A Man and his Penguin

Take a powerful computer. Run Linux on it. It is now YOUR powerful computer.

Oct 03 2008

Congratulations Apple, you just tried to patent the tooltip!

Posted by: bigbolshevik in Other computers/OS'es, Proprietry software, Technology Stupidities

Apple has submitted an innovative concept to the US patents office. The idea is that when you move your mouse over a link, it pops up either a thumbnail of the target website, or some textual information pertaining to the target file.

I certainly hope somebody can discover any copy of Windows made in the last 15 years to find some prior art of the tooltip. Failing that, we could go to any of the websites that pop up little thumbnails of the target site when you move your mouse over them. But chances are that somebody at the patent office has one of a hundred Firefox extensions that do exactly the same thing.

I hate to sound like BoycottNovell.com, but software patents are simultaneously evil AND dumb.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 3:53 am and is filed under Other computers/OS'es, Proprietry software, Technology Stupidities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Congratulations Apple, you just tried to patent the tooltip!”

D says: November 5th, 2008 at 10:08 am

I had to laugh out loud when I read the title!