You make good points, and it is worth noting that, unlike Samsung, microsoft has a license from Apple to use Apple's technology. (they have a cross licensing a

You make good points, and it is worth noting that, unlike Samsung, microsoft has a license from Apple to use Apple's technology. (they have a cross licensing agreement) That agreement prohibits copying. As a result, Microsoft made a touch screen based UI, but made an innovative one. Whether Microsofts work is good or not, it is clear that they tried something very new (unlike Android which is a replication of the iPhone UI to a large extent) and only by doing something new can we move the ball forward. I am sometimes surprised to see, on a site ostensibly for people who want to found startups, and thus do new things, that people are so defensive of products that are simple copies of others when Google does it, but pretty hostile when someone copies another startups HTML code or when the Samwer borthers clones YC companies.