This will just get him disavowed as a cofounder of Apple by the hardcore supporters. Eventually no one will remember he helped start Apple and everyone will think Jobs was the only one. (edit: true enough that they already see him as the black sheep, the embarrassing uncle everyone tries to ignore)

No one cares what the "naive, idealistic" engineer clueless about business thinks. That's the battle we're fighting - to fix patents, we have to tell people how it's not mere idealism or ideology, but how real businesses can get squeezed out by patent trolls or assholes if software patents don't get reformed soon.

On the bright side, I'm noticing more friends getting Androids, even around this time when the iPhone 5 is being launched. Only the core Apple supporters are going straight for the iPhone. The tide may be turning and Apple losing a bit of its shine, at least in my circles.

Wise man. The way I see it, Apple had a case regarding "trade dress". Some Samsung devices, for example the Galaxy Tab 10.1, do look too much like Apple products. However, the rest of the patents were ridiculous. If the bar for patent validity is going to be this low, most software developers will not be able to do a day's work without accidentally infringing on something. Every piece of software I've seen being built most certainly uses methods that are described somewhere in patents, especially if it is leading edge in terms of communicating, collecting, syncing or displaying information through the web or mobile devices. If court decisions keep going this way, it is going to become impossible to code legally without the costly burden of acquiring a patent war chest and a team of layers to defend your organisation. We might as well shut down the industry to newcomers.

I hope he's right that this gets reversed.

Apple makes a lot of best-in-class products (and I know some people that think everything they make is best-in-class).

Do they think they need to do this kind of litigation to keep making products people will buy? Are they trying to discredit Samsung as copycats? Or is it just a case of "if it costs us $100m to pursue 10 lawsuits with a 5% chance of any one of them getting us a $1b reward, it's a positive business move" sort of thing?

I am not taking sides. Don't have all the data. I'll just say that there's a huge difference between "Research & Development" and only "Development". The first is far more time consuming, risky and expensive. The second is a clear and guided roadmap that you simply follow to completion.

I used to be an idealist. I bought the whole idea of "just build a better product" without question. And so I did. Many years ago I embarked in the development of electronic products for a specific industry while trenching new territory and bringing new ideas to the user base. I opted not to file for patents because, well, they were expensive and I was going to just beat them with a better product. Or so I thought.

The first product took about a year and a half in R&D. Lots of work. Lots of problems to solve. Lots to learn. It finally got out and we did really good business right out of the gate. Hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. Eight months later competitors came out with devices offering about 60% of what we were doing at half the price.

It nearly killed the business. A six month month run with a hardware product isn't enough to recoup your R&D. Our competitors had the advantage of only having to do the "D" part because they copied and stole as much as they could. Never mind the fact that they did not have to trench new territory and actually test to see if there was a market there.

The lessons I learned during this period were invaluable (and very painful). Patents do have reason to exist and should not be ignored. People will cheat and steal in business the first chance they get. It takes a special kind of person to honor an agreement without the threat of serious financial harm through litigation if violated. People will violate NDA's and use them to get your ideas and insight under all kinds of pretenses.

Business is war. I was an idealist. An idiot. Live and learn.

I don't know about the Apple vs. Samsung issue. Frankly, I don't have the time to dive into the details. Even if it did, it would be a huge waste of my time as I have nothing to gain from such an exercise. Not taking sides, here's hoping that the courts get it right.

I've said it before and I will say it again. Apple needs to compete on, and thus focus on the quality of their products. Not sue everyone else into the ground because they feel threatened. Apple will just keep squeezing out incremental changes to their devices and suing everyone else until they are the only ones left standing.

Maybe they should let Woz run the company, he seems to be the last innovator left.

I agree with the sentiment, admire respect the man for his contibutions to where technology is, but I really don't understand why Woz's opionion is solicited for every step that Apple of any time in the past 10 years has made. Even at the gestation of the company, his idea of how they should proceed was completely at odds with Jobs' (the latter actually wanted to turn a profit, among other things). I would call it safe to say modern Apple is all but devoid of Woz's influence

I can't believe these guys just called the Woz "infamous".

It's interesting that camera quality is so important for people, yet I find it difficult to find information on image quality beyond how many megapixels the sesnor has. The least they could do is tell me the sensor size/aperture size too.

You really have to search the specialized review sites to find good comparisons on image quality.

Turn-by-Turn navigation came on Android way earlier than it came with iPhone 5 yesterday.

How fair it is for Apple complain about stealing ideas?

Apple should have won a copyright case against Samsung clearly copying too much of the overall iPhone design. Instead Apple won a patent case which sucks for everyone, not just Samsung. A litigious Apple could use this win against other Android (and smart-phone in general) manufactures.

Samsung may have copied the shapes and a few gestures like slide to unlock with the original galaxy s. But anyone who claims that it gave them a market advantage is being disingenuous.

Woz has always been rational about stuff and what he says. I hope the verdict gets overturned.

This is lazy journalism.

Will people stop posting what Steve Wozniak thinks about everything? Just because he's Steve Wozniak doesn't make him a foremost expert on everything related to technology. Does this quote add any insight or value at all?

“I don’t agree with it — very small things I don’t really call that innovative. I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody’s technologies.”

Patents are living proof that ideas are overrated.

We know Woz is an 'outside looking in' type person. His remarks remind me of all the people who are really upset with Apple for pursuing this lawsuit. People seem to have this conception that Apple saw an opportunity to sue the pants of a harmless company so it did. This is not the case at all. The two corporations were in meetings with lawyers for a year trying to iron out a deal. The deals fell through and they went to court.

The truth is everyone has been and is suing Apple, all the time. http://c4sif.org/2012/04/web-of-tech-patent-lawsuits-infogra... This graphic is now 9 month old. Truth is Apple is the most sued company in tech! I just don't get this 'down with Apple' mentality. It's completely irrational.

When Apple entered the phone telecom industry, it turned telecoms on their head. Apple started to take control from these awful companies (see my article on t-mobile: http://news.nucleusdevelopment.com/2012/09/11/t-mobile-infla...) and give it to consumers. Remember verizon didn't want any part of the iPhone because 'it gave the consumer too much control'?

Google and Samsung have been helping the telecoms regain control, allowing crapware and bloatware to go right back on the phones. That is one of the very things that Apple fought so hard to keep off their phones, and one of the main reasons Verizon didn't initially want Apple as a vendor. Not to mention, The spyware that gets installed with out our knowledge, ie: Carrier IQ. Controlling the software OS on the phones (ei: why it takes so long to get a new version of Android on your existing phone).

So how would things have turned out if we dropped all the software patent claims and Apple could only sue on trade dress?

Apple is a hardware company. A hardware enclosures design company, really; they outsource most everything to do with producingthe hardware. For a company like Apple, trade dress claims make sense. Software patents seem a little fishy.

(Even for software companies software patents are a bit fishy. That's why they've traditionally relied on copyright. And if I'm not mistaken that's why the USPTO is soon going to be issuing new rules and a new system to deal with software/business method patents since they cause so much concern.)

I love the head on that man's shoulders.

Why use expression like "The infamous engineer"? what does it mean? some writers just go overboard sometimes.

I feel like the craziness is only just beginning.

So what? Really. His opinion isn't any more or any less valuable that anybody else.

I respect the guy but is he influential enough that it matters what he thinks?

Woz made the original Apple computers on a single board PC and did a good job for what they were but has done nothing since and never was a good businessman. Why does anyone think his opinion means anything or carries any weight? From everything I've read, he never had good business sense and I would just do the opposite of anything he says.

The thing is, Woz isn't relevant anymore. Of course I respect his lineage, but the guy seems to have lost a lot of steps since back in the day.

Why use expression like "The infamous engineer"? what does it mean? some writer just go overboard sometimes.

Apple should file a patent on filing patents, copyright each vowel individually and trademark "99 cents".

An Apple patent a day, keeps innovation away.