companies who don't have real inventions to patent. This one in particular is exceptional bullshit.
--Jeremy
Yep, as I suspected. You have no idea at all. Carry on.
The point is not whether or not Apple was legally right in doing this. The point is they were assholes for doing so. And I don't like doing business with corporations that are not nice.
No, the point (as put forth by the OP) was that Apple patented rounded corners, and meant "method patent", which is not what Apple did.
The point wasn't anywhere near whether Apple was being an asshole about it - yes, they were - the whole lawsuit has got way out of hand, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't correct false statements.
Your analogy, typical of most car analogies, is slightly flawed.
The modifier took a Cougar and altered it. Apple's iPad is not simply a modified prior tablet.
A closer analogy would be a car with no syncho on the transmission, and then Apple coming along with a car that had syncho making it much more pleasant to use. However, the concepts of a manual transmission and synchronising input and output shafts are not new. Combining them to refine a product was at the time, however.
The iPad wasn't Apple's "invention", nor did they claim to have invented tablets. They did innovate in that area though, creating a tablet (not a new concept) that was easy and pleasant to use, especially in the way it dealt with I/O. Previously tablets had all been compromised because the UI was shoehorned in and you had to mimic a keyboard and mouse. Now, a touch-sensitive input system designed for the human hand is not new - again, Apple did not invent this - but they did marry it with a tablet device and create a product that worked.
That is textbook innovation, especially when they're being panned for it in the run up to product release (very famous public criticism of both the iPhone and the iPad as "guaranteed flops" before their release).
Let me be totally clear here - Apple rarely invents anything itself. It doesn't work that way. What it does do, and does almost better than anyone else, is identify concepts and technologies that work well and combine them into products that people love to use. Sure they don't hash out 3G radio protocols, or even work on the glass that goes into the iPhone - they simply licence what they need or buy the company. This doesn't mean they don't innovate though.
It also doesn't mean that everything they do is the right way to go - their track record with input devices is pretty spotty, for example. The hockey puck mouse, the Mighty Mouse and the Magic Mouse are all pretty woeful in my opinion (although some people love the Magic Mouse), but the Magic Trackpad is one of the very best things I have ever used. In no sense did Apple invent or create the concept of a trackpad, or even the mouse (most famously).
Yes, it is well understood that you Apple acolytes have twisted and stretched the word "innovation" so much that you have actually adorned the Crapple shit-slab like Hannibal covering his face with his victims' skin (Clarice!). We all get it. The answer is, no, Apple is not an innovator. They imitate and it is shameful that they have perverted the patent system to the point that they actually get protection for stealing other peoples' ideas.
That's your (extremely eloquent - did you type all that out by yourself?) opinion of course.
You really should look at the definition of the word "innovation" though. An objective look at the history of Apple's products shows a great deal of innovation, especially in the refinement of previously released products such as all-in-one computers, tablets, smartphones and portable music playing devices.
You also forgot to log in - perhaps ask your mom what your slashdot password is, assuming you're allowed to have an account.
You fucking imbecile. None of what you say refutes the fact that Apple was allowed to get away with patenting round corners. As a matter of fact, you have implicitely agreed. Then you have the gall to compare a fucking Apple fondle-slab to one of the most storied designs in American automotive history? GTFO, troll
You still don't understand what a design patent is, do you?
You also forgot to log in, kid.
First you say "innovations" then you go on about whether they "invented" tablets, phones and mp3 players.
I think you need to look at the definitions of those two words. They are not synonyms.
Have you even looked at the patent in question? Here it is in all its rounded corner glory. They patented rounded freaking corners. If you want to get specific, 4 rounded corners on a rectangle. Like the world has never seen that before.
Yes, that's the point of a design patent. It doesn't have to be something new, just a design specific to your product - the iPhone happens to be a rounded rectangle with a dock connector on one edge. That's what's laid out in the design patent.
It's not a method patent, as you seem to be wailing and gnashing about. Of course "the world has seen that before" - the purpose of a design patent is not to mark out totally new, never seen before things; that's what method patents are for.
Apple didn't "patent rounded freaking corners", they submitted a design patent for their product in much the same way that thousands and thousands of other design patents are submitted, like that of the Ford Mustang. Zomg! Ford patented a transportation device with four wheels and an engine! Like the world has never seen that before!
That's called "cutting off your nose to spite your face". Apple is one of (maybe the?) biggest customer of Samsung's components. Cutting them off would be a huge financial hit for Samsung.
Citation needed
I see you didn't read one comment further down in this thread, which is understandable since you can't seem to figure out how to log in.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2979325&cid=40650881
It's true though. Even *IF* this had a malicious intent, what could that person/those persons have done?
There's no name associated, no personal information, nothing but a picture you could have randomly taken anywhere and gotten some random person in a specific location.
Tell me what's the worst thing that could happen?
So that makes it ok?
The mind boggles. You also forgot to log in.
"...according to the plants owner."
What does a guy who owns many plants know about compressed air storage power generation?
"1) The Apple Store is not a "public facility" it is private property."
Just because something is privately owned, doesn't mean it can't be a public space. The Apple store is open to the public, so it is a public facility.
The OP was clearly calling Apple "tyrannical" for daring to dictate what was allowed in a "public" space, as if it had no right do do that. Apple's retail stores are, by definition, private property.
People don't EXPECT privacy at an Apple Store.
How many people log into Facebook and such on Apple Store computers?? For all anybody knows Apple is key logging and screenshoting everything you do!
Besides, is this seriously a privacy issue? He's not collecting personal info, just pictures. It's not like security companies are not out there RIGHT NOW trying to te store security cams to your personal info.
This is a harmless kids prank... Move along....
Wow.
I'm not even... I don't know... the stupid... it burns...
1) The Apple Store is not a "public facility" it is private property.
2) he wasn't using his own equipment, he was installing software on Apple's machines.
3) Apple doesn't "forbid" you from using your own cameras and recording equipment in their stores to "record what they witness in plain sight", it just frowns on you effectively installing hidden cameras to capture people's images without them knowing.
Yes, highly "tyrannical" of a private business deciding that installing hidden camera and spyware software on computers owned by them in a place of business owned/rented by them without asking permission (of either Apple or the unsuspecting customers) and trying to handwave it away with a "it's not mentioned that this sort of behaviour is explicitly forbidden therefore it's ok" was something it was not happy about.
Mmm. I'm sure Apple is quaking in its boots that an Apple hater is thinks their decision to put a stop to a guy secretly recording its customers using its own display computers with spyware is a bad one.
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/02/14/apple-to-become-samsungs-biggest-customer/
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/apple-and-samsungs-symbiotic-relationship
http://www.razorianfly.com/2011/04/20/apple-refutes-previous-reports-claims-it-is-samsungs-largest-customer/
The figures suggest $7.8 billion, which is a seriously large amount of cash to simply give up on a whim.
I have yet to use a Windows PC that works as well as my Mac. Even the Windows Bootcamp installation on my Mac sucks compared to OS X.
Ditto, but I'm just heading off the argument at the pass. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and in this case the Q is the hardware on the premium side of the line in comparison with other products.
Whether that premium is worth it is another discussion entirely (for me, the decision to go for an iMac made sense, it may not for someone else).
Samsung should just stop selling components to Apple...
Let them invent & manufacture that stuff themselves.
That's called "cutting off your nose to spite your face". Apple is one of (maybe the?) biggest customer of Samsung's components. Cutting them off would be a huge financial hit for Samsung.
I should mention, for the record, I think this move by Apple is massively overstepping their authority. Leave enforcement of court rulings to the courts and regulatory agencies. No need to go all vigilante.
You could do it for less with an original Apple TV (before the second gen mini one) and a reasonable amp for less than the Q. It is in fact what people have been doing for some time.
Adding a native Android version of XBMC is great though, but using the Q puts you in that potentially perilous territory occupied by Apple users: "You are only using that hardware for the name/novelty/etc, you should use [$cheaper_option] that works just as well".
Still, if you didn't have a dedicated home theatre amp setup, the Q could be good I suppose.
The judge didn't make that determination - the summary did, badly.
The ruling didn't hinge on whether or not the iPhone/iOS devices are computers or not.
Maybe they should patent reading the fucking article - you'd be in no danger of infringing.
It wasn't a vulnerability, it was a deliberate design decision that came to bite them in the ass. It was the default behavior and was described as such, only now that it was exploited is it considered a vulnerability.
Making excuses for Google is bad, but then so is making excuses for Apple. Worse so, in this case.
How can you say that is wasn't a vulnerability?
The setting was specifically designed to block third party tracking cookies, but you could get around that by tricking the browser into thinking the cookie was first party with the invisible form submit trick. The only reason Google were doing this was to set tracking and advertising cookies on people's machines who had the "do not track me with advertising cookies" setting checked. If they didn't have that setting on (eg, had the "accept all cookies" option checked then they wouldn't have needed to take deliberate action.
I'm not excusing Apple's security hole - it's clear that the security model was broken by someone not considering that advertising companies like to think deviously, and a really obvious method would be to try to trick the browser into allowing the cookie under the more permissive criteria. Apple absolutely should have checked to see what would happen in situations such as that.
However, when you boil it down, Google deliberately went out of their way to get around people's privacy settings in a "Do Evil (tm)" way, and the excuses I've seen on slashdot trying to justify that behaviour have been staggering. I think the winner was the guy trying to claim that because Apple makes it the default setting on Safari that Google was justified in ignoring it because "how could google know what people really wanted?"
Astonishing.
Why would you keep an old computer to "run" Ubuntu. I'm assuming there is something you do with the computer after Ubuntu loads, no?
Email, web browsing, listening to music, something to read when I can't be arsed to get up off the sofa and go to my "main" computer.
My point was to the brave, brave AC who doesn't seem to think old computers are useful for anything.
Ok, three major strawman arguments in your post.
Firstly, no one is saying that all PCs should be dumbed down. That is the Chicken Little argument I referred to before on slashdot that the "elite" come up with as an excuse to bash less technically literate people or products that they see as a threat to their nerd cred or whatever it is that has them up in such a flap about it.
The second is the "Mac for those in denial" comment. It's an obvious troll, but the product line has a specific name. What you're saying is "There's the Chevy car, the Ford car (Mustang, for those still in denial)..." Apple makes Macs. They happen to have much in common with PCs, but they do have some subtle differences - mainly in the EFI/boot department and in the firmware on the GPU - that do set them apart.
Although, I guess if you want to troll and lump all computers together because you can't differentiate them, or you somehow think that it's "denial" to consider a Mac to be anything other than a PC, then fair enough. Do you think PCs are inferior to Macs then? Given how you seem to want to categorise them. At some point you must have considered the Mac to be superior, given that users are now apparently "in denial" about them being PCs now?
The third is that just because people want an easy to use computer means they should have bought "an email box" from "1998-1992". This is clearly not what people want, hence the market for such devices going away. What people want is a device that browses the web, can do email, facebook, light gaming, messaging and skype etc and that does this without all of the downsides (malware, big software updates, anti virus software suites, etc).
This doesn't mean that they don't want you to have a PC that is as complex and annoying to maintain as humanly possible. The two situations are not mutually exclusive positions.
All fanboi-ism is douchebaggery. Period.
You must hate it around here then, what with Apple on one side, Google on the other, and Microsoft on the third. However do you cope?
Quite. If you believe all of the hype and propaganda about Apple hardware then there's ample reason to just buy the hardware and forget about the OS. I had 3 Mac Minis for this very reason.
They were the most suitable at the time. They were relatively cheap.
That changed in my case. I could see it still being true for someone else.
Why is it necessarily "hype and propaganda"? Can't it just be "product advertising for a product that doesn't work for me"?
Or can I call Samsung's advertising for the S3 or the Note "hype and propaganda" since it's equally as specious as Apple's?
" if you really want to downgrade to that. "
Just to let you know: You're a troll and a douche bag.
I know two wrongs don't make a right, but this is tame in comparison to vast amount of "Mac users are dumb idiots who can't use a computer" stuff that we put up with on here. Calling Win 7 a downgrade from OS X might be a little bit... flammable (I consider it more of a side-grade), but it's hardly worthy of being called a douchebag.