Apple could collect $10 for every Android device sold, expert says - Page 6

Originally Posted by OhReally

But you see, Android had a voice input and control feature first, and Apple copied it. Did they make changes? Is it an improvement on existing tech? Yeah. So what are we arguing about? Are we saying shut down iOS becuase it copied an Android feature? Aguably much more important the the things apple claims adroid copied. Did google copyright voice control? How broad of a patent could have have?

Originally Posted by OhReally

Siri is a direct copy of google voice, for example. I don't doubt that Apple will try to implement widgets of some sort at some point.
...

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.[28]

Apple hired many speech recognition researchers in 1990. After about a year, they demonstrated a technology codenamed Casper. It was released as part of the PlainTalk package in 1993. Although available for all PowerPC Macintoshes and AV 68k machines (it was one of the few applications that made use of the DSP in the Centris 660AV and Quadra 840AV), it was not part of the default system install prior to Mac OS X. The user had to do a custom installation of the OS to get speech recognition capabilities.

Originally Posted by freckledbruh

I'm confused. I have Google Voice and it mostly routes calls and translates voicemail to text. I know that you can use voice commands with it if you have an android phone but what does that have to do with Siri?

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

Google



PlainTalk


If you are going to accuse someone of copying -- you should make sure you correctly identify the copyee and the copyoor.


Edit: To be fair, Moutain Computer Inc. had a voice recognition accessory for the Apple ][ as far back as 1978. I borrowed one for a weekend and it did a pretty good job after you trained it. I couldn't find any info on the 1978 era product, but I found a manual (1981) for a follow-on product called the SuperTalker:

Mountain Computer Supertalker

Originally Posted by Gatorguy

They're not really comparable at the moment. Google's Voice Actions allows for some things Siri does not, but Siri is way more friendly and capable of much more overall.

Apple's iPhone didn't have a native feature equivalent to Google Voice Actions for Android prior to the iPhone 4S with Siri, so the tables have turned. Sometime in the future it may swing back to advantage Google, or perhaps even Microsoft. Then again perhaps not.

None of the current options will still be applicable 3 years from now anyway IMO. We'll be way beyond today's functions.

Originally Posted by AbsoluteDesignz

In all honesty when it comes to certain things, voice control/actions/etc being one of them....there is no real existence of copying since the idea itself has existed in some form for nearly half a century in computing.

This is another industry where people will be influenced and then influence, and advance the field rapidly...unless somehow Apple gets broad patents in relation to this but that's another story.

Originally Posted by longfang

Hon Hai aka Foxconn is Taiwanese. And there are historical reasons for "friction" between Japan and Korea.

Originally Posted by AbsoluteDesignz

In all honesty when it comes to certain things, voice control/actions/etc being one of them....there is no real existence of copying since the idea itself has existed in some form for nearly half a century in computing.

This is another industry where people will be influenced and then influence, and advance the field rapidly...unless somehow Apple gets broad patents in relation to this but that's another story.

Originally Posted by melgross

But what Siri does as an overall experience, is new. That's never been done before in a commercial setting, though I've seen somewhat similar work in the lab. But nothing useful for a handheld device even with the heavy lifting done outside, as Apple does it.

Of course, once one does it, it becomes much easier for others to do as they can figure out much of how it was done.

Originally Posted by AbsoluteDesignz


the way the patent system is now if company 2 does anything similar to A despite the fact that it is not A doesn't take code from A and aside from some functionality is different than A altogether company 1 can still somehow have a patent on what company 2 did and ask for an injunction

Originally Posted by melgross

I don't understand why some people get bent out of shape over software patents.

Originally Posted by Gatorguy

Perhaps because of silliness like this:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic....11210181900395

or this:
http://www.applepatent.com/2011/04/o...of-patent.html

One of my favorite descriptions of why software patents are a hindrance to technology and progress is this one:

"The result is that even when you write a program, you are using lots of different ideas, any one of them might be patented by somebody. A pair of them may be patented as a combination by somebody. There might be several different ways of describing one idea which might be patented by various different people. So there are possibly thousands of things, thousands of points of vulnerability in your program, which might be patented by somebody else already.

This is why software patents tend to obstruct the progress of software -- the work of software development. If it were one patent-one product, then these patents wouldn't obstruct the development of products because if you develop a new product, it wouldn't be patented by somebody else already. But when one product corresponds to many different ideas combined, it gets very likely your new product is going to be patented by somebody else already.

In fact, there is economic research now showing just how imposing a patent system on a field where there is incremental innovation can retard progress. You see, the advocates of software patents say "Well, yes, there may be problems, but more important than any problems, the patents must promote innovation, and that is so important it doesn't matter what problems you cause". Of course, they don't say that out loud because it is ridiculous, but implicitly they want you to believe that as long as it promotes progress, that outweighs any possible cost. But actually, there is no reason to believe it does promote progress. We now have a model showing precisely how patents can retard progress. The case where that model can fit describes the software field pretty well; incremental innovation."

The entire speech given at Cambridge can be found here, as well as other links concerning current patent issues, including software.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-strat...-case-2107497/