HP’s Latest TouchSmart PCs Rips Off Apple Touchscreen iMac Patent

John Brownlee (10:32 am PDT, Feb 07 2011)

HP’s Latest TouchSmart PCs Rips Off Apple Touchscreen iMac Patent
HP’s Latest TouchSmart PCs Rips Off Apple Touchscreen iMac Patent

When he first showed off OS X Lion last year, Steve Jobs explained Apple’s reluctance to add multitouch displays to their line of iMacs by saying that multitouch needed to be horizontal to be pleasant to use. Use it in a vertical position and you’re always leaning forward to poke and prod the screen, leading to what Steve Jobs calls “gorilla arm.” That’s why Apple has only brought multitouch to the Mac through peripherals like the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad. Even so, some patents have shown up over the past year that suggest that Apple’s been experimenting with multitouch-capable iMacs with pivoting displays that pull down to a more appropriate horizontal orientation when a user wants to interact with on-screen elements directly.

If you want to see what such an iMac might look like in the flesh, though, check out HO’s latest TouchSmart PC. Look familiar? Yup, that’s right: it features a pull-down design that drops the multitouch display into a horizontal position to reduce arm fatigue… just like in Apple’s patent!

Windows PCs both, HP’s latest TouchSmart series are 23-inch affairs boasting full 1080p resolution, LED backlight LCDs. The cheapest is the 610, which starts at just $900 and comes with options of Intel or AMD CPUs, up to 16GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, Blu-Ray optical drive and Beats Audio Speaker. That’ll be available on February 9th. If you can wait until May, though, the TouchSmart 9300 will boast an Intel Sandy Bridge processor and an 160GB SSD. Given OS X Lion’s improved support for both multitouch and SSDs, it’s probably the safer bet if you’re looking to beat Apple to the punch by Hackintoshing together one of their patents your own self.

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8 comments »

  • Paul

    WTH! It’s a rips off to apple’s patent

  • Charli

    So John, how is it that you know that this is a rip off and not that HP licensed to use the patented design and everything is perfectly legit.

    You likely don’t. Making this yet another example of the new tabloid mindset on this site.

  • Rob

    Hmmmm HP licensing an Apple patent hey Charles….

  • CubsFanRon

    Did the Apple patent issue or is it merely an application for a patent?

    Is it possible that HP also has a patent in this area that Apple might be infringing? HP has had touchscreen computers (either tower or all-in-one’s) for a couple of years – long enough that I’ve seen them at Sam’s Club…

  • crashnoww

    this is why rumors and publicizing patents it’s hurting apple.
    just take a look at the previews hp sh#t touchcrap and u’ll see what kind of design they can pull off by themselves. look at the dvd-rom and card reader arrangement. what’s next? an aluminum chassis with glass for a high end model?!

  • Matt

    Obviously sensationalised pro-apple rants are the purpose of this site, but while making your statements and claims could you perhaps show your alternative designs for a hinged monitor stand?

    Its a tablet (monitor), with a stand that hinges. Without a lot of pointless over-engineering how else is such a stand to look?

    It even hinges in the opposite direction.
    Also, as the bottom of the unit is on the table surface at this angle (shown in your image) the stand mounting on the HP unit clearly slides vertically (not a feature of the apple patent).
    More clearly shown here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20030815-17.html

    No reasonable person could propose that apple should own the broad concept of a monitor/tablet stand that hinges more than a little bit (as almost all normal monitors do).
    The other comments here pretty strongly indicate you’re just preaching to the choir however, so who cares how inaccurate you are. May want to remove the ‘insightful analysis’ part of your ‘cult of mac’ spiel however.

  • http://ObamaPacman.com ObamaPacman

    @Charli

    Trolling fail. PC makers prefer to make knockoffs based on Apple’s IP, not through licensing.

  • Matt

    @ObamaPacman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black

    I’m with you on disagreeing with charli that HP would licence anything in this regard, but obviously I do so because there is nothing that could be reasonably expected to require licensing (as detailed in my last post).

    You can patent specific implementations of designs, but you can’t claim to own a broad concept like a hinged monitor stand any more than a company could claim to own the concept of a door, or the wheel.

    To call trolling on Charli in the same breath as giving the finest example of an ignorant zealot trolling I have seen in a long while gave me a good laugh. Thank you.

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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