Mr. Forstall said he invented a patent for double-tapping on Web pages because as he had been using a prototype of the iPhone to surf the web, he realized he was spending a lot of time pinching and zooming the page to fit text perfectly on the screen.
"I realized I have this incredibly powerful device, why can't it figure out the right size for me?" he said. So, he challenged his team to make the software automatically size the text into the center of the screen when he double-tapped around a webpage."
This is why we're in such a sad state with regard to software patents. This guy genuinely believes that he "invented" something. And that it should be patentable.
Of course, anybody who has actually built anything knows that what he actually did was "decide how something should work". You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it's not in any way a big deal. Certainly not something you should call "inventing", and absolutely not something that you should consider patenting.
It's just one of thousands of design decisions you make. It's just sad to watch people who don't understand that making things worse for everybody.
"I realized I have this incredibly powerful device, why can't it figure out the right size for me?" he said. So, he challenged his team to make the software automatically size the text into the center of the screen when he double-tapped around a webpage."
This is why we're in such a sad state with regard to software patents. This guy genuinely believes that he "invented" something. And that it should be patentable.
Of course, anybody who has actually built anything knows that what he actually did was "decide how something should work". You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it's not in any way a big deal. Certainly not something you should call "inventing", and absolutely not something that you should consider patenting.
It's just one of thousands of design decisions you make. It's just sad to watch people who don't understand that making things worse for everybody.