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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."
If we discuss Luxpro's trade secrets, will they sue us just like Apple does?
liqbase
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.
Why I can already hear Jobs smashing extra Newtons already,..
their's isn't super! :(
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
I saw this a week or so ago, and the first thing what wandered through my mind was not 'They are going to get sued' but 'So this is the OEM version of the Shuffle eh?'.
There has been a lot of speculation that Apple never designed the Shuffle but bought it in from outside, guess we will find out if and when Apple sue over it.
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.
This lawsuit-bait would almost be worth considering if it had an AM radio. I wonder why these things include FM radio only. Perhaps the AM radio hardware is much more expensive. Regardless, it is much less useful without it. An FM radio is sort of redundant. I use FM radio for music, and there are already music files on the player. I use AM radio for news, and there aren't news MP3's.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
1. Make it black
2. Make the circular control area square.
3. Make it narrower (even if it means making it longer to cram the electronics in). This is one area where it would actually improve on the real Shuffle, which is just too wide, especially where it plugs in, requiring a USB extension cable or unplugging the other plugs that are crammed in near the USB plug.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
So how much are they? can they undercut apple but a significant amount?
even if they're a blatant ripoff, I'd buy one if they were cheap.
Looks like LuxPro is about to discover the iSue.
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
I am here at CeBit and have been a bit amazed at a couple of look a like iPod mini's and iPod's as well. Apple will easily stop this in the US under "trade dress" litigation.
I also wondered, what are they (the manufacturers that knock off almost exact copies) thinking!?
Real men don't need signitures!!!
They are totally different.
Apple's is a Shuffle, or iShuffle, or iPodensmallened, or something.
Lux Pro's is Super. I mean by adding the word Super it is clear that they are disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see they are serious? Get out of their way, all of you! This is no place for loafers. Join them or die. Can you do any less? For lucky best mp3, use Super Shuffle.
This
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.
This thing most likely uses the same GUTS even as the iPod shuffle, the chip in the shuffle already supports FM radio, Apple (like any sensible company) didn't provide it out of clean UI design.
IAAL and...
You can actually protect style and aesthetics to a certain extent. It depends on the jurisdiction, but in many countries there is intellectual properties in designs, as opposed to patented methods or copyrighted works. In Australia, for instance, the rip-off iPod would clearly breach rights in Apple's shuffle design, assuming they were validly registered etc., not because of the similar functionality but because of the identical aesthetics.
Furthermore, Apple may have an action for 'passing off' in that this company is clearly trying to ride on Apple's market reputation to sell their own product through the name, advertising and styling of the device. This is an illicit subversion of Apple's goodwill and they will be able to take action on this basis in most countries.
Finally, if the allegations about asian tech manufacturers and Apple's partners prove true, there will very likely be an action in contract or equity against any company that has participated in sharing the technology used in the Shuffle for this device.
That is the legal position. 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.
Read Pynchon.
Is it any tastier than iPod Quiche? Will it collapse if you slam your Powerbook closed?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You can't, like, trademark a product's look, feel, and functionality, man.
What? You can? Oh. Yeah, those guys are screwed.
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?
How about a new name for this, Lux? "EyePawed: Shah-phel"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The iPod Shuffle uses a Sigmatel Stmp3550, which doesn't have a built in FM tuner. There's an external tuner chip which only supports FM.
Apple to stop CeBIT presentation of iPod shuffle clone
Tell me again why Apple doesn't put FM in the iPod?
I assume they don't think it would help sell more iPods. When they see demand, if they see demand, they'll spend a year making it cool and release it at the 11th hour.
The company you ought to be talking to is Griffin. They were going to do an FM tuner for the 'pod, but dropped it because Apple changed the way the iPod remote worked.
Why Griffin couldn't have given their tuner its own controls, I don't know.
They probably make them in the factory next door to the clone factory they make the iPod Shuffle in.
r -m p3-player.aspt g/detail/-/B000 08AJSO/002-0805304-2818432?v=glance
When Steve Jobs got on stage in 2004 and poo-poohed flash music players, concentrating on the high end, I was livid. He was talking about flash music players as if the big bulky high-end were the only possible competition. I immediately went to Apple's site and sent in a suggestion that if they thought flash music players were $200 behemoths they ought to have a look at the music player I'd bought for my daughter back in late 2002 or early 2003. It cost me $70 and it had the minimum features imaginable... no screen, no way to select specific songs, you just plugged it in like a flash drive and copied MP3 files over... and it played them in whatever random order they landed in memory.
I had even figured out the way to use iTunes with this player to get the equivalent of what they later called their "Autofill" function using their Party Shuffle. Sure, it only held a couple CDs worth of songs, but you could reload them when you recharged the battery overnight... so who cared?
Apart from the "reshuffle" ability, and the memory size (after all, this was 3 years ago), it was functionally identical to what Apple released a year later as the iPod Shuffle. It was a little bigger than the shuffle, but not much, and even hung from a lanyard like the Shuffle does. Oh, Apple's definitely done their usual wonderful job of [re]design... but all in all the Shuffle is just a few tweaks applied to the Magic Star "Gray Whale" MP3 player:
http://pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk/memory/magic-sta
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/
The killer feature of the Shuffle, for me, is that the 512M Shuffle is cheaper than the 512M "Gray Whale"! This may be the first time in memory that an Apple product was less expensive than the third-party equivalent... but it's got a lot less of Apple in it than most people seem to think.
-- Apple Lawyer
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This player doesn't, it uses an internal li-ion battery like the shuffle does. If it's the same dimensions as the shuffle, there's no room for an AAA battery in the player.
From the LuxPro page:
Power Supply: Li-Ion rechargeable built-in battery (Charging via USB port from computer or power adapter)
Heise News article (in German) and the Google-Translation (replace "conditions" with "booth", and it makes more sense). LuxPro had removed the notPod from their booth on Friday, but put it up again on Saturday.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
This kind of ripoff is actually quite common. I see Rbok and Nke shoes all of the time and they are cheaply made direct copies of the originals. In fact, many Chinese factories that make the original will also do the ripoffs using the same equipment, just different grades of electronics, plastices and other items. It even goes as far as cars. I read a article in Time where knock offs cost not just the computer industry, but almost every industry on the planet. Callaway golf clubs, Yamaha Motorcycles, Nikon cameras, etc etc....
I bet this Super Shuffle does not even work with Apple's DRM'd files.
Gorkman
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.
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Is the Shuffle made in Taiwan as well?
Gorkman
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2005/03/super _shuffle_f.html
....
The Shuffle wasn't the only thing they copied
Apperently, if anyone was wondering what the Apple lawyers were gonna do, it's here
About 5 years ago, right after Apple came out with the first iMac, eMachines came out with a blatant knockoff and Apple successfully sued http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/08/20/ 1345216&tid=3. This website http://ordinateurs.free.fr/APPLE/copies_pc_iMac.ht m is in French but has pictures.
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
Right after Apple released the iMac back in 1998, everyone started jumping on the "all-in-one" PC thing again. A new company at the time, eMachines, tried to market a near copy of it called the eOne PC. They were slapped with injunctions in the US and Tokyo shortly after that and later forced to stop production.
The review for the eOne is still up on epinions, along with a stock photo: eOne Photo
Daewoo tried something similar. They both got the smack down. See here.
Do you remember when Cobalt Networks was about to sue Apple over the Cube? Because of Cobalt's Qube design? Only to find out a few months later Apple owned NeXT at that point, which created the original Cube. At that point Cobalt changed their tune and decided suing might not be so smart. Some Cobalt info.
The reason for suing is brand dilution. When you make a look-a-like, you're copying a design that's identified with the product. It's the same reason stores brand soda tries to have similar color schemes to Coke, or Pepsi. You identify the product by the colors, shapes and patterns of the packaging or product itself.
I get what the Taiwanese company is doing. They would have been better off sticking to knock off Nintendo games though. I'd guarantee Apple already knows about the knock off at this point, and we'll probably be seeing lawsuits within a week or two.
I dunno where you live, but every Target I've been in has em.
just ask for it at the electronics counter. I picked up a 1GB there about two weeks ago. I asked why they weren't on display, and the reason was related to shrinkage. So, maybe you might wanna saunter/mosey/drive there...
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
"Let's copy a famous product that is expensively marketed worldwide and make some easy money from chumps"
That was classic intercourse!
> IANAL but I don't think there is much apple can do. Unless
> they stole some patented technology, they should be fine with
> that desing. You cannot copyright style or asthetics.
I don't that's true. Patents aren't the only thing protected. Designs, trademarks, logos, and appearances are protected, too.
You can't market a product that can be mistakened for the product of another. The reason is that psychologically, people associated items that look similar as having the same quality as the original product, and consumers will assume that the two companies have something in common. In other words, the rip-off product is trying to bank on the consumer perception of the original product.
In my Consumer Behavior class we studied the case of a regional soft drink called "Corr's Natural Soda". The can looked vaguely like "Coors", but the script was different (to someone paying attention) and the former can had a big cross-section of a lemon on it.
Coor's Brewing Company sued the regional soda manufacturer claiming that "Corr's" was trying to facilitate their market position and gain benefits through the name and the look of the can. The latter defended by saying that it was named after the owner "Robert Corr".
The courts sided with Coor's Brewing Company. They told the regional soda company to change the product to make it less similar to Coors. They were told to not put the name in script and if they wanted to name their soda after the person, they had to use the guy's full name and not just the last name with an apostrophe s so as to not deceive. The soda was changed to "Robert Corr Natural Soda," the name was put in a regular (albeit ugly) Serif font, and the can looked different enough from Coors that no one would expect there to be a connection.
The Coors versus Corr's case gives some insight, so I think Apple has a case. Many people will look at this "Super Shuffle" and think either Apple made it (since it looks almost exactly like the iPod shuffle), or that this company builds it for Apple (and thus the customer is getting the same product for less money because they don't pay Apple's markup). Then they'll go home and find out it doesn't support purchases from the iTunes Music Store, and you'll have some unhappy customers.
Clearly this ripoff product is gaining value by banking on Apple's look and feel. The fact that they put "Shuffle" in the name (a non-obvious name that only has value now that Apple has an iPod shuffle) and their ad rips Apple's ads off makes it worse.
I'm sure Apple Legal will have a response Monday morning. Like with the case of Future Power who ripped off the iMacs years ago, Apple needs to quelch the iPod ripoffs early and often. If someone wants to make a competing product, great, but market the product on its own merits, not trying to deceive customers.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
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.
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.
This isn't 'IP' like software patents, or DMCA copyright schemes, it's 'IP' as in 'identity'.
No one would cry 'foul' at this product, if it were functionally exactly like it is now, but didn't look just like an iPod shuffle, and wasn't packaged with Apple type adverts (dancing black silhouettes with white 'pods over a green background).
I agree that fighting competition with 'IP" instead of innovation is evil, but this thing isn't 'competition', it's impersonation.
It might be pointed out that one of the chief negatives against the entire iPod line is that it possess lower audio quality than competing manufacturers.
This is the first time reading someone being concerned over the iPods' audio quality. I've read reports on the contrary, where audiophiles could not find problems with it. I wonder what the Consumer Reports report had to say, which the web page author refers to.
"The iPod ear-bud headphones are among the best we've tested."
How very insightful. Of course it costs less. Luxpro didn't have to sink loads of money into design and advertising, as Apple did, instead they just used Apple's designs and even advertisements free of charge.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
Try new Anonymous Coward Lite! Opinionated, and low in facts!
Apple has actually spanked MS a number of times in the last ten years, lawsuit-wise. The problem is that as soon as it begins to look like Apple is winning, MS immediately settles. One of the settlement conditions is always that neither of the principals will discuss the settlement, so it takes a little digging to get the information, but there are always some leaks.
For example, there was the company that MS paid a rather surprising amount of money to get a copy of Apple's QuickTime source code from. At the time, MS's video player was less than half the speed of Apple's, on Windows. So they just appropriated huge chunks of code wholesale from Apple's software. And, when Apple took them to court, they settled out of court. According to the best scuttlebutt available, the large MS investment in Apple in the late 90s, and the agreement to continue developing MS Office for the Mac, were part of the settlement.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
And second, you need a little bit of education on the difference between morals and ethics. I won't even undertake to do that here, but here's a pretty decent web site: http://www.scribblers-ink.com/professional_ethics
Apple does unethical things upon occasion, as does any other large corporation you can name. Do they do it more often? Are they a thousand times more heavily scrutinized than most other companies their size, and therefore their 'little lapses' are more often found? Is more expected of them, because of their early rhetoric, and therefore are all lapses greatly magnified, sometimes out of proportion?
I'd have to answer those three questions: 'who knows?', 'yes', and 'ohhh yes.'
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
- get up
- lift the needle from the turntable
- lift the record
- put it in the inner sleeve
- put the inner sleeve in the outer sleeve
- put the album back in the collection
- choose another album (fuck! You don't even have to choose nowadays, it just shuffles for you, good thing because if you're that stoned everything is good),
- pull it out of the collection,
- take out the inner sleeve,
- take out the record,
- place it on the turntable,
- start the turntable,
- put the needle on it (motor control!)...
- ...and finally get back to the...shit...they've already finished the spliff you just rolled.
The iPod is the second greatest thing for potheads across the universe and yet you're still complaining about it! (The greatest thing was of course the Lego Mindstroms controlled rolling machine.)Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.