What Came First: Android or iOS?

I totally agree. I think the enhancements that apple made to what is clearly an android feature will spur on the greater development of android features.

The thing that frustrates me is when a company patents something like that and file lawsuits to protect it. That path leads to zero innovation.

Yeah, software patents are an entirely different frustration. I wish the government would reform the patent system already.

Good article. Patients are interesting: If one party patients a technology, that in a sense forces everyone else to pay homage, invent something else, or get out of the game. Patienting may force a lot of competitors out of business, but it theoretically could encourge some to inovate rather that copy.

Also, it encourges inovators in the sense that they get royalties or exclusive use of their technology. Some patient holders say they would not have (or could not have) developed a certain product without the protection that patients offer. It’s not such an easy issue; so they do need to Duke it out in the courts from time to time.

Some lawsuites are trivial; but that’s more of a business issue; sometimes it just seems profitable to sue. A sues B orver somethig the C invented just in case the courts don’t catch on to the game Or someone decides to patient the air we breath, if no one stops them.

Everything pointed out in the original post is fact, however, the assumption that both were in developement around the same time is not an accurate judgement due to a few facts that were not mentioned.
1: In april of 2003 Jobs expessed his certainty that PDAs and tablet PC’s were not in high enough demand for Apple to enter into a market with.
2: he also expressed at the same time that he believed that mobile phones were essential devices for information access on the go.
what These two facts imply is that there was possibly research and development that focused on mobile phones at the time but also that the concept of PDA as a phone (which is what a smartphone is) wasn’t in their agenda at the time. This was only 6 months before Android Inc. was “Founded”
Also we have to consider the motives behind Android’s development prior to google’s acquisition of it as well as afterward and iOS’s development under Apple Inc.. For starter’s android was developed with the notion that other’s would contribute to it’s development (hence why it was open source). The original contributors realized the task they had was too large for just their current line up of developers “in house” as well as it reaching out to compete in the real large mobile market (this is discussed in different words on the AOSP website for those that want to know.). Now Apple specializes in marking hardware branded by them with tightly integrated software as a whole product. Their profits come from their products(Hardware and software) and the services associated with those products. Google doesn’t sell products they profit from their services which are focused on advertising for other companies. All of the “products” and general consumer “services” offered by them are predominantly free(ex. Chrome, picasa, Android, Gmail etc.) these are all avenues for google to expand it’s reach in advertising power. Android offers that and so It should be easy to figure out why google bought the company by now. As jobs stated himself about mobile phones and their essential use for information access. In google’s case the focus is on getting their advertising model into the consumers hands, which is making information accesible (including the ads they host).
So how does this all fit together when determining which mobile OS was developed first? Well For one android’s open model depended on gathering community of contributors and developers. when you look at the original staffing you’ll that very few were working on android in the first few years until the founding of the open handset alliance. Now apple already had the resources to fund development and hire enough developers to meet a set deadline from the start. Android Inc. did not. These facts alone weigh more in favor of android being in development first than for apple’s iOS and the iPhone.
Apples resources=More funds for development=more initial developers at start=less time to reach a finished product for distribution and sales.
Android’s resources before the acquisition by google and founding of the open handset alliance=less starting funds=dependence on contributions=fewer initial developers=longer time til reaching a final product.
Apple had the considerable buying power to push a well polished device onto the market expediently whereas android followed a snowball effect in it’s success due to an ever expanding community with similar intents and ideals as well as having multiple manufacturers to adopt the platform as well as partially fund and contribute to it themselves.
Although the assumption that android started first is not provable it is much more likely when you take into account these facts. and conversely iOS’s development is entirely speculative. In all reality I don’t care which came first or who stole from whom. Ironically Open source can’t really be stolen from in the same sense proprietary models can be stolen from. in fact it’s the complete opposite: YOU can copy it and do what you want with it just don’t expect credit or respect from the community for it unless you contribute something significant and practical as well. open source contributes for more to technological and scientific advancement than any closed model could. Android is already an example in the consumer technology category when it comes to the devices running it. The more important question to answer is which platform contributes more towards supporting innovation and technological advancement than the other: I think the answer should be obvious by now.