Did an Apple Engineer Invent FB Messages In 2003? 128
theodp writes "Q. How many Facebook engineers does it take in 2010 to duplicate a lone Apple engineer's 2003 effort? A. 15! On Nov. 15th, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook Messages, which uses whatever method of communication is appropriate at the time — e.g., email, IM, SMS. A day later, ex-Apple software engineer Jens Alfke was granted a patent for his 2003 invention of a Method and apparatus for processing electronic messages, which — you guessed it — employs the most appropriate messaging method — e.g., email, IM, SMS — for the job. Citing Apple's lack of passion for social software, Alfke left Apple in 2008. After a layover at Google, Alfke landed at startup Rockmelt, whose still-in-beta 'social web browser' also sports a pretty nifty communications platform."
Rockmelt? (Score:3, Interesting)
The web browser which solves this problem? And I quote Daring Fireball since I agree:
"They solved the problem of Chrome having a nice, simple, minimalist interface."
I have to wonder how much RM *really* do for the user, compared to Chrome with various Facebook extensions.
I don't get this (Score:5, Interesting)
I know I don't speak for the world but I totally don't get the idea of "we'll get the message to them, somehow." I want to control the "somehow." If it's a short message that warrants interrupting whatever they're doing, I'll text. If I'm already sitting in front of a computer and a longer conversation is required, I'll IM. If it's more detailed and/or not time sensitive, I'll email, and furthermore, depending on what it is, I'll send it to their home address or their work address. Sometimes I want a conversation, sometimes I want a monologue. Not all mediums are equally good at or suitable for all types of communication.
Not every message requires an immediate response. Some messages very much don't need an immediate response. If I'm emailing someone and want them to look at something complex online, the last thing I want to do is have them get the message right this second while they're in the grocery store. I do, however, want to send it now because that's what I'm doing. If I'm on IM with someone and they're going to step away from their computer and start driving a car I very much do not want the conversation transparently shifting to SMS.
And finally, one-size-fits-all messaging becomes even less desirable as you move across time zones. It's bad enough that I work with people in another time zone and they always want to schedule "mid-morning" meetings that are actually in the middle of my lunch. I don't want my work or my friends following me everywhere I go. My life is cut up into chunks: work time, family time, friend time, me time. I like being able to enforce a little solitude and cut off any arbitrary group at any arbitrary time just based on where I am and what devices I'm near.
Re:1 Person's Software Diamond is Another's Dirt C (Score:2, Interesting)
You would criticize NeXT for adopting a widely supported open operating system foundation?
I didn't "criticize" NeXT for adopting any of these technologies. I pointed out that most of them didn't come from NeXT to begin with. If IBM had wanted those technologies, it could have gotten them elsewhere, but they actually had better technologies.
Visual Age Smalltalk never went anywhere and never provided anything like NeXTstep/Openstep/Cocoa
VisualAge Smalltalk did something much better: it gave people a good environment to develop custom apps that actually ran on Windows. It always remained a niche player, but so did NeXT. IBM then switched to Java and has been spectacularly successful with it in the corporate market.
NeXT were brilliant at selecting the right technologies to integrate into a system. Mach, BSD Unix, Display Postscript, Objective-C, the precursor to Cocoa frameworks, ... It was and remains a dream come true software development environment.
NeXT was a failing company when Apple bought them; IBM betting on them would have been madness and IBM would have gotten screwed.
And NeXT didn't select "the right technologies" at all. DisplayPostscript was a total failure, not just at NeXT, but also at IBM and Sun (all of which tried it); Apple got rid of it. Objective-C never caught on as a mainstream language until Apple shoved it down their developers' throats. Mach's microkernel approach was an architectural disaster and Apple just rewrote it and turned it into a monolithic kernel.
Are you out of your mind?
No, I just know what's going on, unlike you apparently.
I wonder if CAKE represents prior art (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was designing the CAKE protocol [cakem.net] in 2003 I already had the idea of doing this. It was 'Key Addressed Crypto Encapsulation' for a reason. The idea was to choose whichever transport method was handy for the message.
A friend's interest has got me working on this again. Hopefully I can get a working system together soon so other people can play with it.