Well, if you go back to 2003, there was the Motorola A760, which looked a lot like current android phone but without capacitive touch (resistive touch/stylus, no keyboard though). Oh, and it ran linux, and apps via java.
Yeah, I had a P800 running UIQ back in the day. But I think the bottom line is that if you put a UIQ phone, a WinCE phone, an iPhone, and a G1 in a lineup, the G1 would be a lot closer to the iPhone than the others. And the similarity has only increased over time.
Why do you find it strange (iPhone inspired by PalmOS) and then make the same claim (PalmOS inpired by Newton)?
Most people accept that ALL mobile OS platforms gained inspiration from others. The only exception are Apple followers who seem to think Apple invented everything and now everyone just blindly copies them :S
Right and the point I'd make is his example doesn't hold weight because the first Android touchscreen device looked exactly like an iPhone. Same number of icons per screen, same resolution, same gestures, same icon placement on the applications (at the bottom and constant).
Surely the iPhone inherited from Palm and Windows Phone/PocketPC and both those inherited from Newton. But none of those devices looked exactly the same.
I bought a G1 back in February 2009 around when Android 1.1 was released and it didn't look "exactly like an iPhone". It didn't support multi-touch, it didn't have an on-screen keyboard and the launcher was quite different in operation from iOS. Applications weren't (and still aren't) added to the main launcher screen by default and instead get added to the application drawer. Apps have to be manually added to the home screens. Android of that era also made extensive use of a long-press gesture (I distinctly remember it as I found it quite un-intuitive at the time) which didn't show up in iOS until version 3.2 (except for in the homescreen anyway).
Physically, the devices were quite dissimilar too. The G1 had a smaller screen, was much thicker, had a slideout keyboard and a trackball in addition to five face buttons (Call, End Call, Home, Back and Menu).
Multi-Touch was disabled in the G1 on purpose but was there (it appeared in the European version:http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f8/some-good-videos-on-en...). It didn't have an onscreen keyboard because it had a physical keyboard but Android that an onscreen keyboard (as evidenced in the sdk video). Applications are added to the Apps screen instead of the launcher but Google just added a step.
As for the rest no one was saying the G1 was identical to the iPhone just that the OS looked identical.
The G1 hardware supported it (though not very well), but Android had no support until 2.1 which was never officially available for the G1. It wasn't just turned off. Even if you enabled multi-touch in the kernel with a custom ROM, the rest of the Android stack had no ability to use it. The story was the same in Europe and the US and I don't see anything in that link that provides evidence to the contrary.
Android had no support for an on-screen keyboard until 1.5. The emulator included with the original SDK has a virtual keyboard, but that's part of the emulator skin, not a feature of the OS and is not displayed on the virtual screen. The addition of a software keyboard while not strictly necessary on the G1, was rather useful as it allowed you to enter text while using the phone in a portrait orientation.
At some point, you have a mobile device that you somehow have to interact with. Sorry, but I don't think Apple deserves credit for clickable/pointable/touchable icons (didn't that stuff come out of Xerox parc?).
(I think some of the current mobile stuff comes from the ubiquitous computing research that PARC did.)
They (Apple) deserve the credit for bringing those concepts to a lot of people.
And obviously it is true that interacting with objects/icons on a touchscreen is a general solution.
But the problem is not Android doing that, the problem is they lend all the aspects iOS makes original to include it in their concept. And Samsung copies the hardware look and feel.
That's the easy way to go for them. I think they could have come up with something different. Making the concept even better. But at the current situation, they will always be behind iOS, because Apple knows way better how to do great, usable interfaces. I guess iOS 6 will bring more widgets to the notification center and maybe animated/live icons or something like that.
These are the parts Google did new on Apples conceptual idea, and they will eventually come to iOS too, but more refined in a more cohesive way. Google needs to think differently.
I don't get this article's logic. The original iPhone was unveiled in January 2007, 11 months before the timeframe of November 2007.
The grid of icons thing had been in mobile phones for years and years before Android or the iPhone. What Android borrowed was the capacitive multitouch-style interface of the iPhone.
I played extensively with the Android SDK public releases before it incorporated touch. So did perhaps hundreds or thousands of others. It clearly wasn't going the direction the iPhone was, at the time.
He talks about facts this and facts that. But the fact is, he's wrong. Android borrowed from the iPhone's new paradigms. Has it been that long ago that we've already forgotten history?
Note that none of his facts come from personal experience. They come from dug up videos.
And again, what's the big deal? Everyone's all of a sudden screaming theft. Iterative improvements are good. They promote evolution and competition (eg. one upping each other's designs).
I agree with everything you said but the one thing you didn't mention is he makes the mistake of dating the prototype to the Techcrunch post. When in fact the prototype was obviously from an earlier version (hence the SDK looking like an iPhone).
As he said in the article Android had been in development for years before Google bought the company.
What is noteworthy about the "Blackberry" phone is the entire paradigm is different. The navigation is different. The desktop-esque icons on the home screen are different (the blackberry prototype had a dock type system where as Android has the icons on the desktop). The resolution is different (notice Android phones with keyboards have smaller screens but a similar resolution ratio where as the blackberry protype had a wide, short screen)
Notice how the touchscreen in the video works like the keyboard prototype and nothing like modern day android. Look at the 3 minute mark. See he's navigating through a dock. See how the commands are through menus and not icons like modern day android. Notice no pinch and zoom (he uses a button on the side). Notice no swipe (he's using a button on the right hand side). It's as if they took a keyboard prototype and rushed out a touch version (and then added all Apple's look, feel and gestures later)
While the launcher changed quite a between the initial SDK release when that video was taken and what shipped on the G1, the version of Android shown did support a drag-scroll gesture for scrolling through the dock and app drawer. It did not support kinetic scrolling at the time though. You can still download the version of the SDK that was released back in November 2007 (when the video in question was released) and play with that early version in the emulator.
The G1 has never supported pinch-to-zoom or multi-touch in general except for in 3rd party ROMs and at least as of Gingerbread menus are still quite prevalent in Android (though D-pads and trackballs have fallen out of favor). The G1 also lacked an on-screen keyboard at its initial release (though this was added in an official update, Android 1.5 IIRC).
I don't think anyone would argue that Android hasn't been influenced by iOS, but it doesn't seem clear that they were solely focused on a non-touchscreen Blackberry clone and then did a complete 180 upon the release of the iPhone. It's certainly possible that they did so before they publicly announced Android, but we don't have any direct evidence of that.
> What Android borrowed was the capacitive multitouch-style interface of the iPhone
How could Android have "borrowed" multitouch for its basic design when Android OS didn't even support multitouch until nearly 3 years after the launch of the iPhone, not until Android 2.1? If anything, Google showed remarkable forbearance in holding off on such a desirable feature for so long, as it turns out, merely at Apple's say so.
Ultimately I believe apple is responsible for this feature not being included, but the rumour of it being Apple's request is probably not the full picture (or even accurate). Apple is known to approach companies that are likely to infringe on what Apple believes to be their IP, a recent example that came to light was a meeting between Steve Jobs and Samsung executives.
It's clear Google will not (and never were) going to heed any directions given by Apple. Apple probably did approach google about it, but I suspect it's likely that Google held back on the feature due to potential legal ramifications of including the feature. (Remembering here that Google originally entered the market as a phone provider.)
> It's clear Google will not (and never were) going to heed any directions given by Apple
Actually the history is more complicated. Google held off on including multitouch but when Apple banned Google Voice from the App Store things soured. I think it was at that point Google said "Ok, if you're banning our stuff then the deal's off" and put multitouch in Android. So it's not clear how long Google might have held back multitouch if Apple had played nice (I'm sure the answer isn't "forever", but they might have gone much longer).
I'd say they're not too closely related, as the two were already bitter with each other before that point.
Google Voice was rejected from the iOS app store: July 2009
Multi-touch on android SDK commenced around: November 2009, sure they could have been developing it earlier, however in the following January google launched the nexus one with multitouch, which would have needed more than the short development time from July 09.
> sure they could have been developing it earlier,
Actually there is evidence they had developed it much earlier. Some people examining the source tree found it was basically present in the G1 but commented out. They were even able to enable it with some crazy hacks - more info:
> the following January google launched the nexus one with multitouch
No I'm pretty sure the Nexus launched without multitouch; it was enabled in a release (2.1 update 1, a couple of months after launch). Again, an indication that even as late as January 2010 Google was still holding back - whether it was out of fear or through some hope of reconciliation - no idea. But I suspect the latter. Android was still small enough at that point that getting barred from the iPhone wholesale would have been horrible.
I think we're more or less agreeing here. I guess my only point is that to talk about any one incident in the chain in isolation is highly misleading.
If you read Thom long enough you'll find he has no love for either Microsoft or Apple. I do find his articles on Amiga and GNU/Linux to be well thought out and researched. But if he has an agenda he pushes it.
It's like getting an Apple review from Paul Thurrot, he starts off hating it so you base everything from that.
I've been reading Thom's posts for long enough to infer that Apple is his least favorite company bar none, and that he would much rather side with Microsoft than with Apple.
This anti-Apple bias is common in people who write tech reviews because (a) their audience is often international and Apple has been historically been popular internationally than in the U.S. (today, with China and Japan, things are a bit different), and (b) the reviewers are interested in creating as much confusion as possible about a large variety of tech products in order to ensure page hits, and Apple is actively working towards eliminating consumer confusion. Who wants to read boring, often poor-quality tech reviews when things just work?
I don't think you've been reading my posts long enough, then. Every review I've ever written on an Apple product has been positive. Each and every one of them.
On top of that, OSNews barely does any reviews - only a few every year. In other words, your post seems to be of a trollish nature :).
What I don't get is the idea of theft.. Of course it cannot be code theft.
They are different implementation of an idea.
It could be that the idea originated in the iPhone, but if the customers ask for a virtual keyboard, for example, are they supposed to restrain from implementing that feature because it was "not invented here"?
Quoting from George Bernard Shaw: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."
I remember vividly back in 2007 all the Blackberry-clone screenshots of Android with multiple buttons and scroll wheel. Not just the one referenced in the article, but many screenshots and no screenshots of a full touch interface. And then around the time the SDK was released in November, there started appearing the full touchscreen interface we see today.
Google was demoing the Blackberry-style configuration as late as February 2008, too. For a second, I thought I was going crazy, then I found this picture: http://news.cnet.com/2300-1037_3-6230132.html
Anyone notice that Sergey uses the word "Apps" in the video. I find it incredible when people claim that Apple introduced the word App, and therefore the trademark "App Store" is valid. So glad that was squared away during the Amazon suit.
I'm sure it is, I wasn't suggesting otherwise; just concurring with the poster I replied to that Apple have used the term for a long time and that they certainly used the term long before OS X was released.
Programmer, by the way, referred to their wares as 'software' and 'programs' (hence the nomenclature), not just apps. Your observation that "marketing and legal" call the shots is trite. And wrong. The issue, as with everything, is accountants and money men.
It looks like Android, but that's not my point. My point is that only fanboys care about a discussion of whether or not Android looks like X, or if Apple copied Y, etc.
I think productive people who actually create things that people use have better things to do than fight these wars so I flagged it -- HN is supposed to be for such people, and so why do we have fanboy ammo on the front page?
The article doesn't even speak to the obvious rebuttals: 1) the "touch screen" Android interface is mostly driven by buttons, 2) the iPhone was launched 11 months earlier, 3) the blackberry looking phone is the one the guy was carrying around for 6 mo.
Right or wrong, an argument that does not address obvious rebuttals is not an argument, it's wishful thinking in an echo chamber.
"the "touch screen" Android interface is mostly driven by buttons"
That's what I kept thinking while watching the video. Blackberry and Blackberry Pearl were all about pushing or selecting things using a rocker or ball, and that's what's shown in this video for making selections.
What the iPhone changed was direct interaction, making the OS interact and respond the way the spinning globe does in this video.
The point I'd make is that you still get BlackBerry style android phones, and crazy folding ones and many other form factors.
If you only compare a single blackberry-style phone from the pre-iPhone era and one slab phone (which doesn't look particularly iPhoney-except in relation to the hardware keyboard phone) then you'll make a good rhetorical point for people who already believe that Android is an iPhone clone. I don't know if you'll convince anyone else.
There was a similar, older comparison which resized the phones and kept hardware keyboards shut, which again, seems a bit disingenuous if the point is to show similarity.
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But wasn't PalmOS at least inspired by the Newton?
Most people accept that ALL mobile OS platforms gained inspiration from others. The only exception are Apple followers who seem to think Apple invented everything and now everyone just blindly copies them :S
Surely the iPhone inherited from Palm and Windows Phone/PocketPC and both those inherited from Newton. But none of those devices looked exactly the same.
Physically, the devices were quite dissimilar too. The G1 had a smaller screen, was much thicker, had a slideout keyboard and a trackball in addition to five face buttons (Call, End Call, Home, Back and Menu).
As for the rest no one was saying the G1 was identical to the iPhone just that the OS looked identical.
Android had no support for an on-screen keyboard until 1.5. The emulator included with the original SDK has a virtual keyboard, but that's part of the emulator skin, not a feature of the OS and is not displayed on the virtual screen. The addition of a software keyboard while not strictly necessary on the G1, was rather useful as it allowed you to enter text while using the phone in a portrait orientation.
They (Apple) deserve the credit for bringing those concepts to a lot of people.
And obviously it is true that interacting with objects/icons on a touchscreen is a general solution.
But the problem is not Android doing that, the problem is they lend all the aspects iOS makes original to include it in their concept. And Samsung copies the hardware look and feel.
That's the easy way to go for them. I think they could have come up with something different. Making the concept even better. But at the current situation, they will always be behind iOS, because Apple knows way better how to do great, usable interfaces. I guess iOS 6 will bring more widgets to the notification center and maybe animated/live icons or something like that.
These are the parts Google did new on Apples conceptual idea, and they will eventually come to iOS too, but more refined in a more cohesive way. Google needs to think differently.
The grid of icons thing had been in mobile phones for years and years before Android or the iPhone. What Android borrowed was the capacitive multitouch-style interface of the iPhone.
I played extensively with the Android SDK public releases before it incorporated touch. So did perhaps hundreds or thousands of others. It clearly wasn't going the direction the iPhone was, at the time.
He talks about facts this and facts that. But the fact is, he's wrong. Android borrowed from the iPhone's new paradigms. Has it been that long ago that we've already forgotten history?
Note that none of his facts come from personal experience. They come from dug up videos.
And again, what's the big deal? Everyone's all of a sudden screaming theft. Iterative improvements are good. They promote evolution and competition (eg. one upping each other's designs).
As he said in the article Android had been in development for years before Google bought the company.
What is noteworthy about the "Blackberry" phone is the entire paradigm is different. The navigation is different. The desktop-esque icons on the home screen are different (the blackberry prototype had a dock type system where as Android has the icons on the desktop). The resolution is different (notice Android phones with keyboards have smaller screens but a similar resolution ratio where as the blackberry protype had a wide, short screen)
Notice how the touchscreen in the video works like the keyboard prototype and nothing like modern day android. Look at the 3 minute mark. See he's navigating through a dock. See how the commands are through menus and not icons like modern day android. Notice no pinch and zoom (he uses a button on the side). Notice no swipe (he's using a button on the right hand side). It's as if they took a keyboard prototype and rushed out a touch version (and then added all Apple's look, feel and gestures later)
Compare the phone shown in the video to the G1 (http://www.letsgodigital.org/images/artikelen/681/tmobile-g-...) which had gestures, 4 icons per screen, swipe to get between screens and so on.
The G1 has never supported pinch-to-zoom or multi-touch in general except for in 3rd party ROMs and at least as of Gingerbread menus are still quite prevalent in Android (though D-pads and trackballs have fallen out of favor). The G1 also lacked an on-screen keyboard at its initial release (though this was added in an official update, Android 1.5 IIRC).
I don't think anyone would argue that Android hasn't been influenced by iOS, but it doesn't seem clear that they were solely focused on a non-touchscreen Blackberry clone and then did a complete 180 upon the release of the iPhone. It's certainly possible that they did so before they publicly announced Android, but we don't have any direct evidence of that.
How could Android have "borrowed" multitouch for its basic design when Android OS didn't even support multitouch until nearly 3 years after the launch of the iPhone, not until Android 2.1? If anything, Google showed remarkable forbearance in holding off on such a desirable feature for so long, as it turns out, merely at Apple's say so.
It's clear Google will not (and never were) going to heed any directions given by Apple. Apple probably did approach google about it, but I suspect it's likely that Google held back on the feature due to potential legal ramifications of including the feature. (Remembering here that Google originally entered the market as a phone provider.)
Actually the history is more complicated. Google held off on including multitouch but when Apple banned Google Voice from the App Store things soured. I think it was at that point Google said "Ok, if you're banning our stuff then the deal's off" and put multitouch in Android. So it's not clear how long Google might have held back multitouch if Apple had played nice (I'm sure the answer isn't "forever", but they might have gone much longer).
I.E. they're both as guilty as each other.
Actually there is evidence they had developed it much earlier. Some people examining the source tree found it was basically present in the G1 but commented out. They were even able to enable it with some crazy hacks - more info:
http://openhandsetmagazine.com/2009/01/the-story-of-multitou...
> the following January google launched the nexus one with multitouch
No I'm pretty sure the Nexus launched without multitouch; it was enabled in a release (2.1 update 1, a couple of months after launch). Again, an indication that even as late as January 2010 Google was still holding back - whether it was out of fear or through some hope of reconciliation - no idea. But I suspect the latter. Android was still small enough at that point that getting barred from the iPhone wholesale would have been horrible.
I think we're more or less agreeing here. I guess my only point is that to talk about any one incident in the chain in isolation is highly misleading.
Some notable examples are referring to the OS behind appletv, ipod touch/iphone & ipad as inflexible.
A short memory with regard to iOS borrowing from PalmOS, while ignoring Newton.
Then being critical of unsubstantiated news, while himself representing unsubstantiated rumours as fact, but only when it favours Android.
It's like getting an Apple review from Paul Thurrot, he starts off hating it so you base everything from that.
This anti-Apple bias is common in people who write tech reviews because (a) their audience is often international and Apple has been historically been popular internationally than in the U.S. (today, with China and Japan, things are a bit different), and (b) the reviewers are interested in creating as much confusion as possible about a large variety of tech products in order to ensure page hits, and Apple is actively working towards eliminating consumer confusion. Who wants to read boring, often poor-quality tech reviews when things just work?
On top of that, OSNews barely does any reviews - only a few every year. In other words, your post seems to be of a trollish nature :).
http://www.osnews.com/story/24882/The_History_of_App_and_the...
[disclaimer: I'm the author of both the parent article as well as the article linked to in this comment]
Programmer, by the way, referred to their wares as 'software' and 'programs' (hence the nomenclature), not just apps. Your observation that "marketing and legal" call the shots is trite. And wrong. The issue, as with everything, is accountants and money men.
I think productive people who actually create things that people use have better things to do than fight these wars so I flagged it -- HN is supposed to be for such people, and so why do we have fanboy ammo on the front page?
Right or wrong, an argument that does not address obvious rebuttals is not an argument, it's wishful thinking in an echo chamber.
That's what I kept thinking while watching the video. Blackberry and Blackberry Pearl were all about pushing or selecting things using a rocker or ball, and that's what's shown in this video for making selections.
What the iPhone changed was direct interaction, making the OS interact and respond the way the spinning globe does in this video.
If you only compare a single blackberry-style phone from the pre-iPhone era and one slab phone (which doesn't look particularly iPhoney-except in relation to the hardware keyboard phone) then you'll make a good rhetorical point for people who already believe that Android is an iPhone clone. I don't know if you'll convince anyone else.
There was a similar, older comparison which resized the phones and kept hardware keyboards shut, which again, seems a bit disingenuous if the point is to show similarity.