No, I'm talking about knowing that users are faster and more efficient when the menu bar is at the top of the screen rather than attached to windows. Design makes people more efficient. Undesigned things, or poorly designed things don't care about these factors, or do them half assed.
> The idea of someone saying my setup is 'wrong' from a design perspective is laughable,
This is because you reject design. You claim it is marketing. You reject it as an engineering discipline. That's my point.
>Where's the novel signal processing algorithms to clean up capacitive touchscreen input?
Patented, and you guys claim that the patent is disproven by the existence of "touch screens" in the past that worked by pushing one layer in enough that two wires touched closing a circuit.
> should get you the rights to the entire concept
The only people claiming that the rights to an entire concept are involved are those who are trying to claim that these are bogus patents... which is either profoundly ignorant or completely dishonest.
However, the nicest experience in the world isn't sufficient for success. Something has to make people get over the activation energy and earnestly investigate something other than what they know without complaining what's different and lacking - generally social factors.
> This is because you reject design
No, it's because I acknowledge that design happens within a context - most design is not universal. What is an appropriate UI for a CAD program is not appropriate for an airport kiosk, and vice-versa. When a user wishes for customization, they are designing within their own context. Their judgment is small in scope and may end up hurting other aspects of their experience, but it's ridiculous to say that the opinions of a blessed Designer aiming for the 'common user' are more valid than their own opinions of what they desire.
I had skimmed the tap to zoom patent and all of the claims seemed quite generic. I'll have to examine it in more detail, but I have to ask - if the patent does contain a novel technique for using a capacitive touchscreen as input to a UI, why does it include the specificity of zooming, a quite necessary and obvious activity for most UIs ?
Linux copied the Windows interaction paradigm (and everything else too - fvwm95/afterstep/olvwm/cde/etc) because the goal wasn't to create a new method of interaction and suffer from two adoption battles, but to appease people complaining about how Linux wasn't intuitive (after they'd already gone through one UI learning curve). Ubuntu will never ship with a default tiling window manager (certainly not the "best" design, but it's a novel design).
> based on their lack of design perspective that would let them see why things should work that way.
If a user desires for their operating environment to function in some way, they should be able to develop that customization, full stop. I use 24 virtual desktops with windows generally maximized, switching between them with [Alt+]F1-F12. Is this good design, especially for the average user? Hell no. But it fits my desires and is quick enough that I can't understand why people desire multiple monitors. The idea of someone saying my setup is 'wrong' from a design perspective is laughable, and only serves to illustrate the bounds of the field.
> This is why they think that apple patents are not original is because they reject that any engineering went into them.
Sigh, back to this again? Nope, what's being rejected is the idea that engineering an implementation of a concept should get you the rights to the entire concept through a "concept plus computer" patent. Where's the novel signal processing algorithms to clean up capacitive touchscreen input? Instead, we get descriptions of straightforward processes in terms of vague programming idioms.