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40 Comments
- jfpwr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33one company acquiring another company is sad?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21In this context, it means "saved from bankruptcy and utter obscurity".
- winnch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Honestly it's headlines like this one that explain why I come to digg less and less. Oh, poor developers.... who were snatched up by Apple, saved from bankruptcy, and made part of an incredibly innovative product. Flagging this article, although beneath the ridiculous headline is a pretty interesting story about two very lucky people at Fingerworks.
- monkeyrun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18"practical kidnapping of a pair of inventors"
lol, I envy your ability to turn any Apple related story negative . - AICkieran, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Konfabulator wasn't exactly an original concept, what about apple "Desk accessories" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_Accessory).
I like how people bang on about people stealing things when there is prior art, and in this case, the prior art came from apple. - gmprunner, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12lol, "Fingerworks"...
- Soulscribe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"practical kidnapping"
Really? - RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Archive.org has pages from this company going back all the way to 2000. They apparently invented multi-touch so Apple owns that technology now. I was skeptical at first but this could indeed be as important as owning the touch wheel.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000830151807/www.fingerworks.com/technology_frame.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20010202085300/www.fingerworks.com/about_frame.html - dealcatcher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I met Wayne Westerman the founder of fingerworks this summer while on a group bike ride in Delaware. He mentioned he worked for Apple and was in the area of reasearching touch displays. He was very secretive, but I immediately thought touch screen ipod. Apple actually let him work from home at his headquarters in Dover Delaware, I also thought this was strange. I knew whatever he was working on must have been important. Now I wish I could go back and pump him for more information.
- smhill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Microsoft has done this as well, many times. My cousin and his company were absorbed into part of MSN, the got new jobs in Redmond and made out well. Look at MS games for example. (or any big game really for any system). There is nothing wrong with purchasing / acquiring talent and tools. Most of the time it is a hell of a deal for the development team. Most companies do. Innovation comes from individuals. And not all those individuals work within the walls of Apple, Microsoft, Sun, etc...
Good for the Fingerworks team. They were obviously passionate about what they were doing, now they can continue it with better resources and wider exposure. - Sirusdv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I have a fingerworks keyboard and it is amazing. It's a shame they stopped making them, they sell on ebay for about ~$500, I hope the drivers are going to be vista compatible.
and yes, it does work on linux. - anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I make touch gestures with my fingers on a daily basis.
- BlogJones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Apple bought Fingerworks.
Microsoft bought Visio.
Google bought Picasa.
This is an industry practice. Let the little guys produce new technology on the cheap, then buy them if their ideas are any good.
Apple's talent isn't in creating innovative new ideas. It's in taking those ideas and making them user-friendly and accessible. For example: Leopard has multiple desktops. Woo-hoo! Linux has had them for years. The difference is that "normal people"--the less tech-savvy who just want a computer that works and is pretty--will use Apple's multiple desktops. - delhokie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3More in-depth story appeared in the News Journal (Delaware), as they were University of Delaware researchers: http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007701190357
- angusware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3So what about Google Buying YouTube, companies like Apple and Google buy companies and make them better and use their technology to make things better. They don't destry them, they enliven them. Companies like Microsoft take companies (if they even lawfully aquire them in the first place) and destroy them and make the technology crap.
This is the way things work and Apple is doing a good job of buying technologies, microsoft destroy the technology.
And Apple had widgets before Konfabulator, they had them in very early Apple OS's and if they did get the idea from Konfabulator just to be picky we'll say it was nEXT, because Mac os x is pretty much just the nEXT OS being slowly intorduced piece by piece to make more money for apple when all the features could have gone in from the beginning. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Seriously, *****..you are about to get those videos removed from Google. Hope you are OK with that. You also could get sued by several web sites. This is no longer just simple violating a TOS. This is illegal what you are doing. You are harassing SEVERAL web sites, and knowingly and repeatedly violating their TOS.
AS a dumb kid, there is no way you could pay to defend yourself, or pay the fines. So...do you really want to go to jail for this? - sonofalink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow, if that's what kidnapping is like... someone kidnap me!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow. How many of YOU are there?
- Dego, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Fingerworks gave use the two finger scroll for mac books. I was on the products they sold.
http://www.fingerworks.com/gesture_guide_mouse.html - TheMacThinker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Now it makes sense why Apple was so confident about their patent and such for these technologies.
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http://www.mostofmymac.com - kbarrett, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"gesture-operated gadgetry"
Gives one ideas. - ardnut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The keyboard will work without a problem. The only thing that could be an issue is the XWinder app.
- wrongway, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So this is why they closed up shop and stopped making their wonderful product avail to anyone who wanted it...
now you can only get the tech in an apple phone, and not for your desktop anymore... - Refrag, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3This is speculation on Engadget's part. Buried as inaccurate.
- AICkieran, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I know this is late, but:
Funny that, I'm not even an apple user (most of the time) I spend most of my time in windows or Debian, *****.
Also, what kind of an argument is that? You didn't even say what I'd said that was wrong, the article just says the engine is different, so? the ***** __CONECPT__ is what I'm talking about.
I'm not normally this aggressive, but you come to the assumption that I'm defending apple? feck off.
(Posted from a THINKPAD running windows/debian) - EelfinnTy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ Sirusdv I have a touchstream keyboard too and it is hard to switch back to anything else. Hopefully Apple will use this technology a lot more.
- flosty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@Broomett - 990.999999% hey? How do you figure that?
@Everyone else on this little sub-topic - Who cares? - Swift0023, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I was wondering if this technology is going to be the next step for computers by way of making them into a totally intuitive work space where the entire computer will be a touch screen monitor. It seems like it is possible, and it could be the next wave of the Mac computers.
- pyrates, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@AICkieran
Try reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konfabulator#.22Dashboard_versus_Konfabulator.22_Debate
Your dumb ass biasness really is pathetic when you knowingly put out false information just to defend all that is Apple. It is NOT a religion. Understand? This is also why Apple has such a small part of the market. People like you scare the ordinary users away. When they see how arrogant some Apple users are and how they lie just to defend Apple, it makes Apple look worse, not better. When you think you are helping Apple, you're only hurting it. - RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Maybe just the prior art.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+8Not to mention...with EVERY post you make, you are proving Alex Jones wrong.
Because if the government had no problem killing 3000+ Americans on 9/11, they would have absolutely NO problem killing you. No one would even notice. So why would they not silence you if you were exposing the "truth?
The fact of the matter is, Alex Jones would have been killed long ago to. He is also not important enough to be noticed and never will be.
The fact that you two still breathe air proves that the crap in the video is *****. (Of course, Alex Jones already knows this, and admits that he doesn't believe it. It is not his job to weed out the *****. His job is to pass it all along. That is what he says.) - geoken, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2 Apple bought pretty much the entire iLife suit.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Um...digger...if Alex Jones died tomorrow, NO ONE WOULD CARE. No one would know. 990.999999% ofhte coutnry doesn't know, or care that he exists. He owuld not be appreciated, becuase no one would know it happened. He is a non-entity in this world. He wants your MONEY.
He ADMITTED that he posts ***** he doen't beleive. How do you not get that! He does not beleive what he posts! - rediff, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Had this been about M$ doing similar thing ....
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0Ever thought that the guy is spamming this so we get angry and have it removed?
The person posting it is using us to attack something he doesnt like. Ban the ***** IP doing it, and continue to get your Digg on. Where the hell are moderators on Digg anyways? - w0rd, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Well, to be fair, they engaged in talks with them to buy them out. The Konfabulator guys were real receptive and it went pretty far until Apple released their OS without them and told them to ***** off. I'm sure the fairness comes in here somewhere...
- thashiz, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Fingerworks huh?
I thought I owned that trademark...
;) - drizek, on 10/12/2007, -16/+6At least they had the decency to buy them out this time. They just flat out copied Dashboard from Konfobulator.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -21/+4How INNOVATIVE!
- Crepsley, on 10/12/2007, -35/+1Wow
That's pretty sad for Apple
Hope they don't get sued again
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