A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

<i>Why are PDAs suddenly that weird uncle you never talk about and only see at birthdays?</i><p>Because they ultimately failed in the market. There was a reason that the Blackberry and Treo type devices became popular. They worked better than the early touchscreen devices.<p>Those early deficiencies left manufacturers gunshy about creating more touchscreen devices. It was combination of hardware issues (resistive, single touch) and also software (graffiti, interface).<p>It was not obvious in 2007 that such a device (full touchscreen, no physical keyboard) would succeed. The early iPhone reviews specifically addressed the keyboard issue, since this was a Blackberry world. Practically all Blackberry fans at the time were saying that the device would fail because you <i>need</i> a physical keyboard.<p>(2007) <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20070626/the-iphone-is-breakthrough-handheld-computer/" rel="nofollow">http://allthingsd.com/20070626/the-iphone-is-breakthrough-ha...</a><p><i>The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly.</i>

This has been spoken about over and over (refer to the heated discussion yesterday which wasn't my intention - <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431382" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431382</a>). The core of the article again - looks at the concept of obviousness.<p>Refer here - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousness" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousn...</a> - "One of the main requirements of patentability is that the invention being patented is not obvious, meaning that a "person having ordinary skill in the art" would not know how to solve the problem at which the invention is directed by using exactly the same mechanism."<p>Predominately - <i>"that obviousness should be determined by looking at the scope and content of the prior art; the level of ordinary skill in the art; the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art; and objective evidence of nonobviousness. In addition, the court outlined examples of factors that show "objective evidence of nonobviousness". They are: commercial success; long-felt but unsolved needs; and failure of others."</i><p>See also - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_35_of_the_United_States_Code" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_35_of_the_United_States_C...</a>.<p>Again - this article is attempting to state "oh because PDA existed, that means that everything related to <i>a device with a touchscreen and few buttons</i> was obvious". but again, thats untrue.<p>I still believe - in additional the complex legal arguments - the comment below was one of greatest aspects that changed the lay-persons juror mind. Per the Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny<p><i>"In those three months, Samsung was able to copy Apple's 4-year investment in the iPhone, without taking any of the risks—because they were copying the world's most successful product ... No one is trying to stop them from selling smartphones, all we're saying is: make your own. Make your own designs, make your own phones, and compete on your own innovations."</i>

"Just to drive the point home: a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious.."<p>I still don't buy it. This still misses the mark - it wasn't about a 'few' buttons, the iPhone was about none. All those pda's in the picture don't really mean anything to me. Sure, some of them had cell networking and a lot (most? all?) had wifi. But I would never consider the old pda's a mobile device. 'Mobile' to me comes from the term 'mobile phone', not 'mobile pda'.<p>To me, this article is typical of OSNews - if it's not Linux or open source, it bad/wrong/etc.<p>Anyway, Dan Frakes tweet wasn't talking about 'a few buttons being obvious' he said 'having no buttons/keys'. And like he said, if this was so obvious, then why wasn't everyone doing it in 2006? Howcome pda's didn't do this in the early 2000's? Because it took a visionary team of designers and execs (or just Jobs) that appreciates minimalism. No one at Compaq, HP, Microsoft's many pda OEMs would, no, could have done something like this. And don't forget the require stylus..

As someone who has owned a pre-iPhone phone with a touchscreen, and seen another one in the hand of a friend, no, what made the iPhone the iPhone is NOT obvious.<p>For the love of god, my LG Prada was so shitty I had to hit a 2px scrollbar with my thumb to scroll in the contact list. I can't contain the nervous laugh whenever some ignorant who never touched the device link to wikipedia proud of their attempt at mocking Apple. Web browsing on a touchscreen is a real PITA without something like the double tap making a paragraph fit the whole screen automatically too.<p>Like it or not but the iPhone, as a whole package, without just singling out a feature here and there, was a real innovation, a breath of fresh air that opened a new market and has been copied to death by some companies like Samsung. I hated my LG Prada but instantly loved my iPhone the day I bought one and I wasn't anything like an Apple fanboy.

Ever notice how Jony Ive looks nothing like a Googler?<p>This whole trainwreck of a discussion is fed IMHO by the big rift between common, male IT-oriented folks and the rest of the population around visuals, aestethics and yes, concepts like fashion.<p>Sit in the cantina of any company and you can tell who is development/IT. Neckbeards? Socks in sandals? Leather cowboy hats? Attachments on their belts? Unshapely bodies?<p>Aestethics do exist in that other group. Good code, clever algorithms, etc. Fashion too, in forms of buzzwords and technologies du jour. DjangoRailsHadoop... But visual aestethics? Nope, nada, utter incomprehension.<p>The utter genious of Jobs was to bring the aestethics of the outer world into software and computer hardware. Design already existed in other industries, see Braun, Sony, etc but no one applied it to software. Because "nerds" didn't even understand it. See it. Grok it.<p>These Samsung vs Apple debates show this faultline. No comprehension at all why a particular implementation of multi touch should matter, be worth something. It is all obvious, just UI, the thing you slap on top of your awesome program. Why should it matter how it LOOKS?! How can that be so important? Didn't the LG Prada looks exactly the same? Ok, it used scrollbars, but why is that different to how iOS does it?<p>Whenever someone claims that Apple's success is just about marketing, nothing relevant in their products themselves. Whenever it's just off the shelf components they took and re-arranged, super simple and OBVIOUS, I can't help to think about blind people arguing about the uselessness of colors.

Few buttons, PDA.<p>Tablet with news, Knight Ridder tablet. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBEtPQDQNcI" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBEtPQDQNcI</a><p>Icons finger sized in a grid. Well given we already had desktops, and given it's a handheld device, then it's insanely obvious to have fewer icons in a grid at finger size. Low resolution screen compared to our desktops, hey maybe we should have fullscreen as the default.<p>Pinch to zoom, multiple sci-fi movies.<p>Slide to unlock. Phones already had something called "unlock', and physical bolt locks already slide... So we make a visualisation of what amounts to a sliding latch when when have the touch screen, pure genius, nobody besides Apple could have thought of that, right?<p>"Trade Dress" to stop competitors should also be entirely illegal unless there is no branding or logo on the phone, or the name is too similar or in some insanely small font. If it has "Samsung" written on it it's insane to argue that anyone would confuse these things. What if these rules applied to TVs, cars or bottles of perfume? Perhaps technically they do, but people have had such things for so long they don't think about them in that way. It's farcical that anything clearly identified as a different product on the box can be subject to such rules.<p>Apple products are like a good classy restaurant or hotel chain. They take ingredients everyone has and put a lot of work into fit and finish, they make the customer feel special for a slightly higher price. And they have a dress code that permits only a certain crowd in there (app store approvals vs. more free entrance policy of other application stores, and by the way apt-get and various frontends to it pre-date the app store). All due respect to them for doing a good job, but Steve Jobs' entitlement complex knew no bounds and there is no moral or logical merit to their claims only a slice of legal merit on the back of stupid laws.

Also see openmoko (2006):<p><a href="http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Cheap-hackable-Linux-smartphone-due-soon/" rel="nofollow">http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Cheap-hackable-Linux...</a><p>"The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card.<p>Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad -- in this case, an ultra-high resolution 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 480) touchscreen. "Maps look stunning on this screen," Moss-Pultz said.<p>The phone features an A-GPS (assisted GPS) receiver module connected to the application processor via a pair of UARTs. The commercial module has a closed design, but the API is apparently open.<p>Similarly, the phone's quad-band GSM/GPRS module, built by FIC, runs the proprietary Nucleus OS on a Texas Instruments baseband powered by an ARM7 core. It communicates with Linux over a serial port, using standard "AT" modem commands.<p>The Neo1973 will charge when connected to a PC via USB. It will also support USB network emulation, and will be capable of routing a connected PC to the Internet, via its GPRS data connection. [...]<p>Moss-Pultz adds, "Applications are the ringtones of the future." [...]<p>As for additional software components, Moss-Pultz admits, "Quite a lot is there, and quite a lot is not there. We're hoping to change this." In addition to a dialer, phonebook, media player, and application manager, the stack will likely include the Minimo browser [...]<p>He adds, "Mobile phones are the PCs of the 21st century, in terms of processing power and broadband network access. "<p>Looks familiar?<p>I personally have always thought the iPhone was Apple taking the openmoko idea and running with it.<p>EDIT: added details

One of the big differences as far as PDAs go is that they required a stylus, and the touch was pressure sensitive. It couldn't be used just with your fingers.<p>The iPhone's touchscreen implementation <i>was</i> innovative. I remember quite a lot of debate in the period between the iPhone's announcement and release about weather or not a capacitive touchscreen on a phone would provide a terrible experience. There were a lot of very smart people out there who thought it just wouldn't work (greasy fingerprints came up a lot). At the time, for Apple, putting this kind of UX out there was a huge risk, and a major innovation in the industry. They really nailed it, and in hindsight it, like many other great innovations, seems obvious, but at the time it was far from it.<p>EDIT - here's a quote from a CNET article at the time: "11. Just how useful is the touch screen? The iPhone user interface looks elegant, innovative, and easy-to-use, but is it the best interface for a device like this? Whenever you do anything, the iPhone will command your full visual attention. "No buttons" may be sexy, but it also means you can't do anything without looking at the phone. The iPhone's iPod usability may suffer even worse from the touch screen. Have you ever tried to operate an iPod while it's in your pocket? You can do it, but it's hard. The iPhone will make blind iPod-surfing downright impossible. That said, it looks like the iPhone will eliminate accidental pocket-dialing once and for all."<p><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9677208-1.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9677208-1.html</a>

This entire trial was a farce. The jury foreman admitted that they "skipped" prior art because "It was bogging us down."[0]<p>&#62; "Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents," Ilagan said, "it's easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products because it was all the same. Like the trade dress, once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flatscreen with the Bezel...then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel.<p>Seriously?<p>&#62; "We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."<p>Except the purpose of damages is to compensate the patent holder, not to punish the infringer.<p>And let's not forget that they responded to 700 questions in 2 days. If they worked for 16 hours/day, that's 32×60/700 = 2.7 minutes/question. I find it difficult to believe that a group of highly educated patent lawyers, let alone a group of laymen, most of whom didn't even know what a patent was a month ago, could have come to an equitable decision on all the questions so quickly.<p>The way I see it, Samsung clearly copied many aspects of their phones from the iPhone. That was obviously unethical, but whether it was <i>illegal</i> is much more difficult to determine, particularly when Apple itself copied many aspects of the iPhone from past innovations.<p>I don't like to think of Apple as a pure innovator - I think of them more as an assembler. When they see a market in which all the hardware pieces are available and waiting to be put together, they do that in such a way that the final product appeals to the end-user, particularly through the design of appropriate software. For example, they entered the PMP market when hard drives and batteries were cheap/portable enough to make the iPod a reality. They entered the phone market when capacitive touchscreens were cheap/large enough - their real innovation was on the software side. I don't agree with software patents, but unfortunately that's the current state of things in the US.<p>At the same time, there's little doubt that there was bias towards the "home team" as well, especially when the jurors live so close to Silicon Valley.<p>I was honestly shocked that Samsung didn't overwhelmingly beat Apple in South Korea[1], although the WSJ suggests there was definitely a bias[2]. Samsung's chairman, Lee Kun-hee, has been found guilty in the past of tax evasion, bribing politicians, prosecutors, and judges, and then pardoned for it by the South Korean government. Not surprising when you consider that Samsung generates 20% of South Korea's GDP.<p>0: <a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390&#38;repost=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390&#3...</a><p>1: <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/23/3264434/apple-samsung-korea-lawsuit-verdict-announcement" rel="nofollow">http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/23/3264434/apple-samsung-kore...</a><p>2: <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444230504577613120353094642.html?mod=googlenews_wsj" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044423050457761...</a>

"Intellectual property" is an oxymoron and the laws are a farce. Information is not property. Property has no objective foundation if you decouple it from tangible or economic scarcity.<p>Samsung stole no property from Apple. Samsung was providing value to the market by responding to the market's demands that were exposed by Apple. The existence of patents distorts economic incentives to divert activity towards patentable inventions.

My dad: Apple just won right?<p>Me: No - they just lost big time - Apple is done.<p>Dad: Wait - What? They just won the court case and got a billion dollars to boot.<p>Me: That doesn't matter - Samsung won.<p>Dad: Explain.<p>Me: As soon as you have to sue your competition to remain competitive - you're done. Apple did the same thing with Microsoft in the nineties. Furthermore, Samsung builds not only many of Apple products - it's also leading the charge with the explosive growth of Android - open systems always win in the long run.<p>Dad: So Apple is done?<p>Me: Yeah - I sold my Apple stock after this very short case finished up. Funny thing is - the new CEO will be blamed for the fall set up by Steve Jobs - a damn shame if you ask me.

Such device concepts have existed for decades in sci-fi. In the 90s, if you were thinking to the future of wireless PDAs, they always end in all glass touch screen devices.<p>Apple wins in execution, although one I believe is based on a flawed philosophical understanding. They won the mass market, like McDonalds did for fast food but they didn't invent anything nor does it make it good for you, developers or society. A lot of different things happened, coming together at the right time for Apple to exploit this market.<p>If any corporation put as much critical thought into product design as Steve Jobs and Apple did, I think they'd have the same result. To me, it's not about some innate genius or technology prophet, it's about <i>thinking</i>, being critical of everything and getting people to work their hardest at one single goal.

It's interesting that all of the devices that are pictured are turned off.<p>I remember using PDAs back in the day, and they tended to be fiddly affairs with styluses. Sure, you could use touch inputs, but touch input tended to be quite impractical, as the OS on the phone invariably tended to be a modified version of a desktop OS. [1]<p>Ever since the mobile phone was invented, there has been experimentation with form factors. Not all PDAs looked like iPaq's or XDA's. Nokia's Communicator [2] had an iPhone esque interface, but Nokia didn't consider making it touchscreen until well after the release of the iPhone.<p>Surely Apple's innovation - and the one which Samsung has copied - is combining the grid-based icon system (making tap targets much larger), with the few-button-large screen form factor. Because I don't remember PDAs being anywhere near as useful or usable as an iPhone.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.uspree.com/reviews/images/stories/hp-ipaq-214-enterprise-handheld-pda.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.uspree.com/reviews/images/stories/hp-ipaq-214-ent...</a> [2] <a href="http://cdn101.iofferphoto.com/img3/item/116/916/389/nokia-e90-communicator-unlocked-pda-quadband-gsm-auth-23627.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://cdn101.iofferphoto.com/img3/item/116/916/389/nokia-e9...</a>

Apple's execution skills enabled them to succeed using an 'obvious strategy'that others couldn't pull off. That does not mean they "invented" the idea/strategy or that it was overly "original" (e.g. the buttons).<p>The true innovation of the iPhone was the global re-thinking of the software of iOs, and its relation to a phone. Recall, it was only 2.5G when it came out, one of the reason for "apps", was bandwidth efficiency, in addition to custon form factor. The misery of surfing flash-enabled desktop websites on 2.5G was not appealing. From there, there was the obvious need to maximize screen real-estate. hence, the elimination of the (physical) buttons. Soft keys, Icons, touch etc. were not per-se innovative in 2007.<p>The adoption of gesture based touch is obvious to anyone who saw Jeff Han in 2006 TED (well before the launch of iPhone). That's not to say apple was not innovative independently. The form factors and underlying tech vary widely.<p>Just some context worth considering.

<i>Just to drive the point home: a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious - at least to the millions and millions of happy PDA users.</i><p>Yet somehow they look so different you could never confuse them for an iPhone while Samsung also agrees it's obvious but many of their devices look very much like an iPhone. I think the author is unintentionally proving Apple's point.

Apple does not copy. It's against their "values".<p>Apple steals. Starting with Xerox PARC and continuing to this day.<p>What do they steal? User interface design and code.<p>Why do they steal? Because Apple is a _hardware_ company who aims to compete with (and now aims to control) software developers. It started with trying to compete with Microsoft and it continues to this day.<p>To discover where Apple's interfaces come from one needs only to do the requisite research.<p>But it seems people have an aversion to doing such research - it's work, after all - while they have little aversion to passively being the targets of Apple's high-priced marketing and advertising. It's easier just to sit back and let Apple control the show. Show us the "future", Apple.<p>The ideas that are not new, but which others have been developing for years, that you have now stolen and claimed as your own. Interface designs that simply "did not exist" until you adopted them and slapped on the familar Apple logo.<p>I love Apple hardware. It looks great. I'd even pay higher prices for it. In fact, I have. Many years ago.<p>But that's as far as it goes. Apple's software and interfaces have little value to me. And when Apple tries to restrict what code I can run on their hardware, it lowers the value of the product. I lose interest, no matter how slick the hardware design. It's inflexible. And that defeats all the fun of using a computer. Apple has reached the point of diminishing returns for me. It's not worth it to buy their new stuff anymore.<p>According to Apple fanboys, the number of other users who think this way is so small that Apple can disregard any user preferences for flexibility. This is even worse than Microsoft.

I don't want to stir up bad blood, I'm just making a point so don't kill me =).<p>Almost every one of those devices has at least 5 buttons (up, down, left, right center). That's not simple at all. One button is simple. The touch screen on the iphone takes those away so only one is needed. It's the reason the iphone got so dominant--it worked.<p>It's the reason Jobs realized his foray into tableting in the 90s (with development starting in 1987, the first being released in 1993!), the Newton, sucked. He killed it when he realized it wasn't working. The tech wasn't there, when it was, he moved.<p>I know people hate apple, but they need to look at this objectively. this wasn't apples first rodeo--they helped write the book on the PDA market. They're also not suing palm or Visor or HP. Those companies didn't reiterate. Apple did.<p>If you wanna hate, hate being judged by a jury of your peers (you probably shouldn't do that), or our current patent system. And drink some tea or something.

The first time I saw an iPhone, I thought to myself "oh, finally an Jornada that actually works". The number of buttons, layout of those buttons and placement of audio and charge jacks on the iPhone and the HP Jornada are nearly identical. The home button is in the same place. The volume buttons are on the top left side. It was a perfect match. That apple had a stack of jornadas stashed in the back that they were "improving" seemed so damn obvious, I thought that was the point of the whole iPhone schtick.

Ultimately this is a religious issue. The frothing anti-Apple hordes will never admit that Apple innovated and will always see Apple as in the wrong because, well, Apple is evil. These people then jump through logical hoops to justify their contortions. The simple truth is that Samsung copied from Apple wholesale. I for one hope the damages get tripled, not because Apple needs the money but because Samsung contributes precisely nothing of value to the market. They are like the idiot kid in class who tries to get ahead by copying the smart kid's work verbatim. Samsung are plagiarists and thieves.

Grids of icons are pretty obvious too - even on portable devices. Palm Pilot had 3x4, in 1996.<p>It's interesting to see the row of buttons at the bottom of the screen. Samsung clearly is influenced by that styling, rather than the single button on the iPhone.

No one is trying to rewrite history. We all know about the PDA style designs of the early 2000's. Thing is, Apple's designs were still nothing like anything people had seen. The picture in the post is actually proving my own point, not the OP's. That photo also illustrates how the same design concept can be made without blatant copying. All those phones and PDAs have the big-screen-couple-button design style but still look like entirely different models of devices. Even post-iPhone devices all look different while still retaining their heritage with the exception of the Samsung devices in question. It doesn't take an expert in technology, patents, phones, or any expert at all to see that after the iPhone debuted, a lot of Samsung phones started to look a lot more iPhone-like. Everything from the materials, to the colors, to the shape, and even custom changes to the Android UI all closely mimicked the iPhone. The idea was to get regular folks confused into either thinking they were buying the iPhone or make them think they were buying the equivalent of one. Now, regular folks often do think all smartphones look alike but when you walk into a phone store those same people can tell that those phones are made by different companies. They can at least differentiate between the lookalike phones to the point where they understand they're not all the exact same phone. What Samsung tried to do is blur the lines even further to the point where those normal folks who were looking for an iPhone could potentially get confused into thinking they were buying one because of the way they pretty much cloned the iPhone.<p>The patent system may be fucked but what Samsung was doing was wrong and patents were the best tool Apple could use to send a meaningful message and get them to stop. This case isn't all that good to argue the shortcomings of the patent system. There's too much biased information about it out there and everyone tends to just defend their camp. It turns into a Apple v. Android argument in the end. If you want to argue patents then argue patents. The fact is, Apple held patents, Samsung infringed, and justice was done. You can argue whether the patents should have been granted or not but you can't say Apple <i>shouldnt</i> have won because the patents <i>should have</i> never been granted. Too late. They already were.

Turn those phones/PDAs on and we'll see how "similar" to iPhone they were.<p>I just can't believe how some OpenSource-loving people could go soooo much astray and become total jerks who twist the facts just to prove their point.

Oh god, an OSNews article from Thom Holwerda about how "obvious" the iPhone was is now top of Hacker News? How long do I need to switch the internet off for to restore sanity?

Palm devices used a stylus and had text input via a special language at the bottom of the screen. How is this remotely related to the Samsung/Apple patent issues at hand?

Yeah, it's obvious now, because it's so beautiful and simple. That's the magic of the iPhone, how obvious it all seems now that it's staring you in the face.<p>I have no doubt that Samsung, Microsoft, Palm, Google, et. al, were all headed down a similar path, but no one was willing to break from the past.<p>People wanted/begged for a physical keyboard, people wanted/begged for the fastest 3G connection, etc.<p>Apple wasn't bound to that past and yes they had hindsight to make something compelling. Plus they had to come up with something that would immediately separate themselves from the other devices. In fact, this desire to be unique amongst all other smartphones led to these defendable iPhone traits.<p>What Apple was defending wasn't minimalist capacitive touch devices, no, they are protecting the unique attributes that define what an iPhone experience should be.<p>Take away the physical hardware for a minute and compare only the software of the phones. You still should tell which one is an iPhone versus something else. It's those features that Apple needs to protect. Bouncing scroll that stays glued to your fingers, etc.

One thing people fail to realize, any information not submitted as evidence during the trial, may not be considered by the jury in their deliberations. This includes prior knowledge or experiences of any given juror.<p>So if these PDA's were not submitted as evidence by Samsung, they could not be taken into account when the jury decided their verdict.

Maybe all the people with slam-dunk morning after arguments should have sent them to Samsung's large, professional, highly paid and presumably competent legal staff.<p>Or maybe these arguments are all bullshit. Would the jury really have found these to infringe the iphone design (assume they were released later)? I'm going to say, clearly, no. Right off the bat none of them have black faces with equally rounded corners. That sort of gives away the game right there. But let's imagine any one of those devices in this exhibit:<p><a href="http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/087-e1345854689999.png" rel="nofollow">http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/087-e...</a><p><a href="http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/677-e1345854925482.png" rel="nofollow">http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/677-e...</a>

The iPhone also used the same 320x480 screen resolution of some PDAs. <a href="http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2007/06/iphone-vs-lifed.html" rel="nofollow">http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2007/06/iphone-vs-...</a>

Considering how much money was spent on both sides, I'm certain any aspect that would have helped Samsung was researched and considered. After many months of deliberation and arguments from both sides, the verdict is very clear, they are guilty. We would all like to think that this case was simple and the jury was out to lunch. The facts however don't seem to support that. It was a long case, with mountains of evidence, covering a variety of copyright issues. It's also clear from the decision and statements made by Samsung Executives that they don't feel that their appeal to this case will be successful.

And the Atari Jaguar was both the first 64-bit videogame console and the first videogame console with a GPU. But history is written by the victors...<p>And never mind the Atari STylus demoed in 1991... Never happened...

All those devices had a STYLUS and if the writer were being honest he might have mentioned that the original such devices were the grid and newton and that john Sculley coined the term PDA.

Samsung ripped off Apples design, there's no excusing this:<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/qN6n9.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/qN6n9.jpg</a><p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/FJkZE.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/FJkZE.png</a><p>They're clearly in the wrong here. It's not about the fundamental form factor of the devices, it's about blatant plagiarism. Apple's designs are aren't perfect, and instead of perfecting or improving the devices (which would be better for consumers), they simply didn't think about it. Shame on you Samsung.

The obvious question is, why didn't /couldn't Samsung point to this obvious prior art and get the point across to the jury?<p>Damn I wish I had been on that jury, I would have loved infuriating everyone by hanging for a full acquittal.

When I was 13 and encountered my first PDA (which is essentially a computer, even back then). I said "they should just attach a phone to this and be done with it."<p>I WAS 13! It was most certainly obvious.

Jury foreman owns a patent he can now sue Apple for, seriously.<p>This whole trial was a complete mockery, regardless which side you believed was right.

Basically, Apple got the jury that they wanted, ignorant and unwilling to understand the consequences of their decision.

PDAs were not cellular devices. Cell phones were not PDAs. The iPhone was the first to converge them.

&#62;<i>This is a very common trend in this entire debate that saddens me to no end: the iPhone is being compared to simple feature phones, while in fact, it should be compared to its true predecessor: the PDA. PDAs have always done with few buttons.</i><p>So,<p>1) having "few" buttons + stylus 2) in a different product category 3) in devices that very few people bought or cared about, means, in Thom's reasoning, that the iPhone <i>was</i> obvious.<p>Meanwhile, let's see the OSNEWS first review of the device, back in the day: (...) <i>And it's innovative too. Everything seems to work via multi-touch, a touchscreen-based input method</i> (...)<p>Searching for the review, I found this gem:<p>&#62;<i>This may seem like a bold statement. Apple's just released iPhone is not only very attractive as we would expect from an Apple product, but includes some impressive features and specifications. It's probably unrealistic to claim that anything currently available on the market competes with this offering. However, is it really a revolution in mobile communication devices? Maybe not if there still is something that can overshadow it, and do it very soon.</i><p>The thing that would overshadow the iPhone "very soon" was OpenMoko.

Well, no. You can look at an LCD monitor and say "look, prior art for a tablet" but that doesn't meet the legal meaning and requirements, and nor does this for the purposes of this case. Stop making the argument about Apple vs Google. This is about patents and commercialism. So many fan comments we can't see the forest through the trees.

The fact that Samsung copies Apple is as obvious as the fact that the sky is blue. I am not sure whether it is a real problem, because Samsung is not able to even do a clone properly. The problem is that the US patent system is more than absurd, it is retarded. Will somebody in the United States ever do something with it?