>There's an entire ideology that is anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-mind at work here. One manifestation of that ideology is support for things like welfare, etc, because they believe that it's just chance that separates Steve Jobs from you and me. (and not hard work.)
Actually it's well demonstrated that you need to have money to make money. The few cases you can site as exceptions are exceptions, and for every exception I can point to a thousand (maybe a million?) people who work hard and are barely making ends meet. And each and every one of those exception stories contains a lot of luck. Claiming that hard work == success is insulting to all of the smart people who have failed, and truly insulting to the millions who work hard in ways that you're discounting as "work."
"The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001"
It's much older. Multi-touch was invented in 1982, at the University of Toronto [1]. After that, it took quite a bit more research until an actual product was made that consumers could buy: in 1998, FingerWorks' launched its line of multi-touch keyboards [2]. FingerWorks was later bought by Apple, in 2005.
As an aside: Microsoft's Surface was announced in 2007 [1] and works with cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen.
Your argument is akin to claiming that whoever invented magnetic audio recording on tapes didn't do anything innovative because Edison had already invented the gramophone.
The paper you cite claims that people were working on multitouch at University of Toronto. It is also true that touch panels (not multitouch) predate even that, going as far back as the 1970s.
But none of this is relevant, and the fact that the Surface uses cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen is not an "aside", its the smoking gun.
Apple (aka Fingerworks) invented multi-touch, which is the method detailed in its patents and used in the iPhone.
Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology.
I think the problem is that you guys have believed your own propaganda that patents just cover ideas. They do not. Patents cover specific technological inventions, methods and processes.
Thus, 1970 era touch panels, the displays at your movie theater, the surface and everything driven with a stylus is as relevant to the invention of multitouch as the gramophone is to the invention of magnetic recording. That is to say, in the same broad field, but not examples of "prior art".
"the fact that the Surface uses cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen is not an "aside", its the smoking gun."
I think you're confusing 'multi-touch' with 'multi-touch on a small capacitive LCD touchscreen'.
The fact that other companies chose to use cameras or other screen technologies instead of capacitive LCD touchscreen doesn't mean they weren't employing multi-touch. 'Multi-touch' simply means that the system registers multiple touches simultaneously.
Multi-touch existed long before FingerWorks got into the game, but they were the first to actually use it in a mass market product and they invented a lot of the multi-touch gestures that we now use on a daily basis.
"Apple (aka Fingerworks) invented multi-touch, which is the method detailed in its patents and used in the iPhone."
If FingerWorks invented multi-touch, Apple buying the company would not mean that suddenly Apple becomes the inventor of multi-touch, just that it holds those patents.
And the FingerWorks patents cite earlier multi-touch patents (even calling it that), so it's clear they're not claiming to have invented the entire thing.
"Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology."
Em, how about FingerWorks' own products, before they were acquired by Apple?
Different technology, different operating mechanism, doesn't do the same thing as apple's multi-touch (which I've explained a number of times already.) This detects a fingers location in gross space, not the pixel the finger is intending to touch. Pixel level accuracy is one of the key components of Apple's solution.
Notice that, just like all the others in this thread, you're liking to something that is not using the same mechanism and doesn't conflict with any of the claims in Apple's multi-touch patent.
Your ideology tells you that anything having to do with touch makes Apple's multi-touch invention irrelevant.
This is like saying that there was no invention in magnetic audio recording because the phonograph had already been invented.
I know this won't convince you, of course. One of the saddest things about this topic is not that so many people are ignorant of the nature of Apple's invention, but that their ideology compels them to believe that Apple didn't invent anything, and so they have no interest in learning. And, of course, rather than address the thesis of my article, I'm getting rampantly down voted and comments that are irrelevant.
The Microsoft Surface is not "multi-touch"[1]. It uses a completely different technology.
Further that wikipedia article shows that the someone had the idea in 2001. Good for them. The movie Minority Report came out in 2002, and was in pre-production for years before that. Thus the IDEA was not new. Nobody has claimed that the iPhone invented the IDEA.
That you make no distinction between someone expressing an idea, and an actual invention of a technology, shows that you're just reaching for excuses to rationalize your ideology.
Your attempt to insult my be claiming I denigrated people who work hard is also ... missing the mark.
Finally, the surface uses a completely different technology, which is driven by cameras, to the iPhone, and does not have the same capabilities as the iPhone.
So, even if the Surface itself had been invented in 2001 (rather than just the idea) it still wouldn't be applicable to this discussion.
This comment is exactly why I hesitate to post on Hacker News in the first place, and rarely respond to comments to my posts.
[1] this is a precise technological term trademarked by Apple whereby the impact area of a finger is resolved down to a single pixel, and multiple such fingers can be tracked simultaneously. The surface does not do this.
Between the time the iPhone was announced and released, Microsoft did whip up a quick demo... as anyone could have in the 1990s if they'd wanted to.
Frankly, your claim about the Microsoft Surface false. It is completely irrelevant to this discussion. And actually supports my hypothesis that those who wish to diminish the inventiveness of the iPhone do so out of ideological reasons, not out of an understanding of the underlying technology.
The Surface uses a technology whereby an image of the user is captured. It is not a touch screen at all. It does not directly measure touch.
If people aren't even addressing the actual technology in question, I find that having a discussion is ... problematic. Plus the preponderance of down votes against my well reasoned points tells me that that a lot of you don't care about accurate or inaccurate, but whether something agrees with your ideology.
Which lends credence to my hypothesis that this is ideologically driven.
You're bandying around the term 'multi-touch', and shooting down responses that don't reference multi-touch using a capacitive screen. Multi-touch is a technology-neutral term that simply means a system with the ability to respond to multiple touches at the same time, and the Surface clearly qualifies. MSR did a load of useful UI research on multi-touch devices, and deserve credit for that.
Apple released the first commercial device with a capacitive multi-touch screen (that I'm aware of), and it was absolutely a leap forward - the technology the surface used wasn't suitable for mobile devices. Apple deserve a lot credit for making an interesting, accurate, and responsive UI using new screen hardware (which, it should be pointed out, was not created by Apple). Surely this distinction isn't too hard to understand.
The key problem here is that people are conflating technologies that work on a completely different principle and don't have the same capabilities with the iPhone touch technology, and saying that their existence proves that nothing was invented for the iPhone. However, this is obviously false, as the technologies work using different methods and have different capabilities.
Multi-touch is a trademarked term[1] Apple uses to describe its technology for resolving the amorphous blob a finger makes when in contact with a screen into a single pixel.
Notice that the surface doesn't do this. It just detects a finger, but it can also detect a stylus or anything else. Its accuracy is that of an object, maybe a finger, not a pixel somewhere under the finger that is much smaller than the finger.
I'm not discounting Microsoft's work, it its just not relevant to this discussion.
When doing the trademark search just now, I found that some one else used it to talk about a switch based technology, invented around 1990.[2]
Again, "touch screens" whereby finger pressure closes a circuit by bending one trace into another has been around since the 1970s. These are almost alway single touch, but even when they can detect two fingers, they are not solving the same problem Apple did.
Apple resolved a finger down to a pixel, these things just detect fingers. There's a huge difference.
Thus, people bringing up these other technologies that do not even do the same thing, as if they are "prior art" are being dishonest.
[1]Word Mark MULTI-TOUCH
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Handheld mobile digital electronic devices with electronic mail, digital data transmission, audio player, video player, handheld computer, personal digital assistant, electronic organizer, electronic notepad, telephone, computer gaming, and camera functions. FIRST USE: 20070109. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20070629
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number 77219819
Filing Date June 30, 2007
[2]Word Mark MULTI-TOUCH
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: switches, switch panels, and communication circuits. FIRST USE: 19900202. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19900202
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 74438236
Filing Date September 21, 1993
Apple did not invent capacitive multi-touch capable screens, and they did not invent the common UI metaphors used in multi-touch screens. Apple's software did make for a very precise capacitive touch screens, but their improvements were incremental.
This is not to downplay their achievement in the iPhone - I think it was a marvellous device, and the first truly usable smartphone - I just don't think it's fair to ignore the contributions of those who came before, and the long history of research into multi-touch screens.
You shifted the goalposts. The trademark is listed on the USPTO.gov site, as being live and owned by Apple. They don't provide the ability to link to it directly, which is why I quoted it with enough info for you to do your own search.
I'm not ignoring the contributions that came before, I'm refuting the claim that Apple didn't invent it, specifically when people cite other methodologies.
> Current Status: An appeal of a final refusal to register the mark is pending before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. For further information, see TTABVUE on the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board web page.
Their trademark claim is basically dead in the water. Multi-touch is a generic term. I leave it to the other reply in this thread to deal with the debate about the novel work Apple/Fingerworks did.
edit: You probably owe other posters in this thread an apology for accusations of lying, based on your own misconception of what multi-touch actually means.
If you go through the references you'll find dozens of other papers on the subject. Academics in the HCI field have been working toward this kind of technology since the late 70s.
Fingerworks/Apple did not invent the technology, can we put this to rest?
Neither of those papers describe capacitive multitouch interfaces, nor do they describe the technology Apple invented for multi-touch. The first describes a multi-point interface that does not do what Apple does, and the second doesn't even describe a touch interface at all.
This would be obvious if you'd taken a few minutes to read their abstracts, and were aware of the nature of Apple's multi-touch invention.
The issue has been laid to rest, but I can't stop you and others from continuing to link to increasingly irrelevant claims.
The real question, to my mind, is why are you so desperate to believe that Apple didn't invent anything, such that you'd disparage yourself by being as dishonest as you have been here?
The first paper describes a multitouch capacitive touch tablet in 1985. It is absolutely identical to the core technology of an iPad. Apple may have improved things but the core ideas are layed out right here two decades before the iPad.
> A prototype touch-sensitive tablet Is presented. The tablet's main
innovation is that It Is capable of sensing mare than one point of
contact at a time. In addition to being able to provide position coor-
dinates, the tablet also gives a measure of degree of contact,
independently for each point of contact. In order to enable mutU-
touch sensing [...]
What's more the author of the paper, Bill Buxton, is widely cited in the literature as inventing the capactive multitouch display. Wayne Westerman, one of the cofounders of Fingerworks dissertation has dozens of references to his work. But even in his own words:
> What I am pointing out, however, is that "new" technologies - like multi-touch - do not grow out of a vacuum. While marketing tends to like the "great invention" story, real innovation rarely works that way. In short, the evolution of multi-touch is a text-book example of what I call "the long-nose of innovation."
It's all clear as day if you do your research, unless of course you're already made up your mind... then maybe it's not so clear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
>There's an entire ideology that is anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-mind at work here. One manifestation of that ideology is support for things like welfare, etc, because they believe that it's just chance that separates Steve Jobs from you and me. (and not hard work.)
Actually it's well demonstrated that you need to have money to make money. The few cases you can site as exceptions are exceptions, and for every exception I can point to a thousand (maybe a million?) people who work hard and are barely making ends meet. And each and every one of those exception stories contains a lot of luck. Claiming that hard work == success is insulting to all of the smart people who have failed, and truly insulting to the millions who work hard in ways that you're discounting as "work."