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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."
Only good products get copied over and over.
where's all that Karma?
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.
Well, I don't know about the US, but here in the UK designs can be legally protected, so this could well be infringing under that law. Also, by calling it the "Super Shuffle" they're almost certainly going to fall foul of trademark law under a "confusingly similar" clause (Apple *has* tmed the name "Shuffle", right?)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Oddly enough, on the Mac, it probably will do (at least, with iTunes itself, not the Store).
iTunes Mac has just worked with every single MP3 player I've ever plugged into my Mac. Creative Zen thingies all the way down to little no-name USB players. iTunes grants Mac-using owners of these devices almost every bit of functionality that they'd get with an iPod.
However, iTunes on the Windows side works only with the iPod.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
A decent AM radio antenna (ferrite rod) would be way too large to fit in the case.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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
No, it means that someone has taken the design that Apple put effort into developing and duplicated it at no cost to them. This is how they were able to shove in an FM radio and record feature without increasing the price. And this is why Apple's design is protected by law, because that's not a fair business practice and it should not be done.
Just think of it as a GPL violation. We all get up in arms about that, right?
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.