Did not the same thing occur prior where most cellphones had terrible menu based systems? If you shake up an industry with a superior interface, and users get comfortable with it, there is no reasonable argument that continuing with an older standard would be a wise business decision.

Sure, you wouldn't want to continue with an older standard at that point, but I don't think that is the argument.

If I've seen one consistent thing from Apple product design, it's that they appear to iterate continuously on the hardware and software/UI/IX components until they feel they have reached the absolute best (and before a wrong-tangent thread starts, that doesn't mean it is THE best, just Apple's opinion of best, etc.)

Most likely in the course of designing the iPhone/iPad, Apple threw away countless hardware and software designs that would have frankly been great and significant game changers. So I would imagine their view is along the lines of "We know the iPhone isn't the only conceivable marketable smartphone layout."

I personally believe that Samsung, or some other smart company, could have come up with an iPhone competitor that would not be so closely compared to and confused with the iPhone. Especially when you consider that the iPhone was groundbreaking in the sense of not having a physical keyboard. That was certainly not perceived as the "perfect" solution at the time, and probably still isn't. There was room for innovative differentiation in how user input was handled (physical keyboard, Palm grafitti-style input, chording keyboard, something new).

Instead Samsung (and several other companies) immediately switched to the flat all-glass iPhone design with the same basic rows of squared icons.

> That was certainly not perceived as the "perfect" solution > at the time, and probably still isn't. There was room for > innovative differentiation in how user input was handled > (physical keyboard, Palm grafitti-style input, chording keyboard, something new).

I understand why this perception exists, but I do not think that it represents a fair assessment of what happened.

The first Android device after the iPhone was the HTC G1, with both a keyboard and a trackball. The first two "high-end" (IMO) Android phones were the Motorola Droid and Nexus One (one had a keyboard, the other had a trackball). There were also some Blackberry-esque designs built in the past couple of years (cf, Motorola Charm, and a couple of others). There have also been variations on hinge design and screen setups (HTC Desire Z hinge, and Kyocera Echo).

Samsung themselves have built a couple of high end Android phones with slideout keyboards for both AT&T and Sprint.

The fact that they've settled on a slate design has less to do with their attempts at differentiation than it does with providing what the market has been asking for. They've tried building the other phones, they just don't sell to as large of a demographic.

I can't imagine anyone today picking Palm graffiti-style input over Swype, for example.

Grafitti was just a throw-away example, I wouldn't have actually banked on that either.

I disagree that the slate is what the "market wanted", it's what Apple told them they wanted, which is a very polished skill of Apple.

Apple consistently sets their marketing apart, and many/most other vendors follow up with "me too" products and marketing. I don't recall seeing any of the keyboard/trackball type phones really truly pushing and standing behing those products as a "THIS is what you want" type of marketing. It's kind of like Apple stakes out a claim and defends it vehemently with their product marketing. Many other vendors try something and kinda say "we think you might want to consider this", but they don't seem to truly own and embrace their own decisions.

Apple basically ignores everything else and puts out their own concepts. I don't see this as much from other companies, though I do try to really look and keep an open mind.

I personally think that an elegantly designed and marketed keyboard phone could have been a solid iPhone rival, maybe even still could.

I had that first Motorola Droid, but the software truly sucked at the time. Email client was lame, didn't support signatures at all. The keyboard was OK, but not great. The OS consistently fumbled switching between soft and physical keyboard by throwing away whatever you were typing. So, I don't think the "market" rejected the early keyboard phones as much as they rejected to overall state of those devices at the time relative to iOS.

True. But it's what you do when faced with this predicament that counts. Compare the approach of Samsung versus Microsoft.

Samsung pretty clearly took the iPhone and decided to make their own equivalent. It's an approach they've used (with great success) when competing with Sony. Unlucky for them Apple patented their work every step of the way.

Microsoft however went back to the drawing board, looked at how users were actually using the iPhone, went through their own product development process and built something unquestionably unique.

This is exactly what I'm trying to say when it comes to the discussing "Samsung had to copy the iPhone cause it is the defacto standard". It is not. Nothing should be a standard. Apple didn't copy Nokia even if Nokia was the defacto standard and the bestelling phone maker. It is not okay to just copy products and earn a fortune with it. I genuinely believe that Apple invested millions of dollars into the UX of the iOS platform and letting people just copy it would be a shame and just the wrong thing.

Why can't Samsung just come up with it's own ideas? Why was there no S-Voice before Siri? Why is the Galaxy line pretty much the only Android Smartphone with a home button? Why do Samsung product packages (!!) look nearly the same as Apple?

Even if people like Samsung or hate Apple they have to admit that something fishy is going on here.

apples whole business is based on copy and clone, why are we even having this discussion again?

And Windows Phone is tanking and Samsung are doing great.

I think that happens in any industry where the rules of the game change. The competitors then have to adapt after the winning design/product if the consumers want it and they want to stay relevant. Some level of similarity should be permitted because of that, otherwise you would have either very little competition or none at all.

I don't think Apple are arguing about some similarity, I think it's the sheer level of it - the physical design, the icons, the packaging and so on.

Windows Phone / Metro show that you can do these things differently, so does BlackBerry OS, so do some Android phones. When you look at the similarities between the iPhone and assorted other smartphones, they're nowhere near all being the same.

It's certainly interesting that (to my eyes at least) more recent phones like the S3 look a lot less like the iPhone than the S2 did and has still been massively successful.

> I don't think Apple are arguing about some similarity, I think it's the sheer level of it - the physical design, the icons, the packaging and so on.

I can see how this argument might seem plausible if Apple were only going after Samsung, but they're not.

Apple's also going after HTC (going after, among other things, the Nexus One and the HTC Flyer), Motorola (Xoom)and at least a couple of smaller tablet vendors (and it is entirely possible that there are lawsuits and/or other legal actions I've missed). It's worth nothing that that list includes the top 3 Android OEMs in the US. It's also worth noting Apple is likely avoiding suing Sony because Sony has a trove of patents they could counter-attack with.

This isn't about copying, no matter how much Apple and their apologists try to pretend that it is. This is about Apple abusing the broken patent system to damage their competition - no more, no less.

Yes there are cases all over but the Samsung one is far wider in it's scope - you're not seeing senior execs on both sides pitching up in court anywhere else.

I'd suggest that in different cases (and indeed within the same case in some instances) both things are happening - Apple are pissed off at what seems to be outright copying and that Apple are taking advantage of the system.

But I'm dubious about any suggestion that it has to be one or the other, these things are rarely that clear cut.

What would be better for the users? Assuming the iPhone was better than what came before. Which action from incumbents would be best for users?

a) Do not copy the iPhone. Make old ugly phones. (What blackberry did) Now users are stuck with old ugly phones.

b) Make something different, not because it's better, but only for being different's sake. (what windows phone did) Forces users to adapt to something new instead of using what they're already used to.

c) Embrace the innovation. Put all that's good about the iPhone in your product. Then iterate through it and improve upon it. (what samsung did) Now users have the best of both worlds, they have the brand new innovation, in a format they're used to. And taking benefit from next iterations improved from it.

It's obvious that option C is best for users. Might not be the best for the original innovators. But it's the best for consumers.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that intellectual property is first and foremost intended to protect users. Not innovators. Protecting innovators is a means to a greater end. It's the vehicle that we found that would, in theory, lead to greater products for users. But, unfortunately, often there's a conflict of interest between inventors and consumers.

As an innovator, it's in my best interest that everyone in the planet must pay their every last time to me if they ever stare at my invention, and are only allowed to improve upon it if I allow it. But as a consumer, it's in my best interest that inventions are shared and improved upon. So I can have the best of both worlds.

When there's this conflict of interests. Consumers should always take precedence. Because protecting consumers is the only good argument to back up IP in the first place. If that's not the goal, then IP is meaningless. Protecting inventors for protecting inventor's sake has no value. We do so because we believe that will lead to greater products for users.

It's very common to see a confusion between these in these discussions. Even in courts. Every time I hear "apple is being ripped off because they paid so much money into R&D" or "artists are entitled to their music, and not you". It's clear there's a disconnect between what IP should be and what you think it should be. You shouldn't care whether it's protecting the inventor, you should care whether it's protecting the user. Whenever you're in doubt, you should ask yourself if doing something will protect or hurt the user.

And in this case. It's obvious that even tho Samsung did copy a lot from Apple, they're also improving a lot on what existed before. What they're doing is not in the best interest of those they're copying from. But it's in the best interest of users. Punishing Samsung hurts consumers. That's what we should be worried about. If samsung loses this, it sets a terrible precedent for our industry. And it would be a great loss for consumers. Regardless of who copied what for which reason.

This is sort of a separate question and one that is separate to the trial.

The trial is asking "did Samsung copy Apple?", this question is "should that matter?" which is a question for our law makers.

The side you don't talk about is what benefit accrues to someone who does great design or R&D or produces great art if it can just be immediately copied by someone who doesn't have to make the investment in time or money. If that deters investment then it's not necessarily in the long term interest of the users.

Personally I'm not intrinsically anti-IP, I see some benefit, I just think the level of protection that's afforded goes on for too long and is handed out to too easily.

My feeling is that if you look at how markets develop, there is a period where there is rapid innovation followed by a period of stabilisation and standardisation. If we provided protection during the initial period (maybe three to five years) that provides incentive but may also encourage innovation as people looked to innovate themselves to compete.

Then after the market has settled down and there are clear winners and losers, the protection is moved and the standardisation you talk about can come to pass as the foundation for the next wave of changes.

But critically IP needs to be looked at on a market by market basis. Having a one size fits all system that covers drugs that need years of expensive testing, music that might be written in a few hours, software that is almost certainly redundant in a couple of years and hardware (that depending on it's nature could fall almost anywhere on the spectrum) is mad.

> what benefit accrues to someone who does great design or R&D or produces great art if it can just be immediately copied by someone who doesn't have to make the investment in time or money.

If you assume that everything Apple invented was trivial to copy. Then even then, Apple was still the richest company in the whole planet before having ever bothered that anyone copied them. The richest company in the whole planet. It seems to me that the R&D investment already payed off, lawsuits or no lawsuits. I believe that answers your question.

It's clear from these results that Apple and competitors will invest in R&D anyway no matter if they get copied afterwards. It still pays off for them. I'm pretty sure the world won't stop inventing new things because some are being copied.

I don't assume that at all, it's why I say a one size fits all approach makes no sense.

Different things have different costs to develop, different value, different life span, different barriers to duplication and so on. Some of the things Apple have been granted patents to they'd have done if they had no protection at all, others they may not have bothered with.

But it's easy to look at the success of the iPhone and say "it's obvious it paid off" but not all R&D leads to an iPhone and not all companies are Apple. That's like talking about running and only using Usain Bolt as an example.

I agree that we should have different IP laws for different situations but I don't think profitability or size is a good metric to use.

EDIT: I wonder (thinking out loud) whether some sort of system where you have to be willing to license all patents on something like a FRAND basis might work (not FRAND in terms of the detail but the overall principal)? No-one gets exclusivity but you do get a return. Competing companies can then work out whether they think it's worth paying the modest fee or whether to develop and alternative themselves.

With consumer demand in mind. Don't you agree that if an invention didn't see the light of day, doesn't that mean there wasn't a market for it in the first place? Then why does it matters if that invention wasn't put in market, if consumers didn't want it in the first place? Remember we're not trying to give benefits for inventors for no reason. We're trying to give consumers something they want. We're not trying to throw money at inventors to invent random stuff no one cares about. We're trying to create cool new things for consumers. If there is no consumer demand for an invention, why would consumers care if the invention didn't make it to market?

Consumer demand doesn't necessarily equate to success or profit for the inventor.

Say you're a one man start up and you invent something really cool in your garage. You start marketing it, get a bit of leverage and sell a few. It's going great, you've got some orders, get some money from an investor, you've got a proper workshop and are growing nicely.

Then Samsung or Apple see what you're doing and think it looks cool. They get their factories up to speed and throw a few million dollars into marketing (that you don't have needless to say) and before you know it they're selling millions. Everyone wants it, consumer demand is off the chart and no-one cares a jot about you in your workshop any more because Apple and Samsung can make the thing cheaper and get it to consumers faster.

So, it made it to market, there's plenty of demand and yet where's the incentive for you to do anything when you have your next great idea other than go and get drunk in a ditch because you've got no desire to get screwed over again?

Yes the consumer benefits from cheaper devices but they also benefit from great people having great ideas and being incentivised to do something with them because they know they could get a reward.

And that's before we get into talking about how we do want to encourage failure because if we try 1000 long shots, even if 90% of them fail, we'll have more great stuff than if we try 100 things and half of them work out. research risks benefit the consumer in the long term.

I don't agree with that at all. In theory if a product never sees the light of day, one can assume it is a bad product, but that's still a textbook example of a converse fallacy. I am a man with 10 fingers, thus all men have 10 fingers.

There is a reason "Shut up and take my money" is a meme. Look at the LightTable project that has been shown here on HN a few times over the past few months[1]. Take a look at the current state of popular IDEs. There are hundreds of common patterns shared between every one of them. Chris Granger comes around and shows a new idea and new paradigm for software engineering and everyone goes wild, a Kickstarter campaign starts up, and he gets to work on trying to get a product out the door that thousands of people want. For the sake of argument, lets say he fails to produce the product (personal issues come up and he has to quit, or whatever). Does that automatically make the project a bad product? Thousands of people still want to use it, over 7,000 people have already put money down in support of it. Are those people just idiots when it comes to choosing a hot new product and can't tell a doomed project from a good idea?

Consumer demand does not equal market success. There are hundreds of examples I could give of product features I've personally implemented for my work that have been thrown away because some stakeholder didn't see the value at the time it was shown, and on occasion that same feature gets requested later in the product's lifecycle.

[1] http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-...

I didn't say demand will always inevitably lead to new products on the market. I said that if there's no demand for an invention, then the consumers won't care that it didn't go to market.

Funny how the Samsung apologists have gone from saying "of course it's not a copy, they had these designs before Apple" to "what else could they do?". This defence of plagiarism as being somehow in the better interest of consumers is laughable. "intellectual property is first and foremost intended to protect users"? What have you been smoking?

> Funny how the Samsung apologists have gone from saying "of course it's not a copy, they had these designs before Apple" to "what else could they do?". This defence of plagiarism as being somehow in the better interest of consumers is laughable. "intellectual property is first and foremost intended to protect users"? What have you been smoking?

Intellectual property has always been a temporary monopoly granted to provide economic incentives to inventors/writers/what-have-you for societal advancement.

Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property#Objective...: "The stated objective of most intellectual property law (with the exception of trademarks) is to "Promote progress."[12] By exchanging limited exclusive rights for disclosure of inventions and creative works, society and the patentee/copyright owner mutually benefit, and an incentive is created for inventors and authors to create and disclose their work."

That said, I don't like your tone. Arguing, for or against a position does not make one an apologist.

The U.S. constitution makes it quite clear that intellectual property exists for the benefit of citizens, to promote the advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries.

Eh, from a direct reading its not that clear:

From Article 1, Section 8: Congress shall have the Power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

I guess it's fair to say that 'the Progress of Science' is for the benefit of citizens, but there's definitely cutouts for the benefits of inventors & authors.

I think this muddiness definitely sits near the root of current IP debates.

Looks pretty clear to me.

> Congress shall have the Power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,

The goal or motive.

> by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The means by which the goal is achieved. The benefit to authors and inventors are a means to and end, don't confuse the means for the motive.

The problem is Samsung did not look at the iPhone and say, let's build a UI based on icons the width of a finger, swipes for navigation, and simplify as much as possible. Instead they copied non essential elements to leach off of the iPhone brand. Copying limits you to making a poor imitation of the original. But, inspiration allows you to put scroll bars on both sides of the phone, because they are non functional so why not as it might be better.

You are the founder of evolup.com. Let us say your product/service becomes a huge success. Seeing your success, existing social games developers want to do the same.

Which action from those existing developers would be best for users?

a) Do not copy your product/service. Continue doing things the old way.

b) Make something different, not because it's better, but only for being different's sake. Forces users to adapt to something new instead of using what they're already used to.

c) Embrace the innovation. Put all that's good about your product/service in their offering. Then iterate through it and improve upon it. Now users have the best of both worlds, they have the brand new innovation, in a format they're used to. And taking benefit from next iterations improved from it.

So where does your preferred option (c) leave you in this scenario? Would you whole-heartedly welcome another player "embracing your innovation"?

If that happens to me, I'll lose all motivation to innovate any further. What is the point after all?

You're asking the wrong question to the wrong person. I'm actively in contact with other local game developers trying to get them to do the same thing I'm doing (and compete with me). I've even helped others with implementation details. Which, I believe, will help grow the ecosystem for all of us, myself included. Since what I'm doing is too new (arguably ahead of its time), there's still some prejudice from both users and investors against my technology. If others were doing it as well, that would help me. Do you wanna copy me as too? Feel free to contact me, I'll help you. I can teach you how to properly implement procedural generation to reduce your costs with game artists.

At the end of the day. I trust my skills in my area. And deep inside, I'm confident that no matter how much I'm copied, whoever copies me will always be one step behind me. Because I'll keep on innovating one step further. The only reason I founded a startup is because I believe I'm better than the competition, otherwise I wouldn't have. Realistically, I believe my competitors are much more likely to become clients to my API than to actually try to implement it themselves.

That's just one of the many reasons humans will continue to create and innovate, no matter how much innovation is copied.

If by definition of "success" you mean getting rich and improving the lives of people in the process, then does it really matter if other developers will start copying from them?

"If that happens to me, I'll lose all motivation to innovate any further"

Well, tough luck kid, but a free market has no morals. In a free market the law of the fittest applies. And you should be glad there are still free markets out there, in which people like us can thrive.

First mover advantage is pretty huge. Net effects are significant.

We're not talking about making generic innovations in your products similar to the iPhone. We're talking specific non-innovative features: white handset on a green background icon, for example. A dock using the same color scheme. Identical curves, with a chrome border on a black case. A home button on the center bottom.

Many consumers buy the iPhone "because it's iPhone" - they can't even tell you half of its innovations. So you left out d, which is what Samsung did:

d) Build a device that usurps the panache of the iPhone

Apple was one of several manufacturers bringing hardware innovations happening in the industry to smartphones: Large, colourful LCD screens, mobile processors, GPUs, and wireless technologies. None of that was pioneered by Apple (paradoxically a lot of it was courtesy of Samsung). A lot follows from what is made possible by the new hardware.

Imagine that tomorrow someone -- say Apple -- makes a device that can read your thoughts. Nokia rushes a thought-reading smartphone to the market just before everyone else gets their own thought-reading smartphones on the market. Does Nokia suddenly have a worldwide exclusive right to it?

This is all very similar to the countless "on a computer" patents.

Before Android, the iPhone was a horribly complicated device with broken, almost useless notifications, no cloud functionality, and a need to tether off of a master PC to do anything of consequence (updates, initial setup, etc).

Every device learns from every other. I used Android above but of course it learned from WebOS among others.

Further this notion that the iPhone spurred on a lot of changes that were already happening industry wide is truly infuriating. You've seen the ridiculous "here are smartphones before the iPhone, cherry picked to find those most unlike it, and here are smartphones after the iPhone, cherry picked to find those most like it", acting as if the pivotal event was the introduction of the iPhone, external to the fact that a confluence of hardware improvements made such a form factor possible if not optimal.

The GPS industry -- which exploded before the iPhone -- pioneering and accelerated mobile screen technology, mobile touchscreens, mobile CPUs and GPUs (OpenGL ES -- the foundation of graphics on the iPhone -- was built almost purpose suited for mobile GPS devices), etc. The iPhone borrowed from that development, taking the state of screens, touchscreens and GPUs to make a better smartphone.

Everytime someone shows one of those "before the iPhone" and "after the iPhone" they scream out their ignorance. That the iPhone took advantage of the progression of technology at the right time doesn't give it ownership of the domain.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/15/tomtom-go-910-portable-gp... <- a year before the iPhone.

Horribly complicated? Oh, I'll bite.

All hardware discussions aside (and you do make some good points), the central advance of the iPhone was in the design of the software.

Everything is an app. Everything. The alarm clock is not a special case, Wifi is not a special case, e-mail is not a special case. All functionality has a 'home'. All functionality is 'owned' somewhere. All settings are handled in one location.

There are no scrollbars. No menus. No modes. No windowing. No pointer. No double-tap. The only fixed interface is Volume Up, Volume Down, Home, and Lock. Everything else is mutable, task-specific, and optimized for the space available.

This is the supernova idea that changed more than just the smartphone industry. Vast chunks of complexity and spaghetti UI were drained out of the smartphone experience. Everything else shitty about iOS 1 including the hacky update system and the crappy popups was cleaned up and refined in time, none representing a failing of the product's core design.

So in no way, shape, or form could the iPhone be described as 'horribly complicated'. Literally no access to the filesystem, no ability to add or remove software, no classical ports, no expandability, no alternate firmwares or carrier modifications, simple setup of "cloud" services, effortless PC sync... it was a masterwork of simplicity for the great bulk of users.