Apple patents

Many feel the patent system is out of control. And I can see why. Apple has been granted a patent on the ebook page turn grapic. And apparently also on rectangles with rounded corners. Which is amazing, because way back when the Mac was being developed in the early eighties, one of the ways Steve Jobs convinced his designers that the graphic interface should have rectangles with rounded corners in it, was to take them for a walk and show them that this form was everywhere...



I like this parody. The soft-spoken, yet intense and convincing cadence with which he talks is so ingrained in Apple promotional videos, not the least when Jonathan Ive talks, and I must admit I'm getting a bit sick of it. It feels like they want to convince everybody that every single new product they come out with is not just "insanely great" (in Jobs' famous phrasing), but will change the very foundations of civilization for the better.

I like Apple and I love many of their products, and there's no doubt that they've changed technology, but no single entity should have total power. Too much of a good thing is... well, Liberace.