Apple Adds Samsung Galaxy SIII To Its Ban List

After its big win against Samsung, Apple named 8 Samsung products it wanted an injunction to ban from sale in the U.S. Apple wasn't content with that, though; USA Today reports on the state of the expanded list: "The new list of 21 products includes Samsung's flagship smartphone Galaxy S III as well as the Galaxy Note, another popular Android phone. If the court finds those devices are infringing Apple's patents and irreparably harming the U.S. company, it could temporarily halt sales in the U.S. market even before the trial begins."

Comments

Do it yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

Add all Apple devices to you own ban list today !

Re:Do it yourself

[Nerdfest]

I keep saying this; it does have an effect. It's not just those of us that keep up to date about all of the bad corporate behaviour of Apple, Sony, etc, it's all the other people that come to us for opinions. It matters. The world is a much smaller place than it used to be as well.

Re:Do it yourself

[betterunixthanunix]

Having all Slashdot tell everyone they know to avoid Apple products might have more of an impact than you expect. People often come to me (and I suspect most other Slashdot readers) asking for advice about computers. If I say, "Stay away from Apple," at least a large fraction of those people will do so.

The real question is, how many Slashdot readers actually will stay away from Apple? A pretty large number of IT, CS, and other technically-minded folks seem to like Apple's products (and they are generally apathetic when it comes to Apple's tactics, licenses, or how Apple is pushing for the destruction of PCs), and quite a few Slashdot readers are big supporters of Apple. If the world's technical communities were united on this issue, there would be no problem -- Apple would be facing mass resistance (see e.g. SOPA/PIPA). Unfortunately, we are not united; a lot of people in these communities like Apple's products and are going to deride people who boycott Apple.

Re:Do it yourself

[NatasRevol]

Social groups share things?

Seems odd that I'd have to say that, but this is slashdot.

Re:Do it yourself

[Man On Pink Corner]

That's fine, as log as you add Samsung into the list of bad corporate behavior.

Any organization with two or more people will be guilty of "bad corporate behavior" in someone's opinion. It's necessary to decide what you consider acceptable versus what you consider unacceptable.

I don't recall Samsung doing anything that I, personally, consider unacceptable. I can't say the same for Apple. Your own point is an empty one unless you elaborate.

Re:Do it yourself

[girlintraining]

Add all Apple devices to you own ban list today !

That solves nothing. Companies will continue to abuse intellectual property law and ideology to limit consumer choice. Every company has to -- that's how the game is played. Singling out Apple for being the most successful player doesn't change the fact that its the game that's fucking you, the consumer.

You can ban, cry, shout, scream, boycott -- but it's not the players that are the problem, it's the game. If you really want to make a difference, stop buying products designed or produced in the United States, and only buy from companies based in countries that do not buy into intellectual property (like China). It seems strange to advocate purchasing from a communist country with a long list of human rights issues and no labor rights to speak of -- but I'm of the opinion that supporting slave labor is superior to supporting intellectual property.

It's simple, really: We all learn by copying each other. This is neurological and hardwired. When you see someone performing an activity, you may be unaware of this but the same muscles they are using to do it will tense very slightly. These clusters of 'mirror' neurons, along with their connection to the limbic system, form the basis for learning. Intellectual property is a barrier interposed between ourselves and the environment which limits and manipulates that natural process so that industrialists can profit off of it.

It has to be stopped, or it'll stall out human progress for centuries to come -- our technological progress which up until now could be plotted exponentially upwards is rapidly flattening and we're going to have another Dark Ages on our hands if we don't stop this, and our children will live in some dystopic world where they are materially better off, but intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically enslaved. Our bodies will be comfortable, but our souls won't.

Re:Do it yourself

[shutdown -p now]

I do avoid Apple products. However, if someone comes to me and asks for advice, I cannot in good conscience tell them to say away from Apple without also explaining why I feel that way; and, let's face it, these kinds of ethical issues are far from universally agreed upon. It's something that everyone must decide for themselves. Sure, you can provide them with context, but making the choice for them would be immoral.

Re:Do it yourself

[andydread]

I too have recently started to advise against purchasing Apple products since their litigious behaviour and will continue to do so until they end this anti-competitive behaviour in the marketplace. I simply explain that Apple is Anti-Free market and anti-consumer-choice, Purchasing Apple IOS products is like purchasing a 5 bedroom house with only access to 3 rooms. The bulder of course has access to all 5 rooms. They get it then.

Re:Do it yourself

[jedidiah]

Yes. Blatant copying is OK with me.

Otherwise nothing will ever get done because EVERYTHING builds on something else. If you think otherwise then you are just a pathological narcisist.

Although I don't accept your premise.

BOTH devices are blatant copies of any number of other devices that came before them. This is how progress occurs.

Ownership is not supposed to be assigned to "what" but to HOW. That HOW needs to be non-trivial. It needs to be something that can't be replicated by some student.

Patents need to be real inventions, not college homework assignments.

Re:Do it yourself

[Tough Love]

I've been responsible for converting more than a dozen people from Apple to Android now, and Apple's bad acting is all the encouragement I need to redouble my efforts. Not that it takes much convincing. Basically, demonstrate the Google connectivity, show the hardware features (standard usb is a big deal for just about everybody) compare the free and open Android app scene to Apple and it's a done deal. Oh and the price of course, especially the Nexus 7.The bottom line is, a Google logo is just a lot more sought after these days than a half eaten apple.

Another way to seal the deal, bring along a couple of Nexus tablets and demo a video chat using Google Talk, which is based on free-and-open Jabber/XMPP. A pair of magic videochat devices for $200 each, how can you beat that?

Re:Do it yourself

[Tough Love]

Any organization with two or more people will be guilty of "bad corporate behavior" in someone's opinion.

Most try to steer clear of the "actively destructive" perception that Apple is building for itself.

Re:Do it yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

How about three different convictions or case settling of price fixing? Samsung has paid over a billion dollars in settlements or fines for price fixing in the DRAM, LCD display, and mobile phone markets.

But they've got a nice shiny halo over their heads around here for reasons passing understanding.

Re:Do it yourself

[lsatenstein]

Wait, so you bought an consumer electronics device from them well over a decade ago, it had a feature on it that didn't work very well for your purposes, and you want to throw them in the same category as crApple? I thought that I had a grudge about Apple through their recent behaviour, ever increasingly closed O/S, and hardware that is becoming more and more difficult (read impossible) to upgrade - but your grudge is slightly alarming... and you got your money back from Best Buy!
As a former Apple employee and dedicated user of their products (I may have bordered on fanboy at one point), I've become so sick of Apple's despicable practices and direction that I've given my iPad to my wife and replaced it with a Google Nexus, replaced my iPhone (goodbye unlimited data!) with a Samsung S3, and my shiny late-2011 MBP has been relegated to a secondary laptop with a nice new Dell running Linux Mint 10... However, were Apple to change their business practices/policies I would again consider using their products as they are of exceptional quality.

I have Samsung laptops, washing machine and dryers, vacuums, etc. All top top quality products. I had other samsung products (cell phones and TVs). All top quality. The one time some small electronics failed, I got an RMA after I quoted the date of purchase and the serial number on the device. They sent me a new one.

If it was for a TV or washer, they have certified repair organizations. Can't beat that.

Now for the major factor. Their products performs better than the average. Like all manufacturers, from car to home appliances, etc. they buy a few of the competing products, figure out how they can do it better and sell a better product. It also happens to them, as you can bet a thousand dollars that Apple did that same thing with Samsung and their other competitors.

Samsung Galaxy performs better than does Apples overly priced product. Price gouging, is price gouging, and using the courts in every possible way to harm competition (they learned from MS), is not what I consider acceptable.

Apple is temporarily on top. I think it will be a me too company within 5 years. And all the competitors with their patents will combine to make sure Apple dies a torturous death.

Dear Apple:

[Anonymous Coward]

Get fucked. Seriously. You got what you wanted thanks to an incompetent judge and a jury with conflicts of interest. You can't go about trying to use that as a cudgel to ban things that weren't even in the original case.

It's funny how Jobs once said Apple has always been "shameless in stealing great ideas." Yet when you think someone else has done the same thing to you (regardless of evidence or prior art), you clowns get your panties in a bunch and start stamping your feet, crying to the courts, and whining about "going thermonuclear" on Android. Well, guess what, idiots. You can't shamelessly copy ideas then cry foul when you believe you're the one being copied. It doesn't work that way.

To close, Jobs was a great businessman. But he was also a COLOSSAL douchebag with no sense of perspective or grip on reality. I thought when he died that rational heads would prevail in Cupertino. Apparently I was wrong. This fucker's cult of personality is so strong that even now people worship him like he was some sort of deity.

So yes, Apple. You can go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw, because you're pissing away whatever good-will you may have had left. One day, the drooling iZealots will wake up and get off of the trend-whore treadmill.

--Pretentious signature about what device I'm posting from. In this case, my Galaxy S3

Re:Dear Apple:

[Anonymous Coward]

> They have a legal obligation to maximize profits. They were just handed a victory, however ill-earned it may be, and now they have to press that advantage. If they don't, they can be sued by the shareholders, and the entire board of directors could be thrown out. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Where the fuck does this bullshit misconception come from? The only duty they have is not to not to act in bad faith detrimentally to beneficiaries.

You should just stop and think for one fucking moment - if you follow this line of reasoning, companies could and should be sued by shareholders for any expenses not related to increasing profits. Spent money on charities? You're breaking your fiduciary duties, you failure of a capitalist! Spent a million on recreational facilities for employees and guests? You're sooo getting sued! Your employess aren't glued to their cubicles from 8:00 to 17:00? You failed to supervise and will be held responsible! Don't tell me this three examples are not obstructions in the way to the high goal of maximizing profits.

Or just stop for another fucking minute and think why isn't every CEO sued by shareholders right now - after all, most big companies sit on huge chests of patents and those bastard CEOs don't utilize their profit maximization opportunities by suing everyone in alphabet order. They don't even need to sue, they just have to have lawyers go over the list and send lots and lots of scary letters to make people settle. For some reason, contrary to your view, noble people who employ this tactic of blanket patent bombardment to fulfill their fiduciary duty are frowned upon by everyone and called "patent trolls".

So yeah, seeing all the CEOs not suing everyone in sight despite having patent portfolio and not getting sued by shareholders for that really undermines your "but they must!" rhetoric.

This is a choice made by players. Game can be played in many ways. It is perfectly alright to hate the players with cheapshot methods of playing.

Re:Dear Apple:

[subreality]

They can, they should, and they must. They have a legal obligation to maximize profits. ... If they don't, they can be sued by the shareholders, and the entire board of directors could be thrown out.

Bullshit. They have an obligation to represent the interests of the shareholders. I am a shareholder in several companies, and I am interested in ethical behavior over profits.

That aside, I don't even think it's a good strategy to maximize profits: it may work short term, but turning the patent cold war into a shooting war is going to hurt everyone in the arena long term, Apple included.

Re:Apple will not stop until they have 100% monopo

[gl4ss]

They seek nothing less than a complete monopoly on the smart phone market.

"Good artists copy, great artists steal" - Steve Jobs, 1994

well... they want the parts cheaper, it's no good if they have to compete for cpu production capacity with samsung. but in the end apple by this way is going to end up the same way as many calculator assembly companies did.. when chip manufacturers like ti&others started making their own calculators - apple has been trying to avoid that a bit, but just a bit(don't quote bullshit how they have their own chip, pls). if they could really force everyone else with their "oh boy we've patented it(but don't ask exactly what!)" to stop producing phones.

the next iphone better do blowjobs and come with a 20g bag of coke for people to buy it - if they're now injunction happy because they don't have anything new than a new screen size then it doesn't really bode that well for apple(not that I care, they're closed garden snobby shithole platform with super short self life for their platforms).

I just wish nokia would have taken them to injunction city instead of ceding into the unholy 3 way circle jerk party-truce in exchange of some cash(from apple) with ms and apple(that's the plan - ms+apple duopoly in desktops, tablets and phones, because android started crashing their party like nothing before on computer-like consumer devices).

but complete monopoly is no good for either of them, they learnt that big way in the '90s.. fake competition whilst blocking everyone else from the market is much better.

Re:A more fitting punishment

[mickwd]

I'd rather Samsung be allowed to sell its products in the US.

No AND.

Re:Best advertising *ever*

[jareth-0205]

The OS nothing but an app launcher. Only people who have nothing better to do than endlessly tweak stupid shit focuses on the OS over the app.

In that measure, Android wins. iOS is much more restrictive than Android in what it will let apps do...

It sucks monkey balls to live in the US!

[blind biker]

You got Apple dictating what is and what isn't acceptable to be sold in the US. Now you'll have to smuggle the goods from the rest of the world.

Fucking pathetic!

Irreparably harming Apple?

[amRadioHed]

It seems it would be a hard argument to make that anything was doing irreparable harm to Apple when they are currently the largest publicly traded company in the world.

Re:Irreparably harming Apple?

[Tough Love]

You know who's irreparably harming Apple? Apple.

Banning them will make them more fashionable

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Flaunting something not available for sale in the US definitely has a lot of "bling" value. Just like banning songs from radio broadcast in the UK would increase the sales of records. Hollywood stars, rappers and such will flash them around.

So it might be illegal in the US to sell them. Will it also be illegal to posses one? Will the folks smuggling drugs in a tunnel under the kids on my front lawn, switch to smuggling banned phones?

If I was a South Korean diplomat in the US, I would smugly hand Samsung phones out as diplomatic gifts.

Not about hate, not a choir

[fm6]

Why is Apple the bad guy?

Because they're basically out to force Android phones off the market.

And being critical of Apple doesn't make you an Apple hater, any more than pointing out all the problems with Android (version fragmentation, lousy development tools) makes you an Android hater. Some of us simply want to have a serious alternative to iOS devices that only run what Apple says they can run,

Re:Not about hate, not a choir

[fm6]

You can use a Blackberry, Windows Phone, even Samsung's own Bada OS.

Oh great, I can switch to an outdated platform that nobody's writing applications for, or I can try to forget my previous bad experiences and hope that MS has finally figured out how to do a mobile OS. Thanks a lot.

I'm not going to cheer for a for-profit company over another, no matter how less "evil" they look.

As I think I've already made clear, this isn't about hating Apple or loving Google. This is about Apple using bad IP laws to obtain market dominance. This is a bad thing.

Which is not to say that other companies (including Google) don't also do bad things. It's just that this bad thing is the one a lot of us really care about right now.

Re:Snore. I really don't get the Apple Hater Choir

[Nerdfest]

The LG Prada, the Palm Treo, and The BlackBerry are all lined up outside and would like a word with you about copying others.

Universities and Apple Products

[betterunixthanunix]

The prevalence of Apple products at universities is no accident; Apple is pushing hard, and universities are basically bending over and promoting Apple products. Windows is sticking around because a few programs are training students to use Windows software (especially MS Office), but a typical college classroom looks like this:

http://potpiedeluxe.com/files/2011/02/apple-think-different.jpg

Suggesting that universities promote a free/libre OS is met with all sorts of derision and skepticism, usually of the form, "Yeah but nobody has any familiarity with that, and it is hard to use, and this is a university so students do not have the time to learn something unfamiliar!"

Re:Universities and Apple Products

[erroneus]

Note the absense of Apple in business and government. They aren't interested in meeting anyone's standards but their own.

Re:Universities and Apple Products

[betterunixthanunix]

What difference does that make? Free operating systems are not Unix-like because Unix is some great OS design (it is good, but there are better things out there), they are Unix-like because that was the most expedient choice in 1984. If the FSF had been founded today, GNU would be Windows-like and we would be saying things like, "Well at least its Windows!"

Not only that, but using Mac OS X is nothing like GNU/Linux or even the BSD on which Mac OS X is based. When last I checked, X11 was not even installed by default these days, and the terminal is not immediately available from the base install (yes, I am sure it is not terribly hard to find; it is also not hard to find in Windows, but when I install something like RHEL, the out-of-the-box DE has a terminal icon right there, ready for me to explore or to use). It is absurd to think that any but a small minority of Mac OS X users will discover a "better Unix," because only a small minority of Mac OS X users will ever see anything even remotely Unix-like when they use their computer.

Universities are no exception to what I said. It is not as though they are encouraging students to use Mac OS X, then teaching them how to write shell scripts as part of some "basic computer usage" class. When a student is having a problem, they just bring their computer to the help desk and have someone else fix it for them. If a student cannot find the program they are looking for, they just go to the computer center to find out what shrink-wrapped off-the-shelf software they should buy, assuming their teacher did not tell them already. We are not raising a generation of Unix hackers when we encourage our college students to use Macs.

Yes, your CS department is different; there, the students are learning to program, so they will find their way to a terminal one way or another, and there are hackers in every CS department who will show people how to install a free OS. Even within CS departments, you see an awful lot of Apple customers these days...

Re:contect ?

[bjwest]

If you can't read a sentence with a word or two misspelled, and figure out what it means, then you, along with all the other grammar nazis here on /., need to go back to fucking grade school.

FUCKING READ THE SENTENCE, FIGURE IT OUT AND SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Of course, there's punctuation errors in the above, so you won't be able to discern any meaning out of this either.

Re:Apple will not stop until they have 100% monopo

[Clsid]

The thing is, that Apple by the very definition of their business model, will never be able to reach a 100% monopoly. As a GNOME developer was pointing out, all the success that Apple is having only gave them about 7.5% market share on the desktop, they have been surpassed already by Android on smartphones and their only remaining bastion is the iPad which I think with Windows 8 devices, will truly have a run for its money.

Stop worrying so much, since at best, Apple can be like the Prada or Gucci of computers. Expensive, well designed items that fill a certain niche, but very unlikely to become mainstream but for the shortest periods of time.

Re:So Apple is Evil now?!?

[erroneus]

Apple has been evil on Slashdot for a long time.

For some, it was what they did to Franklin. For others, it was how the screwed over Apple records where they allowed Apple to use their name with the agreement that they never go into the music business. (They are now big in the music business with iTunes.) There are lots of reasons Apple is evil. The Apple vs Samsung thing is only the most recent reason.

Re:Thanks Apple

[andrewa]

Absolute bullshit. Can you imagine the state of the automobile industry today if there had been a patent on the 'look and feel' of the original automobile, and Ford had aggressively sued other automobile manufacturers? Apple are probably the richest company in the world and they are using their excessive funds to cripple any competition with frivolous patent trolling. It will become less important to Apple to innovate if there is no competition, is that what you really want?

Re:Apple will not stop until they have 100% monopo

[dmesg0]

Regardless of why, its still IP that they must defend. Don't like it, change the laws, until then shut your pie hole.

True, you have to defend trademarks, but you must defend patents too.

That's total BS, no law says you have to defend your patents, especially the bogus ones for obvious ideas. Well, unless you are a patent troll, in that case I agree, you absolutely have to do that.

IBM is an example of company that never sues for patents unless being sued by others.
And I believe it's you, sir, who definitely must stuff all your shiny itoys into all of your iholes, and stop insulting others' intelligence with childish replies.

Apple's continuing douche-baggery

[Yahma]

Back in April 2011, Apple's trade dress infringement claims against Samsung went like this:

• a rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded;
• the front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders;
• as to the iPhone and iPod touch products, substantial black borders above and below the screen having roughly equal width and narrower black borders on either side of the screen having roughly equal width;
• as to the iPad product, substantial black borders on all sides being roughly equal in width;
• a metallic surround framing the perimeter of the top surface;
• a display of a grid of colorful square icons with uniformly rounded corners; and
• a bottom row of square icons (the "Springboard") set off from the other icons and that do not change as the other pages of the user interface are viewed.

• That is basically a list of things you aren't allowed to do. Now, individually, those traits aren't worthy of a lawsuit. It's the combination of those things that will send Apple Legal over to kick down your door. The Galaxy SIII was designed from the start to not infringe on any of the above; yet Apple, in their continuing douche-baggery, has now brought up more ridiculous patents to use against the SIII.

  Fuck You Apple!

Re:Best advertising *ever*

[jrumney]

Microsoft owns essential patents on exFAT, which is mandated by the SD card consortium for SDXC cards. Microsoft has also been quietly reducing the size of FAT filesystems that can be supported on USB thumb drives with Windows 8, in order to force exFAT on the industry. Samsung really don't have much of a choice here - unless they go the Apple route of unexpandable devices that interface to PCs through proprietary software.

Re:Best advertising *ever*

[pla]

The problem being, let me reiterate yet again, is that the Iphone does what people need and want it to do.

I want to see a map of drone strikes in Pakistan. I want to tether my netbook to my cellular data plan. I want to run an NES emulator. I want to run a torrent client. I want to get music and apps but hate iTunes. I want to play games with violent and/or pornographic content.

The iGarden most certainly does not do what I need and want it to do, simple as that.