Comments on: Apple wants patent on iPod interface

The company got bitten once when trying to protect its user interfaces from competitors. Now it's turning to patents in an effort to protect its diminutive music player.

Why do you protect Apple

I think this news demonstrates the highly biased view of Cnet regarding the technology. If CNet was right on this issue, then we should all pay up big bucks to Apple because they were able to patent trash icons and the user interface they ripped from Xerox. It is a good indication of where CNet wants us to go. I don't think we should pay up big bucks to Apple for our digital music, music should be free and Apple should stop using patents to lock out others for obvious things. Lists are part of the graphical user interface before Apple ripped off it from Xerox.

Free music?

You say "music should be free." Why? Justify why music should
be free. Don't composers and musicians need to live? And if not,
why stop at free music? Following your thinking, we should have
free cars, free airfare, free food. Free books, free art, free.....

Grow up.

[lthrwolf]

YOU GO ALEX!!!!!

Ya never notice that ya never hear of any mac fanatic talk about the xerox story. I KNOW, my stepfather worked for xerox. APPLE definately ripped them off BIG TIME!!!!

Apple is no Thief!

Read some history, then form opinions:

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/
http://www.apple-history.com

discus (with an open mind) and repeat as needed. History is
never so black and white.

[lthrwolf]

Isnt this getting old

I am so tired of hearing how someone stole(or might steal)a user interface from apple oh boo hoo. And no apple fan EVER says anything about apple stealing the GUI from xerox. Thats right kids the first GUI did not come from apple. It was called P.A.R.C which is an acronym for Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
And now their asking for a patent on an ipod display???

Good computer
Lotsa WEIRD management and bad lawyers

[OscarWeb]

Oh please

This is no more ridiculous than the hundreds of other patents that are/were either pending or approved by the US Patent office, like the ones on the human genome, people's DNA, etc. Apple got permission from Xerox for their GUI (and I believe Smalltalk), unlike Microsoft. What else was first developed over at Xerox PARC? WYSIWYG, Ethernet, and network services such as Directory, Print, File, and internetwork routing were all developed there, but we don't see anyone talking about those things, now do we?
Music should be free? Yes, because you're too cheap to pay someone for their work, that means it should be given out for free. Right. Let's demand that cars, artwork, plane rides, and food be free as well. After all, we NEED food.

[treerod]

This is getting old ...

As a matter of clarification ... unlike Microsoft, IBM, and HP, Apple DID license the GUI window concept from Xerox, and unofficially, Xerox even help Apple develop Lisa, the predecessor to the Mac.

For everybody's "book of worthless information" Paul Allen & Bill Gates (then a fledgeling company called Microsoft) was contracted by Apple to develop a couple of software programs (Word and Excel) for the forthcoming computer called the Mac. Needless to say, Microsoft promptly "stole" ... oh I mean based their program from two other popular programs called Word Star and Supercalc. Oh yea, DOS that little program that Gates gets credit for "inventing." He bought it in 1979 for I believe $5,000.

And finally, the reason both Xerox and Apple lost their law suits was not because they had no merit, but rather they waited too long to defend their rights to the technology, over ten years. This is how Xerox lost their rights to the Ethernet, Laser Printers, GUI, the Portrait computer monitor, the mouse (technically not developed by Xerox, but rather acquired via the purchase of another company), just to name a few technologies that came out of PARC and the MEC facility in El Segundo, CA.

So yes, this is getting old. Unfortunately no one seems to remember it correctly.

[Ipod Apple]

WEIRD management and bad lawyers

http://www.analogstereo.com/turntable_stanton_str8_20.htm