That too me says how we ended up in this situation.
Apple did good, they made a standard out of the portable mp3 players and slowly got to the stage were the only thing to add was the phone part, they then slowly got the feature sets inplace, all with elegant, simple and usage designs. Many obvious, if you study human interaction then swiping to turn a page to open another is clear cut as it's intuative. So yes some already exist and many cases of prior art, but it is all about the patent's (feel a Weird Al song a comming on) baby.
Another factor was the technology, Sony P800 springs to mind and been many other touch screens since with what was the PDA domain and eventual death of. What with camera's, filofax's, payphones the mobile phone is borging alot of markets, soon be sole internet as well eventualy, already is for some today.
But as is the rule in IT, everybody always hates the leader, be it IBM in there day, Microsoft in there time and now Apple. Each company going thru that hate phase grows a large lawyer department and carry's on until somebody else takes the limelight and the hate away from them. It's one of the cycle of life in many area's sadly, but true.
Bottom line and back to Star Trek and SCI-FI in general, you can bet Hollywood had patented there technology imaginations. Now if only we could get the anti-pirate lawyers turned into anti SCI-FI IP lawyers and chasing technology companies then we would truely have a circular centipede moment and some potentualy good TV veiwing as it is after all, a geek soap opera.
That too me says how we ended up in this situation.
Apple did good, they made a standard out of the portable mp3 players and slowly got to the stage were the only thing to add was the phone part, they then slowly got the feature sets inplace, all with elegant, simple and usage designs. Many obvious, if you study human interaction then swiping to turn a page to open another is clear cut as it's intuative. So yes some already exist and many cases of prior art, but it is all about the patent's (feel a Weird Al song a comming on) baby.
Another factor was the technology, Sony P800 springs to mind and been many other touch screens since with what was the PDA domain and eventual death of. What with camera's, filofax's, payphones the mobile phone is borging alot of markets, soon be sole internet as well eventualy, already is for some today.
But as is the rule in IT, everybody always hates the leader, be it IBM in there day, Microsoft in there time and now Apple. Each company going thru that hate phase grows a large lawyer department and carry's on until somebody else takes the limelight and the hate away from them. It's one of the cycle of life in many area's sadly, but true.
Bottom line and back to Star Trek and SCI-FI in general, you can bet Hollywood had patented there technology imaginations. Now if only we could get the anti-pirate lawyers turned into anti SCI-FI IP lawyers and chasing technology companies then we would truely have a circular centipede moment and some potentualy good TV veiwing as it is after all, a geek soap opera.