Engadget Podcast 186 - 03.05.2010
By Trent Wolbe 
posted March 5th 2010 4:30PM
posted March 5th 2010 4:30PM
Hosts: Josh Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Tom Sawyer
Hear the podcast
00:02:21 - Apple sues HTC for infringing 20 iPhone patents
00:03:30 - Apple vs HTC: a patent breakdown
00:26:54 - Apple specifically going after Android in HTC lawsuit
00:27:56 - Google responds to Apple's HTC lawsuit: 'We stand behind our Android operating system'
00:31:12 - TiVo Premiere and Premiere XL usher in a brand new interface, optional QWERTY remote
00:31:25 - Live from TiVo's 'one box' press event
00:33:00 -TiVo Premiere hands-on (update: video!)
00:42:07 - Engadget is live from CeBIT 2010!
00:42:44 - NVIDIA Ion 2 now official; Acer, ASUS and Lenovo at the ready
00:45:10 - NVIDIA's Optimus technology shows its graphics switching adroitness on video
00:47:30 - Acer Aspire One 532G with ION 2 priced at an aggressive 379 euros
00:50:55 - Sony: Don't turn on your PS3 until PSN bug is fixed
00:55:45 - Project Pink QWERTY slider 'Pure' found in the wild, headed for Verizon?
01:01:53 - Exclusive: First Windows Phone 7 Series partner device unveiled (with video!)
01:05:10 - HTC HD2 and Windows Phone 7 Series: Just tell us no, Microsoft
01:06:30 - Microsoft sending mixed signals on Windows Phone 7 Series upgrades, HTC HD2 still in limbo
01:10:10 - Palm webOS 1.4 update hits Verizon's Pre Plus and Pixi Plus
01:19:06 - BlackBerry slider photos leak out!
01:20:02 - More BlackBerry slider pics appear -- is this the next Bold?
01:26:25 - The Engadget app for BlackBerry gets updated to 1.0.1
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1-888-ENGADGET or podcast (at) engadget (dot) com.
Twitter: @joshuatopolsky @futurepaul @reckless @ohnorosco @engadget
Thanks guys, CeBIT should be a good show glad you guys are covering it live.
@CarliT Thx for the pre commercial mention at 1hr 16m
for interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBbGKwWQedM
@IcerC http://www.palm.com/us/company/careers.html
They've got two marketing positions open right now!
I was checking out who's in charge of marketing at Palm and they've got this former-Yahoo! person there. Hmmm, anyone notice how Yahoo! is doing? They just got overtaken by Facebook in terms of traffic. Ha ha.
http://www.palm.com/us/company/management-team/mitic-katie.html
Maybe she's too smart for her job with her Harvard and Stanford education to see what the Engadget editors see as the way to really market their phone. Actually selling the phone on features rather than trying to sell a creepy woman or sell completely offensive hetero-normative gender stereotypes (at least it is to me as someone who's LGBT). What's she going to let Verizon do next? Sell the Pre as a white man's phone and the Pixi as a person of color's phone? Come on!
@IcerC Hmmm, apparently Palm does know how to make ads. Check out this Apple ad:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/07/first-ipad-ad-premieres-during-the-oscars/
Then this HP ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3MSjwUrxT0
And now this Pixi ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBKzy01Xh8g
In all fairness, the Courier discussion should have been on the podcast.
@arnavdesai
I'm pretty sure the courier news broke after they recorded the podcast.
@arnavdesai We got the leaks today -- and sadly our time machine is in the shop.
@Nilay Patel
Well you could record an additional segment and your awesome producer could tack it to the beginning or the end. I heard the podcast live and seeing the courier news makes me so excited wanted to hear your guys thoughts on it ASAP. The statement above was not supposed to sound negative.
@arnavdesai I agree with you, I would've liked to have heard that as well.
Great opening song choice. Rush rules!
PROGS!
Will give my Khotar rating after I've listened.
I really didn't want to being this up about Apple and HTC problem but Nilay Patel made a really good point about patents and contradicted his own point by giving a example about automakers.
Good point that all cars work the same way, yet underneath the hood, each components have their own patents. My point exactly...
They give out patents on mechanics and engineerings, not human interface.
I don't think any automaker has patent on a way people open car door. The way you steer left on your steering wheel to drive left.
I don't know the specifics about Apple patents but they are so broad that they actually prevents any future innovations.
That is why other countries don't give out stupidly broad patents.
@lionjts There are lots of patents on how to open a car door! Everything from the handles to the hinges to muffling the sound when you close it again has been implemented in many different patented ways.
@lionjts
yea, the 20 year thing has probably passed on the regular way of opening car doors.
btw that apple's unlock-sliding thing is so stupid court should just ban apple from creating new patents... the fookers should suffer for &^$# like that...
Great breakdown of the parts of the lawsuit and patent issues between apple and htc. I think this cleared up a lot of the discussion around the patent system in general and some of these patents that got the most discussion.
You really hit the nail on the head with the validity period of these patents. When basic fundamental OS parts that are generally used on many many different generations of smart electronic devices, from pc's to smartphones, suddenly pops up in a completely different form factor device, you have to ask yourself if this is still something worth protecting and worth slowing down the market over.
Anyway, thanks for the breakdown Nilay, in the pod cast and the article. It made things a lot clearer to me.
@ ~40:35
Seriously? The QWERTY remote is a big deal? Who doesn't use a universal remote in their living room these days? Last thing I want is another remote on the coffee table. Harmony 1 FTW!
Why bother asking the patent lawyer a question if you are just going to talk over him, fail to comprehend any of his answers and then declare the whole thing is boring when you realise you aren't as informed as said lawyer? Josh, you do good podcast, but if someone knows more about something than you, for goodness sake shut up and let them speak!
@monkeybutler completely agreed! josh just likes to hear himself talk. i'm sure this isn't the first time this has been said/he has heard this. he argues for the sake of arguing! this podcast would be WAY more enjoyable w/o josh's childish insecurities. i hate hearing this dude's point of view! HATE IT!
My personal opinion.
Obvious patent: a patent that covers a method or implementation that would be inferred as the most efficient/simple-to-implement method or implementation by the piece of technology it is being implemented in.
Examples: a mouse, which records a single point's motion in 2D space, infers that a single point being displayed on the screen to represent it is the best implementation of the mouse in software. Therefore, a, "cursor" is an obvious implementation of a mouse input on a screen.
A keyboard contains multiple buttons representing different letters. It infers that the keys of the keyboard should display the corresponding letter in the focussed document/area when pressed. Therefore, displaying letters in response to corresponding input from the keyboard is an obvious implementation of document writing with a keyboard.
A touch-screen device contains very few input methods (in the case of the iPhone, there is an ambient light detector, a touch screen and a sound input). If you want to use the touch-screen to move the software from a locked state to an unlocked state, it infers one of two things: a single or multiple static input points unlock the software, or; a motion on the touch-screen that unlocks the software. I consider both of these, "obvious" implementations, as unlocking with a touch-screen infers that the touch-screen has to be... touched. Though thus far my opinion has been accurate (as far as I can see at least - feel free to find a flaw in my logic), it might be a much simpler case for HTC to create/push an update that uses another, non-infringing method of unlocking, two of the most effective (and dare I say obvious?) methods having been pointed out above: using (a) static point(s) to unlock, instead of a motion on the touch-screen, or; using sound input from the user to unlock the screen. You might argue that the latter is difficult to implement accurately or securely, but this isn't about difficulty, it's about obviousness.
Time Warner controls my life. If you record a series it literally records every single show in that series, even reruns. In my apartment building (in NYC) you are not allowed to have anything else but time warner, I live next to a time warner center, time warner freezes my HDTV. Time Warner...SUCKS!
Is there any update on the problem with the iPhone downloading this podcast? I have been get the error during the final "processing" step every single time with this (and only this) podcast for like 2 months now. The HD and Mobile podcasts are fine, just this one doesn't work. iTunes on the PC is fine, just not on the iPhone directly.
@chilimost Yes! Same problem here too. It's very annoying. Is it just us?
Gawd, I wish Rush was an GameBoy title.
I am guessing you guys are probably aware of this problem. But when I try to download the engadget classic podcast directly from the iTunes app on my iphone, it gives me a error while processing the download and asks to retry. I have tried this on two different iPhones with the same result, so I am assuming there's some issue. Other podcasts download fine via this method. Please let me know if there's a work around. Sometimes its easier to download directly onto the iPhone rather than connecting it to my mac
Just to throw my 2 cents in, I would have loved to have heard a full podcast dedicated to patent/copyright laws.
@rchapoteau Me as well. The patent segment was very enlightening..
For me, the best part of the podcast was @Nilay Patel going deeper on how the patent system is supposed to work and why. It's obvious he's pretty passionate about the law and made it for some very interesting listening.
If there's a chance in the future, I'd love to hear a segment going into more detail.
haha. thx for the headsup - surely had my fun with you guys arguing over the whole patent-chaos and the blackberry progstore
Love your podcasts. I think the patent discussion was interesting. Being an engineer and not a patent attorney I share a little frustration in the way the system works. I think your discussion was very intelligent however I will point out one nit-picky thing (that may not apply in this situation.) A patent doesn't give you the right to make and sell something with your invention. It gives you the right to prevents others from doing so.
@gdgtsrgd You're absolutely right that it's an exclusionary right! I skimmed over that to simplify our conversation, but it's an important distinction.
loved the rush cover on the intro