Visual Voicemail before iPhone

apple always distorts and/or exaggerates its claims, and waits for the competition to take legal action.

example: The World's Fastest PC ad campaign for the G5.
Apple's 'world's fastest PC' ad banned
Tech Digest: Apple's 'world's fastest PC' ad banned

They are also not above taking other people's ideas and claiming them as their own. Apple has a long history of doing this. Just looking through the preview pages for Leopard, it's obvious that 'Spaces' is taken from Gnome. Dashboard is a shameless plundering of Konfabulator.

.

I think you need to research the history of Konfabulator a little more.

Click to expand...

i'm familiar with the history, thanks dad.

HowEver said:

But where did Apple claim it was the first to offer it, exactly?

Click to expand...

"An industry first, Visual Voicemail allows you to go directly to any of your messages without listening to the prior messages. So you can quickly select the messages that are most important to you."

Apple - iPhone - Revolutionary Phone

.

... ... ...

Son, I've got something to tell you about "mom."

Click to expand...

**plugs ears and runs away from creepy moderator**

HowEver said:

Thanks. Perhaps they're just talking about the way messages are selected?

Click to expand...

That's how I read it. So it may very well be an industry first.

I guess its also an "industry first" to have a device from which you cannot do any cutting and pasting. :-D

That's what MacBooks are for.

History...

Well, Apple did show it off in January of that year, and I believe that is also when they made that claim, so it looks like there is no conflict with the V-VM issue.

As for Konfabulator, it was itself a shameless ripoff of Apple's Desk Accessories in System 7 (!). So I don't really think Apple could be accused of stealing an idea which originated with them anyway.

Desk Accessory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apple isn't always the innovator (although, unfortunately and due to the sad state of the tech industry at large, they usually are) but what they really excel at is bringing new ideas/technology to the mass market. It could be argued that is probably even more important than the innovation itself.