'We're going to have a renaissance – let's do it' This was the week when it looked like the case against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom could be brought to its knees on the mere technicality that the site had never been served with papers in the US. Unfortunately, the criminal conspiracy charges in America are vital to the trial, and without a charge carrying a five-year maximum …
"on the mere technicality that the site had never been served with papers in the US"
How the hell is this "a mere technicality"????!
What next? Heads of state who can have random people, including their own citizens, robo-killed all over the world at the mere drop of hat and to their greatest pleasure, with legal justification alleged to exist but kept locked away because of security reasons? Oh ... wait! No....
As a student in 1977 I was fortunate to spend the summer vacation working in IBM Research. Creating an early GUI (on terminal plus 370 mainframe) using windows, menus, trackball (not mouse) etc. - an early preview of elements of what would gain visibility as the GUI of the 1980s.
Briefly using the Apple Lisa in 1982 was interesting although the machine was underpowered and too expensive for purpose. I recall being amused to read at the time the concepts were all invented at Xerox Park.
During the last 30 years I've worked with other developers from many companies including Apple, Microsoft and Google. Every organisation has its jobsworths but its been a pleasure to work with individuals who are inspired by the desire to make technology do more for people while seeking elegance in design.
Its understandable the man in the street sees a new device and thinks wow how clever of those people at Apple/Microsoft/Google/Samsung etc. Behind the scenes its not like that one bit, ideas have their time, most innovations happen because the time is right. I've personally touched on techniques for gesture input for at least 25 years though only recently has it been inexpensive enough for consumer products. The layman may well believe what they read about inventions being stolen but the fact is that inventions are rare, mostly its about products and people inspiring others and innovations whose time has come arising independently.
When it comes down to ignorant statements we read like Ultrabook copying MacBook Air, think a moment. Do you really imagine experts who work in the PC design business haven't been driven by the desire to make portable machines as light as possible with long battery lifetimes ever since the very first portables were physically possible thirty years or so ago?
Tim Cook ought to know better than make statements like 'We just want people to invent their own stuff'.
I have to agree with you - I feel saddened that Apple seem to claim to be the first to come up with so many fairly obvious ideas whose time had arrived. If anything, they appear to be the first to come up with the idea of being the ones to have come up with an obvious idea. That, and they have a very good markting department. I have to take my hat off to them for realising that you can put a premium on a product if you add a little spit-and-polish, and often a hefty premium too.
Thanks for this post, AC ! It succeeds in saying vital things about the process of innovation in relatively few words, given the complexity of the subject. Alas, our present patent and copyright regimes, rather than protecting the interests of inventors, innovators, and artists, serve only those of the people controlling the great corporations, their lawyers, and the politicians that they buy. Due to these latter, for the foreseeable future, these regimes are most unlikely to see the reform they so desperately require....
Henri
"Tim Cook ought to know better than make statements like 'We just want people to invent their own stuff'."
Steve would never have said anything so stupid. Steve knew very well what %age of 'Apples ideas' came from outside Apple.
Pissed me off to hear my correspondence to Apple being quoted as part of the inspiration for a new Apple product - with nary a reply or thank you, let alone a tip. Steve followed his orders from Apple lawyers to the letter, never crediting or saying thank you to anybody.
That was the last suggestion they got from me.
"We just want Apple to invent their own stuff"
Ripe for fava beans and a nice chianti I would say.
I too wish people would invent their own stuff, like Xerox PARC, instead of stealing other people's ideas and then perjuring myself before the patent system, the courts and the world by falsely claiming to have invented the rectangle, like Apple.
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