Jobs was an idea person, not an engineer. You have to imagine the engineer getting excited about the ideas going into building something. Later, Jobs sees that same idea popping up everywhere, and his natural response is to claim that it was "ripped off".
I think the same thing happened with the iPhone/Android controversy. Many of the similarities are emergent from the technology that became available at that time (larger screens, accurate multitouch panels, faster processors), but all Jobs saw is the idea.
Well, it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the "idea" of the iPhone. After all, all the hardware had been available for a number of years, including displays, CPUs, GPUs, capacitive touchscreens, batteries etc. Someone else could easily have come along with a multitouch phone two years earlier, but nobody did. Of course, the "idea" of the iPhone wasn't new either, but Apple was the first to make the idea into a working, usable product.
You just contradicted yourself: "it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the 'idea' of the iPhone." and "Of course, the 'idea' of the iPhone wasn't new either". If the idea wasn't new, then other companies weren't ripping off the iPhone's idea.
I'm not attempting to detract from the fact that Apple executed on the iPhone almost perfectly. Realizing that the market was ready, and then providing a product that delivers on that analysis is what Jobs should be known for, not this notion that he invented multitouch devices.
Maybe I should have written that they ripped off Apples _implementation_ of the idea. Or maybe they were just "inspired".
The right question to ask is this: Would multiple capacitive multitouch phones similar to the iPhone have been introduced in 2007 / 2008 if the iPhone had never launched? Some people seem to think so, but I see no evidence that other companies were working on similar technology / user interfaces at the time, and plenty of evidence that they were caught off guard.
There's a simple reason why Apple was often the first one to put something into a product: They could afford to sell high-end products for a high price and know that they still have lots of users who buy their stuff.
Most of the other companies had prototypes using those technologies available, but they didn't build products out of them because (at this point) they would have been too expensive for their target audience.
And even if those other companies built a product before Apple, Apple would still claim that it was first: Two examples: (1) LG Prada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada) was there before the iPhone, yet (AFAIK) Apple claims that basically all the touchscreen phones are a copy of the iPhone. And (2) Netbooks and Subnotebooks have been on the market for nearly a decade now - I've used Thinkpad X-series laptops for years now (which weight about as much as a Macbook Air). Still, as soon as a company announes a new Subnotebook now someone will claim that it is a copy of the Macbook Air.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. Most other computer or consumer electronics companies have high-end lines with prices comparable to Apples products. Companies like RIM and Nokia had pretty nice margins on their high-end phones.
The main problem was simply that they had no incentive to innovate in that direction until competition showed up in the form of the iPhone. (And I'm not saying Apple is special here, I think they would probably have been in the same position if they had continued selling the Newton and tried making an iNewtonPhone out of it).
AFAIK, Apple claims various touch-related inventions through their patents (some of which are quite stupid, which is another story). I've never heard them saying "we invented touchscreen phones".
Apple never claimed to have invented subnotebooks either. But you would be right if you looked at many of the new "ultrabooks" and claimed that they have borrowed many design details from the Air (as opposed to, say, copying the form factor of the X-series or netbooks).
Your example of the Prada disproves your point. The Prada sold unlocked for roughly $775. Hardly a cheap phone. The Sony/Ericsson P990 also sold for $700. So the iPhone was not sold at a significantly higher price than its competition.
So, Apple is doomed when faced by your criticism. Either they sell the stuff with new technology at a high price because of their cult following, or they're really not introducing something new. That's a pretty effective attack, since you can basically switch both tactics interchangeably regardless of any actual validity.
Maybe you haven't heard of the LG Prada. Design was public in September 2006, several months before the first iPhone was released. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
Sonyericsson p800, released 2002, 5 years(!) before the iphone. Has a touchscreen covering the whole surface of the phone. You could even stretch it as far as R380, disregard that it's black and white and has no apps and you basically have the iphone form factor.
The iphone might be the first phone that put together all the elements in a really good way and raised the bar for UX on a phone but they certainly did not invent neighter smartphones, touchscreen-phones or phones with apps.
This has been bugging me for a while, too. Jobs is given (and quite frankly, claimed) credit for far more than he deserves. The sad part about that is that it actually detracts from the many tremendously significant contributions things he did make. But as far as invention goes, I don't think Steve Jobs actually invented anything other than, well, Steve Jobs.
That said, this story is about an invention that Steve Jobs _doesn't_ take credit for. It's another example of how Isaacsons biography gets simple facts wrong by simply quoting people without doing research (just like the NeXT quote by Bill Gates discussed earlier).
Also, I think Steve Jobs comes off as belittling the accomplishments of Woz here, by saying that the power supply was just as revolutionary as the logic board, which apparently is clearly false.
While he did invent lots of stuff, I think it's pretty undisputed by the people close to him such as Jony Ive and Andy Hertzfeld, that Steve was famous for claiming other peoples ideas as his own.
[Edit: Jony Ive describes this in chapter 26 of the biography. See folklore.org for more examples.]
It's called a design patent. It explicitly covers only the ornamental, non-functional design of the object, and is subject to somewhat different terms than a utility patent.
In terms of IP law, it's actually quite reasonable.
appreciated, however I don't think that people mean "design" as in aesthetic design when they say "invented"
for example, the spinning beach ball is patented... I think we have passed the point where "patented" has anything to do with what people think of as "invention"
I think the same thing happened with the iPhone/Android controversy. Many of the similarities are emergent from the technology that became available at that time (larger screens, accurate multitouch panels, faster processors), but all Jobs saw is the idea.