Score?
Is anyone (other than Apple and Samsung) keeping score? Can we get a scoreboard in a table on the El Reg front page?
Tokyo's district judge has ruled that Samsung smartphones and fondleslabs infringe on Apple's infamous "bounce back" feature. The pair of patent-battling firms still have cases backed up around the world, including in Japan, where a judge last ruled against Apple in a suit over syncing music and video data in August last year …
Is this like some wierd countries drug/porn/weapons laws where it's legal to own or sell them but illegal to use them? This has been in Android since Gingerbread (2.3) yet Apple dare not, for some inexplicable reason, try their asshat rounded corner bullying shit with Google.
Let's lighten the mood a little by remembering the hilarious embarrassment we all enjoyed when Apple had to apologize in the British Press for pulling exactly this kind of stunt there. Oh but wait... then there was one more thing. They had to think different and apologize again when they were told they were apologizing wrong. Now *that's* genius.
There is a perfectly explicable reason for why Apple isn't suing Google directly.
One can only sue someone if one can prove that one it has suffered direct losses following the action of the other party but also that the other party was aware of the infringement and profited from it.
Google doesn't sell Android it gives it away, so only device manufacturer who profit from the "feature" can be sued. In this case Samsung.
America says this, Japan says that, Holland says something else, as does Germany and Britain and...
Frankly, I feel that a lot of the trivia bring argued is not so much special innovation - think of how the Dyson-with-the-ball is quite different to the bog standard wheels-in-game-side vacuum cleaners at the time and ask yourself if the things being argued here are the same degree of difference. It seems to me more like the current state of what a smartphone should be has reached the level of sameness that makes it harder to be distinctive. Think of Windows vs Ubuntu vs OSX - what makes them different? A brand loyalty? One is perceived as being weaker? Problem is, they are the same inasmuch as you could sit a reasonably computer literate person at any of them and they could write a short essay with citations. It's the same with the phone. There are many cool features around, but nothing mind achingly awesome. I feel this legal battle is because, and exactly because, the devs don't know where to take it next. The devices are pretty high powered, they now run real operating systems and can run real apps, quite unlike the jokey feature phones a decade ago. They try to do everything for us, from reminding us of the things we want to forget to entertaining us. In fact, pretty much the only thing missing from a phone is a DTT receiver (unless you're Japanese...). So where do we go from here? I don't know, and I'm not sure Apple (etc) do either. Hence all the legal bullshit. But, you know, stomping on the competition is only a short term solution. If the next great thing comes along and you miss the boat, all the fuss today will have been for what?
Coat, because I'm bored, going home...
That's why i miss the old MacOS, not for it's weaknesses, as lacking proper multitasking an protected memory etc etc.
But the small touches on how the system worked with data, it was brilliant in some aspects, such things that OSX is best compared to MS DOS.
Filename extensions WTF, that did not used to be part of neither UNIX or MacOS, and now we got the DOS hell upon us. Broken shortcuts and files that cannot be renamed or moved while some other program writes to it.
Fortunately we haven't yet got the Windows problem of a file that cannot be read just because some other App has it open, or the system think's it's open by some other user. That user that is you your self, and not having it open.
I guess that I still to come to MacOSX as Apple today likes to copy all from Microsoft. Apple users get more n more windowsfied each day. Catching up with the linux guys.
"Tokyo's district judge has ruled that Samsung smartphones and fondleslabs infringe on Apple's infamous "bounce back" feature"
Infamous (Adj): Having an extremely bad reputation, deserving of or causing an evil reputation, shamefully malign.
Why is Apple's bounce back feature infamous? I actually think it's pretty good; and certainly not deserving of an evil reputation.
Apple's conduct, on the other hand...
Certainly not deserving of a patent either, maybe?
In case you can't grep it, making a UI element respond to an event is by no means an innovation. What's next, patent rounded icons? Oh, wait...
The sad part is that while Apple touts itself as an innovator, it amusingly overindulges itself on petty squabbles over trivialities that they patented not so much to protect same said "innovation" but for the leverage and chill effect it might have on it's competition.
Anyone still defending the patent system as it exists must be either the government or a lawyer. Both having an unspoken interest ($$$) in keeping the mess just as it is.