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Sale of Samsung Galaxy Tab Blocked in the EU
bizwriter writes with a news piece in bnet about the continuing battle between Samsung and Apple. From the article: "In a stunning and painful decision for Samsung, Apple got a German court to issue a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab. According to patent analyst and blogger Florian Mueller, that means Samsung cannot ... sell its tablet in the entire European Union, except for the Netherlands."
Its better to block out competitors by trolling patents than outcompete them isnt it. god bless american companies ..... not.
Read radical news here
Stop quoting Florian Mueller as news.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
And ignoring Florian is somehow making the injunction in Europe go away? People, grow up, please.
Apple is in the right here. Certain companies just want to copy Apple's designs, slap Linux on them, and make money, and the only reason geek communities like Slashdot support it is because they run Linux, even though Slashdot has previously trashed other companies like Microsoft for ripping off people's ideas.
Just look at what Android phones looked like before and after the iPhone was released in 2007. At first, they looked like Blackberries, and then all the sudden, they all looked like iPhones.
The community design document can be found here. They're effectively preventing anyone from creating a mobile computer device that is rectangular in shape with round corners. Unbelievable.
Apple is both competing on trademarks and design innovation. People used to say the iPod would bomb, it's done well. People said the iPhone would bomb, it's done well. People used to say the iPad... well, you get the point. Apple is willing to innovate even where it will kill current product lines. Microsoft could never do a good tablet because it's worried about the Windows franchise. It could never do a good phone because it needs to look like desktop Windows. Steve Jobs to his credit is fine selling iPads even if they cannibalize MacBook sales. He made iTunes for Windows even though not having iTunes there was a carrot to buy a Mac - he's good with iTunes on Windows as long as it sold iPods. He killed the iPod Mini for the Nano because he felt Solid State was the way forward. Apple is many things, being pathetic not being one i ascribe to it
Apple is fairly innovative, and pretty much every phone I see now looks like an iPhone with maybe a button or two. Whether you say that industrial design should be able to be protected by law, well that's a different argument. But the design element is one of the things that Apple can use, and it does.
Apple is not a computer company, nor a phone company, nor a media company. It is a design company. It designs products that work. You may think you want a company run by geeks, but then you get Windows Zune, and Squirting files, and PlaysForSure. Of course Apple will fight for it's designs.
In a weird way, in our financial society, Apple not using available trademarks may open them up to shareholder lawsuits - not doing all to protect shareholder value and all that. It's a sucky system. Apple is not manipulating it. It is using one of it's many ways to compete. In the courtroom, and in the market.
Remember what the Galaxy Tab 10.1 looked like in February this year? It was fatter and it only somewhat looked like what Apple was doing.
And then... the iPad 2 came. You can tell that Samsung completely freaked out that it would lose to Apple, because it almost immediately said it "would not be outdone" by the iPad's new design:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/03/24/samsung.says.galaxy.tab.101.thinner.to.beat.ipad/
Yep. Samsung openly admitted that it was going to change the shape of its tablet because of the iPad 2, just two weeks after it had unveiled its own work. And sure enough, in March, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was suddenly a lot thinner and looked remarkably much more like the iPad 2. I was at the CTIA's spring show, where they first showed off the remake: they even made it a source of pride how quickly they'd changed the look and had a glass case showing the old version and the new one.
I would personally keep the Galaxy Tab 10.1 on shelves because it's different enough, but there's no question that the model you see now wouldn't look the way it does if it weren't for Apple.
If your idea of "design innovation" is a rectangle with round corners then... I ... I feel sorry for you. I really am.
I know ACs tend to be trolls, but... ... and you bring up rounded corners.
I bring up the iPod, which went from 'it will never work' to 'we must stop Apple or it will control the world', I bring up the iPhone which went from 'it will never work' to 'we need to make sure other companies get the iPhone or else AT&T has an unfair advantage with the iPhone', I bring up the iPad which went from 'it will never work' to 'hey everybody, lets copy tablets'
Apple is a design company. Of course its products will look cool. If you think Apple's advantage is solely because of industrial design, then you are missing a much bigger picture. People don't buy an iPad because of rounded corners. People buy it because it works, simply.
Of the major tech companies, Apple is best at creating things that seem simple to use. They have a simple external model that they expose to people. iOS is a microkernel, but people would never care. I don't know the filesystem for iOS, and I don't need to know. It just works, it's easy to get music, movies, and apps on it. It takes a lot of work and design to make a complicated system simple and consistent to end users. This is why people buy Apple products.
Microsoft is a pool of geeks. They don't make it easy for end users to use stuff. Take something simple like ejecting a USB device on Windows vs on a Mac. I'm a geek, and on Windows, I still need to think about what drive it is and check the volume. Google is made of geeks, and they're a bit better, because they try to be very clean. But they're still not as good as Apple in making things simple.