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Google Distances Android From Samsung Patent Verdict
Nerval's Lobster writes "On August 24, a California court ruled in favor of Apple in its patent-infringement case against Samsung, hitting the latter with a $1.05 billion fine. Tech pundits spent the weekend chattering about the possible repercussions of the decision, which Samsung will surely appeal. One of the biggest issues under discussion: how Apple's victory will affect Google Android, the operating system that powers the majority of Samsung's mobile devices, and itself a player in the patent-infringement actions shaking the tech world. For its part, Google made every effort to create some distance between Android and the smoking ruins of Samsung's case. 'The court of appeals will review both infringement and the validity of the patent claims' the company wrote in a widely circulated statement. 'Most of these don't relate to the core Android operating system, and several are being re-examined by the US Patent Office.' Google didn't end there. 'The mobile industry is moving fast and all players—including newcomers—are building upon ideas that have been around for decades,' the statement continued. 'We work with our partners to give consumers innovative and affordable products, and we don't want anything to limit that."
My Galaxy S1 phone looks and functions nothing like an iPhone. It's completely different size, shape, and operating system. I've tried comparing the two, and I can't see any obvious similarities.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
No. Apple claims that the Galaxy Nexus violated the patent on Unified Search. They don't claim any design patent infringement by Samsung with the Gnex.
They've invested more in R&D than anyone else in the industry
ORLY
Windows 95 and NT blew OS X out of the water
Just to be clear (and given the rest of the post, I'm sure you already know), it wasn't OSX, it was 'Classic MacOS' for lack of a better term. The original MacOS that was probably still stuck on version 7 at that point. As you pointed out OSX was the re-purposed OS from NeXT and only had a resemblance to classic macos after much work to the Finder, and shoehorning old APIs into it.
I'll just throw in there- people forget how important Gil Amelio was to Apple. He recognized that classic macos was a dead end product, and that the rewrite was a disaster. His response was the best thing that ever happened to apple: He bought NeXT, and got Steve Jobs (who took over and fired Gil shortly after), and what became OSX. If Gil hadn't given up on classic macos, Apple wouldn't be here today.