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iPod Shuffle Lookalike Hits CeBIT
An anonymous reader writes "It shouldn't be long before Apple's legal team goes after this one. LuxPro out of Taiwan introduced the Super Shuffle at CeBit, a look-a-like portable that is identical to the iPod Shuffle right down to the sihouette ads, but with the addition of an FM tuner and voice recording."
I don't think there are any trademarks that have been hit and other than that they just kind of look the same and have similar functionality.
As far as I can see this really isn't all that different from walking into the grocery store and finding the generic products that do about the same thing next to the name brand ones.
Are businesses REALLY interested in innovation or just being copycats? I foresee a lawsuit coming out of this blatant duplication of the shuffle.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
"Let's create a better product at a lower price, but without hordes of millions of fanboys blindly buying it at once..." comes to my mind immediately. ;)
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Only good products get copied over and over.
where's all that Karma?
look like? it is a 99.9% clone. it would be like Chevy cloning a Ford Mustang but using a different layout on the dashboard.
Apple always has legal protection on the physical design of their products as well as the rest of it. they went after those people that came close to ripping off the old CRT iMac look and stopped them. this is a blatant rip-off of Apple's design. even if you hate Apple, you have to see that.
I doubt it has tight integration with iTunes, which is a major selling point of the various iPods.
The only justification for lack of LCD is that you use iTunes to operate your iPod Shuffle. If you don't use iTunes smart playlists and iTunes autofill option, iPod Shuffle is actually quite worthless. It has no LCD because some elements of its UI are incorporated into iTunes. "Fake Shuffle" has no LCD either, but you have no software to make it out for you.
Yes, it's a bit on the cheeky side, but get over it.
- Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player
- Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player that did suffle
- Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player without a display
- Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player that plugged into a USB port
- Apple wasn't the first company to make something shaped like a USB key/stick/dongle
Apple is primarily a marketing machine.
Zilch.
Exactly. (Unfortunately this was posted in the "Apple" section for some reason, so you got modded down.)
But after adding an FM-tuner and recording capabilities, all that was missing to make the iPod Shuffle useful (and at least on par with any cheap no-name Korean player) was a display, and they forgot to add it! The fanboys won't buy this anyway, so LuxPro might as well have made a good product for people who want an MP3 player more than they want a a cute piece of plastic with a particular trademark.
What on earth were they thinking?
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
A decent AM radio antenna (ferrite rod) would be way too large to fit in the case.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
-- Apple Lawyer
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
# 1. Make it black
# 2. Make the circular control area square.
# 3. Make it narrower
I guess what you aren't realizing is that it isn't a mere coincidence that this thing looks just like the iPod Shuffle. If they make the changes you suggested, they've failed in their goal of getting sales by confusing consumers into buying their product.
Many non-tech users (a big slice of the Shuffle's market) may not notice the difference in the store, especially since these guys ripped of the advertising.
Because Clear Channel owns all of the radio stations and Clear Channel playlists suck ergo all radio sucks.
I'm only half joking though. Where I live, there is no radio worth listening to (musically) unless your into corporate music (ClearChannel). Personally, a radio on my iPod would go unused.
My OPINION, however, is that Apple deserve to get screwed over because this new device looks as good and has better functionality than the Shuffle. Plus it is refreshing to see that you don't have to have the Godly powers of Steve Jobs in your fingertips to produce the same hardware at the same (or lower, presumably) price.
I guess I would want to withhold judgment about its functionality. The fact that it looks exactly like the iPod Shuffle doesn't mean that it will work in precisely the same way. For instance, three rapid clicks of the play/pause button on the Shuffle returns you to the beginning of your playlist: will the rip-off work the same way? Also, what sort of battery life will it have? Sound quality? Will the FM receiver really work? We don't know any of these things. In terms of real functionality, this may bear as much resemblance to the iPod Shuffle as those ten-buck "Rolexes" you can buy in Times Square have to the real thing.
As for lawsuits: when I first saw the LuxPro design and ads, I figured that they were going to sell the thing only in countries where they are safe from lawsuits. Surely they won't try to sell them in the U.S., U.K., Australia, or N.Z.?
By producing a nearly identical product to Apple's and giving it a nearly identical name, Luxpro is clearly trying to make consumers believe they are buying an Apple product. I mean, it's so blatant they're even ripping off the advertising.
Apple can, and will, go after them for trademark issues because of the product's name, and trade dress issues because of the appearance of the device.
If you're not familiar with it, trade dress is when two products "kind of look the same" enough (in the eyes of a court of law) that consumers could be fooled into thinking cheap knockoff B is actually name-brand product A. Trade dress infringement claims are how Apple killed off those cheesy all-in-one PCs with a blue and white/translucent color scheme that quickly appeared after the original iMac was released.
~Philly
The name Shuffle is clearly protected under Trademark law, since Apple has it trademarked.
LuxPro is screwed.
Boom Shanka
An "OEM" iPod Shuffle, that's one thing. But ripping off the design aesthetics from the iPod advertising campaign is just stupid. Put the two together and they're in serious legal trouble. Anyone who's red-green colorblind won't be able to tell the two campaigns apart. And I think that's the same font - hard to tell in the photo.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then these guys are begging to have Steve Jobs' love child.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Except it has more features, doesn't require a proprietary program to use it, and costs less.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"Let's copy a famous product that is expensively marketed worldwide and make some easy money from chumps"
That was classic intercourse!
Ever hear of the Apple Airport aka the Lucent RG1000?
It's been a couple of years now since Apple used that card's guts as the basis of their AirPort card.
Also last time I checked Apple wasn't the manufacturer of any of their display products.
Apple doesn't make the LCDs themselves. They do manufacture the displays themselves.
So yes their are OEM versions of Apples products that wind up in the open market.
You have that completely backwards. Apple has, in the past, bought OEM versions of other products and used them as the basis for their products. But Apple does not offer OEM versions of its own products.
If you look at any ipod actually there all made in Taiwan - I highly doubt its an Apple manufacturing concern in Formosa however. It wouldn't be too hard for some company to take the blueprints from their assembly line and start making their own ipods.
It has to do with perceived value.
To keep the numbers simple and because I'm too lazy to look them up right now, let's say there are 10 million iPod owners. (I think that's pretty close.) Let's say that Apple has telephone numbers for half of them, because they bought their iPods from an Apple retail store on the online Apple store.
Apple picks a thousand of them and calls them up and asks them how they're enjoying their iPods. They follow up with a series of questions, one of which is, "Do you wish your iPod had a radio in it?" They note the answers. People who take the time to respond get a $10 gift certificate or something.
They go back and collate the answers, and discover that out of their statistically valid sample of 1,000 users, only 20 said that they wanted a radio in an iPod. That's only 2%, compared to the 85% who said they'd like their iPod to have a longer battery life or hold more songs or be cheaper. So when Apple makes their list of priorities, battery life, size and cost are up top and adding a radio is way, WAY down on the list.
But let's ignore that for a second. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that Apple has the opportunity to add a radio for zero cost and zero time. Let's say somebody waves a magic "radio" wand and there it is.
What do we know? We know that only 2% of iPod customers, on average, are interested in getting a radio, but that 85% of their customers wish the product were cheaper. What does that mean?
That means that a whole bunch of people are going to look at the new radio-equipped, same-priced iPod and think, "I don't want a stupid radio, but Apple's making me buy one! How much cheaper could this thing be if it didn't have the stupid radio in it?"
Even though, in our contrived example, the answer is "zero dollars cheaper," the damage has been done. The customers perceive that they're paying for something they don't want.
A device like an iPod, especially a cheap iPod, needs to be as stripped down as possible to give the customer the impression that he's getting pure value for his money. All it does is play prerecorded music, so every dollar you spend on it is going toward prerecorded music playback. You're not paying for a radio you'll never use.
And of course, because the market for a radio-equipped iPod is so small, the idea of manufacturing one version with a radio and one without is just absurd. They'd never sell enough of the radio-equipped iPods to cover the cost of designing, building, shipping, marketing and selling another model of iPod.
That's why Apple doesn't include a radio.
...
If you signed an NDA with them, and then discuss stuff covered by the NDA, I'm gonna go with 'yes.'
Just a thought.
When you don't listen to your customers, they'll find someone who will. Serves them right.
That's an important point. Companies like Dell only have to pass along the R&D costs of manufacturers making faster motherboards, hard drives, etc., while Apple does all those things PLUS has to cover the R&D costs of product design. Not to mention they also are the fastest computer company to shed legacy technology, and there's an associated cost with that.
It's the same reason that Paxil is hundreds of dollars, while a generic alternative might be $30. The drug company paid a team of employees for years of research before they sold one pill. Apple has to cover the same costs.