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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 02 2013 @ 02:50 PM EDT |
I always find comments like this interesting, because they
make various claims together that need to be teased out to
be understood, as some of them don't seem correct to me.
The main claim that doesn't seem correct is that the
rubberbanding patent is a "gimmick" or useless. I remember
the first time I played with an iPhone. Do you know what
thing I remember the most (other than the screen)? The
rubberbanding. The response to going to the boundaries- it
provided feedback that was- fun. I actually spent time
playing with it by "rubberbanding" when I hit the ends of
documents. I remember because it felt so different and was
so cool.
Which leads to the second point- that UI isn't important. It
is. When I worked for a software company (first career) I
was friends with a UI engineer. He had a poster in his
office that showed the steps for a factory worker to make a
pencil. I always thought it was an ironic thing (you know-
step one, hold the piece of wood, etc.), but he explained
that it reminded him of how everything needs to be made as
simple as possible. UI is exceptionally important, and we
often forget that the things we don't notice are UI
triumphs, not UI failures. If rubberbanding seems natural,
now, then that is because it has worked so well, not because
it's a gimmick.
None of this answers other questions. Is rubberbanding
covered by prior art (and even by prior implementation)? I
don't know. Should we allow patents for these sorts of
things? Above my pay grade. But it takes a lot of work by
talented people in all companies- Apple, Samsung, and
others, to make "gimmicks".[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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