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Samsung Vs. Apple Tit-For-Tat Down Under
New submitter GumphMaster writes "In the latest edition of the Apple vs. Samsung patent fight, the ABC is reporting that Samsung has filed in Australian and Japanese courts seeking an injunction to halt sales of the iPhone 4S for alleged 3G patent violations. It remains to be seen whether Samsung has any better luck with the retaliatory strike in Australian and Japanese courts than it did with courts in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, I expect that Samsung will fail partly because of overseas precedent, but mostly because their patents are sane, technical and narrow in scope (unlike the patent-a-rectangle nature of the opposition). If this stupidity ever stops, then millions of dollars, euro, or Won that are being spent on lawyers might actually go into the innovation that patents are meant to promote. Who knows where that might lead?"
Not going to let Samsung do that, too...
At least Apple didn't try to patent wireless data transfer.... Samsung has a patent (of course invalid) that covers pretty much all radio communications.... There is not good or bad, they all are bad, and lawyers win as usual....
As previously stated, it's not a patent on round-rects:
Isn't that, in large part, because Apple's design avoids having anything that particularly distinguishes it as Apple? IE there is no Apple logo on the front. It seems to me that Apple is trying to claim what is essentially a lack of trade dress as trade dress, thereby gaining protection over something essentially generic rather than something specific.
I think it is a worrying technique because the trademark stops being a useful tool for the customer (ie letting them know a certain company stands behind a particular product) and starts being a weapon against other companies implementing fairly basic designs.
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Can Samsung's UX team point out exactly how they designed all of Samsung's hardware and software? Why do their icons look that way? Why have the sheen/gloss instead of a flat look?
I don't know about the icons, but most laptops these days are glossy because that's what people tend to buy. This isn't something that started with tablets.
Why not make the icons circular vignettes instead of rounded squares?
Because a square shape is much more practical. It gives you more space to work with to come up with a descriptive picture. It's kind of like these things called "icons" some of us have had for decades on our computers. I've seen plenty of rounded icons on non-Apple devices long before the iPad.
Why taper the back of your device just so?
Ok, may have been copied. But it's a stupid thing to block a product over.
Have you ever heard the name of their head UI person? You'd think that, given the success of the Samsung tablet, that the person would be giving interviews left and right. Anyone? Anyone?
I can't name the head UI person of really any company ever. Most companies don't have celebrity designers.
Here's an analogy that even a closed-minded geek can understand. You have a Wii, XBox 360, and a PS3. Which one of them looks like the other? They all have an optical drive and a bunch of A/V output ports. Could you, at a glance, mistake one for another?
Those devices aren't trying to pack relatively standardized parts into the lightest and smallest packages they can. They don't have to support a flat display on the front or fit nicely in your hands. I have some ear buds that look a lot like some old ear buds I had from a previous brand. Should those companies sue each other because there's a limited number of practical ways to make a device fit in the ear?
I don't know why I'm even responding to an obvious Apple fanboy but that post being modded insightful is absurd.
>Another example would be cars (automobiles for your Americans). All are basically a rectangular block on top of 4 wheels, with 2 or 4 doors. Yet you would have no problem identifying one zooming past you in a second or two.
Actually - that's pretty much not true anymore. My previous car was a Ford Fiesta, on many an occasion I would think "oh another ford Fiesta" while driving and realize as I got close enough to see the logo that it was in fact an Opel Corsa (I believe in the USA they are sold as Chevrolet) or a KIA picanto or any other 4-door compact.
Their shape is all but entirely identical.
I now drive an Audi A3 and when I'm not close enough to see the logos I cannot distinguish it from any other 2-Dear semi-luxury car, Japanese, Korean, American or German.
In fact - your argument proves the opposite. Cars shapes are determined - above all - by the laws of aerodynamics. Those laws remain the same regardless of who designs which is why in any given generation most cars converge on the same rough shape - the shape that is - with current engineering skill - the most aerodynamic we can do.
For any given class of car - that's the same shape. There is only one most aerodynamic shape for a sedan possible, only one for an SUV, only one for a 4x4 and only one for a compact.
You can easily tell the class - but the maker - from shape and design ? No way - because form has to follow function and the function is constrained by the laws of physics that puts a natural limit on creativity.
As technology improves the shapes change - but within a year or two everybody else has changed in the exact same way.
The same thing applies here - there are notable constraints on the design placed by what it has to do. It must be portable, maximize screen space, comfortable to work with, easy to rest on any surface etc.
In fact the design follows inevitably from the purpose of the device - and all devices converge on it. Star Trek on a purely hypothetical level converged on the exact same design 30 years before the ipad came out.
As for your silly statements about popularity... did it every occur to you that perhaps Korean's don't have the celebrity obsession of Americans ? Samsung certainly doesn't have the kind of fanboism apple has - and thus there is no celebrity. We don't see interviews with their design head because Samsung's users are not "fans" - just people who chose a product that met their needs, they don't idolize the guy who drew the pictures it was made from. Apple has the same celebrity appeal as Angelina Jolie and the same slavish uncritical love from it's fans.
Community theater actors may have no less talent, but they don't get followed around by the paparazzi.
Now whether geek-celebrity as espoused by apple is something we should encourage or not is beside the point -but it is the reason why we never really hear from the designers in other companies. A little bit in Microsoft - but who is the chief UI designer for Oracle ? Who is the chief UI designer at google (whose interfaces I really like for the slick simplicity). Who is the brilliant designer that designed that slick and elegant interface for my Audi's radio system ? It's familiar to anybody whose used a car radio - yet massively advanced over the cheapo that came in my ford. Audi is a company noted for brilliant designs and ergonomics, but nowhere in the press do I read interviews with their designers either.
Celebrity is an American phenomenon, geek-Celebrity is mostly an Apple pheonomenon, that doesn't mean nobody else HAS people who do these jobs, just that those who do them at other companies don't get interviewed by rolling stone magazine.
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