[IxDA Discuss] Apple's Gesture Dictionary

[James Melzer]

I completely disagree that this is a short-sighted move on Apple's
part. To do anything else would be unthinkable.

>From a certain perspective, the business model of both Apple and
Microsoft is essentially monopoly creation and cultivation based on
the network effects of intellectual property (via patents and
copyrights). Both companies build integrated platforms to lock in a
user community (and sometimes a vendor community). And then both
companies release products to increase their base from that core
platform. Microsoft has the Windows ecosystem. Apple has the iTunes
ecosystem. Both empires are built on a series of patents.

Patents serve the greater good by supporting commerce (i.e. business)
rather than by directly helping consumers. In fact, the benefit to
consumers is pretty darn round-about and only happens by coincidence
rather than through any good will on the part of government or
industry. Regulations can serve consumers (sometimes) but patents only
serve their owners.

As Pauric said, hopefully Apple won't enforce it. But Apple has to
patent it regardless.

By the way, Christopher Sholes did indeed patent the QWERTY keyboard
in 1867 [1]. It is only an open standard today because the patent was
heavily licensed and expired long ago.

~ James

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY

On 8/6/07, pauric <radiorental at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whether the gestures prove to be intuitive or not... I'm a little
> bemused as to the short-sightedness of patenting a gesture language.

-- 
James Melzer
http://www.jamesmelzer.com
http://del.icio.us/jamesmelzer