Oka
Project THE STAR 7 [*7] PDA Prototype
·
One of the major patents being discussed
in the Apple vs. Samsung cases all around the world is inertia scrolling.
·
Apple claims to have invented it, but in
fact, Sun was working on a PDA in the early '90s called the Star7, which had inertia
scrolling.
·
In a demonstration posted to YouTube, you
can see this device in action, including the touch screen inertial scrolling.
·
James Gosling (yup, that one), the
narrator of the video, even mentions it specifically.
·
This looks like a case of prior art for
this patent, and serves to demonstrate that, no, despite all these grandiose
claims, Apple did not invent this at all, which further illustrates the
complete and utter lunacy of the patent system in the software world.
·
The Star7's interface is reminiscent of
Microsoft Bob, and makes me want to forcefully introduce my head to my
recently-painted walls. Still, it's an interesting device; 1992 is when the
first fully touchscreen PDA was released (the Tandy Zoomer, by what would
eventually become Palm), and a year before the Newton arrived on the scene.
Luckily for us, the Star7 never made it to market.
Sun demonstrated touchscreen inertial scrolling - in 1992
The
Star7 (*7) was a prototype for a SPARC based,
-
Handheld wireless PDA, with a 5” color LCD with touchscreen input,
-A
new 16 bit –5:6:5 color hardware double buffered NTSC framebuffer,
-900MHz
wireless networking, PCMCIA bus interfaces, multi-media audio codec,
-A
new power supply/battery interface, radical industrial design and packaging/process
technology,
-A
version of Unix that runs in under a megabyte, including drivers for PCMCIA,
radio networking,
-Touchscreen,
-
Display,
-Flash
RAM file system,
-Execute-in-place,
-Split
I/D cache, with cached framebuffer support,
-A
new small,
-Safe,
secure,
-Distributed,
-Robust,
-Interpreted,
-Garbage
collected,
-Multi-threaded,
-Architecture
neutral,
-High
performance,
-Dynamic
programming language,
-A
new small,
-Fast,
-True-color
alpha channel compositing,
-Sprite
graphics library,
-A
set of classes that implement a spatial user interface metaphor,
-A
user interface methodology which uses animation,
-Audio,
-Spatial
cues,
-Gestures,
-Agency,
-Color,
and fun,
A
set of applications which show all of the features of the *7 hardware and
software combination, including a TV guide, a fully functioning television
remote control, a ShowMe style distributed whiteboard which allows active
objects to be transmitted over a wireless network, and an on-screen agent which
makes the whole experience fun and engaging. All of this, in 1992! While the Star7
may have never entered commercial production, Oak, the language behind it all,
became the very popular Java.
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
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