The smart phone and tablet industry
I have a real hatred for anything that is a smartphone or tablet now thanks to the total crap that's going on between Apple and Samsung. Even Google's Android OS is going to get dragged in the next round as that's Apple's next target.
The patents and court cases are making me sick. How can you patent and monopolize something like multi touch? It's like trying to patent a PC mouse. Or a console gamepad. There is only one obvious way for touchscreens to work. Half of the stuff these companies patent were inveted in the past anyway - they just have bigger pockets to make it "theirs".
In the console market, the giants just get on with it from what I can tell. Then we have smart phones and tablets, the war of law. Yuck! PC hardware has always done better for consumers in an open market. If PC's were owned by IBM and their patents, we would never have enjoyed such a rich and open platform.
I'm sticking to PC's, Laptops and standard phones. Bollocks to all these "Start Trek the Next Generation" devices. :p
Re: The smart phone and tablet industry
It is also really annoying me too. Apple are just being bullies because they have the money to keep attacking anyone who tries to encroach into their market.
Whatever happened to competition and anti-monopoly laws?
I really like the iPad but refuse to buy one because of the way Apple behave, and also the over bearing need for them to have complete control of every aspect of their products. Not just the design of their hardware and os, but also enforcing what they allow their users to actually do with them.
And yes, it is mad that Apple can patent something like touchscreen control. They never invented multi-touch. They bought out a small company that had developed it. And also companies like Microsoft were using touchscreen technologies long before Apple. Look at Windows CE on the HP IPaq. I was using one of those in 2001 long before the iPhone existed. It wasn't a phone, but had pretty much everything else a smartphone can do.
Re: The smart phone and tablet industry
Really? I didn't know that. If they had, would we have seen the Mac at all? And I doubt either would still exist as the bad management way Commodore would still have bankrupted the company.
Thinking about it, it's such a shame they didn't! ;-)