In Apple’s quarterly conference call, Steve’s substitute Tim Cook was asked if he would sue makers of the Palm Pre for lifting the multitouch technology that Apple developed.
PC Mag reports:
“I don’t want to talk about any specific company,” Cook said, when asked about Palm. “I’m just generally making a general statement. Competition is good, it makes us all better. We’re ready to suit up and go against anyone,” in the market, except if a company steals Apple’s IP, he said.
“We won’t stand for any of them that rip off our IP,” Cook said, adding that he couldn’t state his position any more plainly.
Palm hasn’t released it’s Pre yet, which looks like an iPhone with a slide-down keyboard. It sounds like it will have more than a couple of the iPhone’s unique features — PC Mag’s review reveals:
At the bottom of the screen, there’s a “gesture area” where you can flick or twirl your fingers to manipulate content. And yes, the screen has iPhone-style multitouch, including pinching to zoom in and out.
[via PC Mag]
I am so excited. I don’t care about the Pre at all, but if this motivates Apple to make the iPhone better, then I am all for it. What will WWDC bring?!
They should make an IP agreement. Palm can keep all the pinching, bouncing, and double tapping. Apple can take the WebOS application switching.
Hm, why should Apple be interested in an IP agreement? The app switching uses a Coverflow emulation (Apple) and application switching is part of OS X (and other OSs) since ages. The iPhone does not do it because of memory and CPU constraints, not because they do not know how to do it. Once the iPhone has a better CPU and more memory, Apple will certainly change its stance. Apps on the Pre are only HTML widgets, much less memory consumption and maybe (do not know that) all just child processes of the browser running anyhow – you can not compare that to the resource consumption of Asphalt4 or Brothers in Arms on the iPhone.