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Samsung Opens New Apple Store In Australia
An anonymous reader writes "Samsung opened its first retail 'Experience' store in Sydney, Australia today and its design and ethos, even in the most generous light, bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the Apple Store. Now, to be fair, Samsung’s corporate color is blue and there are only so many ways you can design a retail experience. That said, it seems difficult to look at Samsung’s store and not immediately be reminded of Apple’s understated chain of brick-and-mortar retail stores which, at the time it debuted, was considered pioneering. And it’s awfully hard to imagine that the similarities between the two won’t further bolster Apple’s allegations that Samsung is a 'copyist.'" This comes on the heels of both companies claiming the other is "anticompetitive" during Tuesday’s summations in the Apple-Samsung trial.
To be found at the Sydney Morning Herald website: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/store-wars-samsung-apple-gadgets-at-10-paces-20120823-24njn.html
The link in TFS is lacking any detail. Go to the above.
These are starting to get a bit far fetched, it doesn't exactly look dissimilar to the telstra shops for example...or many other retailers for that matter.
Already Checked the store out.
If you run up and down george st (where it is located), you'll be amazing at how many of the tech stores look very similar in layout (esp all the mobile phone stores).
hell even some of the food stores (mainly cupcake!) are using similar layouts now as well.
Troll bait title if I have ever seen one :-)
Its a company retail outlet, it looks no different to the Sony store down the road.
G
Out of spite I'd be happy to move into an Apple store to order a Samsung and to claim Apple's store is copying Samsung's. Just to get the equivalent of a bar fight started but then in a techno-ip setting.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
"who copied what again? and don't say it's an electronic store with genius people!"
Flat surfaces with rounded corners. Those tables are infringing.
Not a big fan of Samsung or Apple but apple store reminds you of expensive "boutiques" that sell jewelley or other fashionable stuff.
Exactly. And this is part of the reason why I'll never buy from boutique brands such as Apple, because the tend to charge boutique prices too.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Tesco stores look remarkably similar to Wall-Mart.
an scruffy balding asian dude with glasses in a black turtleneck and jeans
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Yes, but Apple have those devices with the amazing high resolution screens, those screens made by some company in Korea - name starts with S I think :)
Oh, they say that about everything...
And every convention stand has prior art.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
How can Samsung open Apple Store!
Wait 'till business hours, follow instruction on door handle.
It just dawned on my how much Apple's store looks like every single mobile phone store in Australia, with the exception of the "3" stores and their former neon coloured changing lighting which made your eyes bleed, but even they are now Vodafone stores so there goes that resemblance.
The only thing that makes this look at all like an Apple store is that an article about it brings out trolls and fanbois who post on slashdot.
I'd have to say that the Microsoft stores are far more similar to Apple stores than this one is. It looks to me like a fairly generic "gee whiz future" kind of styling.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Samsung's tables have rounded corners.
The broad, rectangular wall displays.
Little known fact - not only did Apple invent rounded rectangles, they invented the regular kind too
The airy, spartan layout and open floor plan
And open plan architecture
dedicated customer support desk
And customer service
A group demonstration area.
...demonstrations
Clean lines.
...cleanliness
Blue T-shirts for all store employees.
...and the colour blue.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I'm obviously not as smart as you, because I can't think of any. I suppose they could hang the products from the ceiling and make the floor a massive trampoline.
Care to enlighten us by naming, say, ten alternatives to having stuff on tables & shelves?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Some far older stores look like this. Hell, a make-up department in Bijenkorf Amsterdam (big rounded white curves, lots of light, big displays) (dutch department store) looked like this long before Apple became cool again.
There really are only so many designs and layouts you can think off. Even only a few colors. You could for instance color your store yellow but everyone would go insane. Yellow is NOT a good color for interiors. And entire range of the spectrum OUT of the question.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This thing is going far beyond any reasonableness.
Samsung is not adding an apple logo on their product. This is a fact.
"SAMSUNG" is clearly different from "APPLE". This is a fact.
There are not many choices to "design" a touch tablet/smartphone:
- they have to have a rectangular shape (triangular? Pentagonal? Irregular?);
- sharp corners are not viable, so they have to be more or less rounded;
- thickness cannot be increased just to look different;
- icons are a de facto standard in GUIs.
Also these are facts.
99.9% of users can read and can tell an Apple product apart of a Samsung one. This is a fact.
So, finally, what's Apple protecting? The shape? The corners? The proportions? The icon shape and colors? The concept design of a store?
Or are they concerned about their customers not being intelligent enough to distinguish two different brands?
Ah! All this is frivolous and needs a good quantity of crack to go on!
If I was Apple, I would rather sue the pletora of Chinese companies manufacturing and selling touch smartphones which are clearly designed and packaged to mimic Apple products.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Honestly, I've seen many retail stores lately having fun with getting not a new phone. They all look like that. Beside, t-mobile is pink (magenta as they call it) and ohters are green or orange. Now when Samsung is blue then that fits that logic. Apple stores also look like any other store. They have this "We are sooo fancy" design. If they start fighting over shop design then they have become totally crazy. Oh wait ...
Actually they have that, but they are not called Geniuses they are called Smart Tutors. And no, I'm not joking.
Sony stores opened long before Apple Stores. First Sony Style store opened in the early 1980s even. There were many Sony retail stores worldwide before the first Apple store in 2001.
Apple directly took the idea of opening it's own one-brand direct retail store from Sony.
Now get off lawn etc etc
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Wake me up if Apple actually try to claim that this new store infringes their IP rights.
Even then, it's not a case of "did they copy" but rather "did they infringe any valid, enforceable, copyrights, patents or trademarks" because it is completely bloody obvious that anybody designing a new consumer IT retail store would take a few leads from what the most successful international chain of consumer IT retail stores was doing.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Care to enlighten us by naming, say, ten alternatives to having stuff on tables & shelves?
Walmart - you aren't looking at the products, you're looking at the people.
Target - Red. It's so red.
Best Buy - glass cases with no one around to help you.
An old Sears - dingy florescent lights, old linoleum, socks.
Baskin Robbins Ice Cream - Ice Cream!
A car parts store - the smell of long chain monomers and old oil.
Dunkin Donuts - Cops and Donuts.
A Sony Store - dark, brooding, empty. Think a museum of small, scary things.
AT&T Store - Bright Orange! Thousands of different gizmos on shelves, racks, the floor and stapled to the door. Employees cowering in the corner, trying to run away from angry, hyperventilating customers. (OK, I made that up, the orange isn't all that bright.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Samsung is one of the few companies willing to tackle Apple on in terms of style. While I agree that Samsung blatantly ripped off Apple with their first Galaxy phone, they have pretty much branched away from Apple's designs and started setting trends for the "rest" of the Android market.
So, get over it. Apple is a trendsetter and people will follow those trends in their product and design. Its absolutely retarded for Apple to produce a hit product and then expect the rest of the world to not match it's design trends. Design trends have been a staple of the retail marketplace for hundreds of years. Its the reason why all cars look the same in a given generation, its the reason why all homes look the same in a given generation. Its the reason why movies look the same in a given generation, its the reason why music sounds the same in a given generation. You make something that everyone else likes, other people will match and expand on that design.
Everybody is ripping off everyone else. Apple should be flattered and even have their ego inflated to epic proportions given the fact that everybody wants to copy their designs and bring their own flavor to it. If Apple wasn't a paranoid little prick, worried about losing their market share to the sheer weight of potential of their competition, they would enjoy the fact they are defining a generation of mobile devices. They are at the top of the food chain but are too busy trying to piss on everyone else to enjoy it.
Apple needs to get over it and I hope the Apple vs Samsung trial rules in Samsung's favor just to smack down the smug, little biatch that Apple has become, worried about stupid people that might confuse one set of rounded rectangles for another while at the same time rising to the most profitable company in history. I mean how insecure do you have to be to have 600 BILLION in market capital and still feel inclined to crap out petty irrelevant lawsuits.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.