There's more than one way to implement pinch-to-zoom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waSXkJBKT1s

Fast forward to 2:22: Pinch to zoom as demonstrated by Sony back in 2001; six years before Apple applied for the 7864163 patent.

As this apparently doesn't qualify as prior art; Apple can't claim infringement either.

So specific implementation details must matter. The general idea cannot be what Apple claims ownership of. The idea has been around for a long long time (Minority Report from back in 2002 being yet another example) and hardly qualifies as novel.

If we're throwing around knock-off accusations, Android used to look like this until the iPhone came out, and then Android suddenly started looking and behaving a lot more like iOS, right down to the pinch-zoom gestures that originated with the iPhone.

Please stop perpetuating this myth. There was no mad rush to change Android after the iPhone was announced. Feel free to look up Dianne Hackborn yourself; her word should carry a lot more weight than a picture carefully crafted by some Apple apologist.

It's no surprise at all that Apple is going to try to hinder competitors' efforts to ride the coattails of its design work.

Oh God, please stop repeating Jobs tiring drivel. It serves no purpose, and only make you look like a tool. Let Apple do their own dirty marketing. Apple has no noble agenda, they're fighting increasingly dirty to protect their bottom-line, abusing the patent system to hinder competition, attempting to subvert the work of W3C threatening the very openness of the web.

Their actions are hurting the industry. Yet, you can still find people on a technical forum like this feeling the need to support their actions, modded +5 Insightful no less. I'm appalled.

I don't remember when and why I added you to my friends list, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of THAT

;-)

Android speech-to-text actually works pretty well. I'm using it now to write this and I find bark bark shaddup I find that it bark bark shut up damnit bark bark don't make me come down there I find that bark bark okay that's it I'm coming down there argh crash thud bark bark bark bark bark bark

Shamelessly stolen

It's an old enough language, that when Java was written, Java took a lot of cues from Obj-C.

What language features do you have in mind specifically?

Now I honestly don't know anything about Objective C, but if you asked me of the origins of Java, I'd point to SIMULA, C++, and BETA.

No, Google Translate get's it wrong. The article actually only says that certain *parts* of the project were delayed till 2006:

Ein Ziel, das nicht zu schaffen war, unter anderem, weil *einige* Ausschreibungen für das Projekt erst 2006 anliefen.

Which roughly translates to:

A target that could never be met, partly because *some* contracts only went out to tender as late as 2006.

Jeez. You brought this back up from your capture file. This is the exact same quote I replied to half a year ago or so...

Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't recall having ever discussed anything relating to this with you. But true, I've linked to Bill Buxton's write-up before, and I figure I'd better apologize in advance, cause I'll probably do it again. Even though it wasn't written yesterday it's still an excellent piece.

Yes, I'm quite aware of the central theme of the article, I've actually read it, and if you hadn't been so eager to reply, you might have spotted that I did include the paragraph you echoed a second time.

But thanks for your reply, and despite the harsh tone, I doubt we disagree about anything here at all.

Though Steve Jobs' habit of claiming ownership of all great inventions rubs me the wrong way (this year Apple invented videotelephony), Apple deserves credit for their work on the iPhone; it was nothing short of a revolution.

Well played sir, well played. However:

[...] my group at the University of Toronto was working on multi-touchin 1984 (Lee, Buxton & Smith, 1985), the same year that the first Macintosh computer was released, and we were not the first. [...] Wayne Westerman, co-founder of FingerWorks, a company that Apple acquired early in 2005, and now an Apple employee:

Westerman, Wayne (1999). [...] U of Delaware PhD Dissertation

Bill Buxton isn't just some random Microsoft employee, he's one of the pioneers of the industry, and has been working with multi-touch systems since back in the early eighties.

Contrary to popular belief Apple didn't invent multi-touch

Multi-touch technologies have a long history. To put it in perspective, my group at the University of Toronto was working on multi-touchin 1984 (Lee, Buxton & Smith, 1985), the same year that the first Macintosh computer was released, and we were not the first. Furthermore, during the development of the iPhone, Apple was very much aware of the history of multi-touch, dating at least back to 1982, and the use of the pinch gesture, dating back to 1983. This is clearly demonstrated by the bibliography of the PhD thesis of Wayne Westerman, co-founder of FingerWorks, a company that Apple acquired early in 2005, and now an Apple employee:

Westerman, Wayne (1999). Hand Tracking,Finger Identification, and Chordic Manipulation on a Multi-Touch Surface. U of Delaware PhD Dissertation: http://www.ee.udel.edu/~westerma/main.pdf

In making this statement about their awareness of past work, I am not criticizing Westerman, the iPhone, or Apple. It is simply good practice and good scholarship to know the literature and do one's homework when embarking on a new product. 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."

Microsoft borrowing ideas from Apple again?

It's probably the other way round. Nice troll though.