<story><title>Apple&apos;s Secrets Revealed During Trial</title><url>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443687504577567421840745452.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jsz0</author><text>I think double-tap-to-zoom is a perfect example of something that should be patentable. It&apos;s a huge improvement over existing systems that often used a zoom box you would position with cursor keys. To work properly it has to take into account the major design elements on a web page and make intelligent choices based on the user&apos;s tap target. Web browsing before double-tap-to-zoom and multi-touch zoom was a nightmare. These two features reinvented web browsing on small displays. This was clearly one of the killer features of the original iPhone.</text></item><item><author>jasonkester</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Mr. Forstall said he invented a patent for double-tapping on Web pages because as he had been using a prototype of the iPhone to surf the web, he realized he was spending a lot of time pinching and zooming the page to fit text perfectly on the screen.&lt;p&gt;&quot;I realized I have this incredibly powerful device, why can&apos;t it figure out the right size for me?&quot; he said. So, he challenged his team to make the software automatically size the text into the center of the screen when he double-tapped around a webpage.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is why we&apos;re in such a sad state with regard to software patents.  This guy genuinely believes that he &quot;&lt;i&gt;invented&lt;/i&gt;&quot; something.  And that it should be patentable.&lt;p&gt;Of course, anybody who has actually built anything knows that what he actually did was &quot;decide how something should work&quot;.  You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it&apos;s not in any way a big deal.  Certainly not something you should call &quot;inventing&quot;, and absolutely not something that you should consider patenting.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s just one of thousands of design decisions you make.  It&apos;s just sad to watch people who don&apos;t understand that making things worse for everybody.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>forrestthewoods</author><text>I couldn&apos;t possibly disagree more.&lt;p&gt;Technology has and continues to advance at ridiculous pace. Many software developments are dependent on hardware. Until the hardware exists no one can even try to solve the problem. I don&apos;t want a company which has first access to hardware to automatically get all the software patents that derive from it.&lt;p&gt;Google is hard at work on their glasses. Lots of companies are. The hardware isn&apos;t there yet. We&apos;re getting there though. Eventually someone is going to have hardware that enables all kinds of cool things to be done that have never been done before. Our culture / society / economy doesn&apos;t need to compound their reward of being first with a 20 year exclusive.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple&apos;s Secrets Revealed During Trial</title><url>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443687504577567421840745452.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jsz0</author><text>I think double-tap-to-zoom is a perfect example of something that should be patentable. It&apos;s a huge improvement over existing systems that often used a zoom box you would position with cursor keys. To work properly it has to take into account the major design elements on a web page and make intelligent choices based on the user&apos;s tap target. Web browsing before double-tap-to-zoom and multi-touch zoom was a nightmare. These two features reinvented web browsing on small displays. This was clearly one of the killer features of the original iPhone.</text></item><item><author>jasonkester</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Mr. Forstall said he invented a patent for double-tapping on Web pages because as he had been using a prototype of the iPhone to surf the web, he realized he was spending a lot of time pinching and zooming the page to fit text perfectly on the screen.&lt;p&gt;&quot;I realized I have this incredibly powerful device, why can&apos;t it figure out the right size for me?&quot; he said. So, he challenged his team to make the software automatically size the text into the center of the screen when he double-tapped around a webpage.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is why we&apos;re in such a sad state with regard to software patents.  This guy genuinely believes that he &quot;&lt;i&gt;invented&lt;/i&gt;&quot; something.  And that it should be patentable.&lt;p&gt;Of course, anybody who has actually built anything knows that what he actually did was &quot;decide how something should work&quot;.  You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it&apos;s not in any way a big deal.  Certainly not something you should call &quot;inventing&quot;, and absolutely not something that you should consider patenting.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s just one of thousands of design decisions you make.  It&apos;s just sad to watch people who don&apos;t understand that making things worse for everybody.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pwg</author><text>&amp;#62; To work properly it has to take into account the major design elements on a web page and make intelligent choices based on the user&apos;s tap target.&lt;p&gt;And that is what should be patentable, if anything at all should be patentable.  The algorithm to account for design elements and make intelligent choices.&lt;p&gt;Not &quot;tap twice to zoom&quot;.</text></comment>