@ Scott

I love how you throw in ad hominem arguments to show your point, decrying “Apple Hater” or “Fanboy”, then ending with labeling Mike an “idiot”.

Goes far in making your point.

I’m not mad though, of course, I’m not Mike either.

I have spent enough time in this industry, working on tablet projects based around Android, that I know your arguments are a fallicy.

Fallacy 1: Innovation – Apple has not “innovated” anything, as almost everything they have done can be found in other, previous systems. The entire drag to move was implemented in almost any off page scrolling technique. Don’t believe me? Look at any web browser, they use a “Bar” to drag the system. The difference is, as found in Windows Mobile, it doesn’t work well, so the next step was to make the entire thing one big “bar”, aka, drag the entire page, not just the smaller “bar”. As an engineering background, this is not a novel idea, and has been used repeatedly. Just because I managed to get my piece of paper through the system first does not mean that I created the idea…
I could go through almost every “innovation” that you list and disprove any innovation Apple has done as coming from them. Even the PC.

Fallacy 2: That Apple has “unique” designs. The candy bar style phone has been around a lot longer then the iPhone. While some merits of Apple’s suits do in fact seem to take on a “copying” concept, such as the round home button with the square in the middle, others seem more like “common sense” and less like “innovation”. How else do you make a large screen phone seem sleek and sexy? A 4″ flip phone, doubling the size to 8″ and making it so awkward that it cannot even compete? Rounding it, squaring it? Maybe they should have patented some shapes instead. I have seen the comparisons, and while there are some things that can be pointed at between Samsung and Apple, and you can say “Yeah, they did copy that (Which might make sense to go to court over, but trust me, they are going for more then the “obvious”), some of those things just make obvious sense, and as debated over and over here on Techdirt, sense should not be patentable (Although it does appear that scarily, too many patents are being issued based on common sense instead of innovation) So, what happens? This companies broad patents are used to sue that company, which is defended by that companies broad patents, etc. In fact, I would say many of the companies in the current patent suits probably hold some broad patent that probably already covers what they are being sued for, and they are so broad in fact, that many end up overlapping.

Fallacy 3: Apple is being sued more then they sue. You claim it is because Apple is the “victim” in this? Most of the lawsuits have been filed as a retaliatory strike. If you trace out almost every date for patent suit in the current industry, you will find it as follows: Apple sues company x, so company x sues Apple. In fact, go back to these original suits, and you will find Apple was one of the first to start this. I would not say they are the only, but it is my impression that they are the catalyst (We can even go back to the original Apple Vs. Microsoft if you want to see how back this has gone on). Unfortunately, now it has spread, and it seems that this has created a wildfire that will not stop for a long time.

Fallacy 4: Apple has gotten the courts to see they are violated. Not completely accurate and non-opinionated there. While yes, they have won some judgments, they have at the same time lost some judgments. In fact, in some cases, the patents overlap to such an extent that they loose based on the very same patent they won, because the other side has a patent that covers overlapping ideas.

So, overall, you have failed to “win over” anyone with your somewhat misleading, and in some cases, quite false, arguments. So now, you understand why I say your idea is idiotic (Just in case you missed the point in this, I am not calling “you”an idiot, thus making an Ad hominem argument, but instead is telling you that your points are idiotic.).