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But Samsung didn't copy. The UK courts have ruled so, and they've made it clear that they consider it libel to say otherwise. In fact, I question the article's

by Camillo 14y ago

But Samsung didn't copy. The UK courts have ruled so, and they've made it clear that they consider it libel to say otherwise. In fact, I question the article's premise. Samsung did invent the iPad, as well as the iPhone - except that theirs are called Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab. And they were able to do so while being a hardware manufacturer whose OS is provided by a third party, which calls the entire "blame Microsoft" theory into question. The fact that Samsung's offerings arrived after Apple's means nothing: it is clear that they were developed independently, and the fact that they shipped later must have been due to the additional development time required to make their products less expensive, and thus technically superior. The timing was entirely accidental, a mere side effect of the fact that Apple had access to a mass of brainwashed fanbois that will buy anything with an Apple logo, which provided them with both the funding and the opportunity to target the deep-pocketed early-adopter market. But in a world where Apple didn't exist, Samsung would have shipped the Galaxy family of products around the same time as they eventually did - and they would have looked just as they do, too. Any resemblance in design between Sammy's products and Apple's is due to convergent evolution: it is simply less efficient, if not thoroughly impossible, to make a smartphone or a tablet that doesn't feature that shape, that button, that grid of icons in those specific colors - or even one that doesn't ship in that type of box. Apple's claims to have "invented" any of that are tantamount to claiming ownership of a law of nature. In the end, articles such as this are a waste of time. There is no secret to Apple's perceived success, no lesson to learn. Their headstart is doomed to evaporate against Android's irresistible growth, and they will be recorded as a mere curiosity (to avoid calling it a "fad" as it really deserves) in the books of history. Hacker News has limited formatting capabilities, but, while reading the above, please imagine that there is a banner saying "This is what Android fanatics actually believe" at the bottom of your screen.

ghshephard 14y ago
Brilliant. You actually had me spitting mad until I got to the last paragraph. The real question I would like to see answered, either here, or in the Fast Company - is what will the _next_ major advance be, that everyone is (presumably) hard at work on right now? I'm very, very impressed with Google Voice on my iPhone. Much more so than Siri (in terms of speed. Integration with the phone is obviously better with Siri). I would like to suggest that high-resolution stylus input, equal to or better than what you can do with a pen-to-paper in terms of resolution and responsiveness, will launch the next round of advances.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  "I would like to suggest that high-resolution stylus input, equal to or better than what you can do with a pen-to-paper in terms of resolution and responsiveness, will launch the next round of advances." What would be the point? Using touch is faster and more direct for operating a UI. As for text input, I can type a lot faster on the iPad's onscreen keyboard than I can write with pen and paper. Granted, I rarely write anymore, mostly signatures. But I also don't print documents and I don't keep a paper archive. I think those are all going the way of the dodo.
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    I'm just reflecting on the fact that when I get together with a group of people, and we start sketching out an idea, none of us would ever consider using our iPads (and all of us have them) to do it - iPads are crappy for that sort of quick, on the fly diagraming. We always end up with napkins, notebooks, and pens. If we're in the office, we always go to a whiteboard. Nobody ever uses computers/tablets to sketch out a concept - too slow, too low resolution. A good high resolution, highly responsive tablet/drawing interface would be a revolution.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      I use a Wacom drawing slate for that. It works great, no need to waste dead trees. However, sketching is a very specific use case, I suspect that many people never do it.
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      Oddly I've found that since I've got my iPad I've switched to using Paper over, well, paper. Note, my basic diagrams and workflows and other concept sketches would make most people cringe in horror, so high fidelity is not a big sell for me.
      - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
        Try OmniGraffle for iPad, it's awesome. I use it extensively, and its interface allows me to make diagrams faster than I could on a desktop computer. At $50, it's not the cheapest iOS app, but it's worth every penny. http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle-ipad/ http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle-ipad/
mdonahoe 14y ago
Thanks for the ending. I honestly wasn't sure. The colors bit was the biggest hint.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
>This is what Android fanatics actually believe No, this is what Apple fans think Android fans believe. There is a difference between legal copying and illegal copying. Samsung did the former and the copy is legal for good reason. Apple is and continues to be handsomely rewarded for innovating with $110B+ cash in the bank and counting. There is no reason that laws should be changed to allow it to have a monopoly for 17 years. If Apple wants to make even more money at a even faster rate, they should continue to innovate new things rather than rest on their laurels and sue competitors over silly things like slide to unlock which had precedents.
- Surio 14y ago
  > There is a difference between legal copying and illegal copying +1 Good rebuttal. This is being forgotten in all the melee. > sue competitors over silly things like slide to unlock which had precedents Not to go far. The syntax of all major computer languages borrow elements from one another freely....
Surio 14y ago
Despite the last para of yours, there is lot of truth in what you've said about convergence and coming together of various trends, that are shaping the overall trend in computing..... and I upvoted you because of that, and NOT the last para and definitely NOT for all the (faux) sarcasm in the rest of the article either. (Just so I'm clear) Note: I am neither android nor apple fanboy.
tmzt 14y ago
Let me start by saying Samsung didn't copy Apple. That out of the way, there is simple no way that "Apple fanbois" could make a market for Apple, people have selected the iPhone in the numbers they have because they like the iPhone. The same was true for the iPod, you simply can't explain the popularity of that device by citing only the early adopters that first embraced the new device. Early adopters lead the curve and the rest follow, that the reason companies like Apple work so hard to court them. effect of the fact that Apple had access to a mass of brainwashed fanbois that will buy anything with an Apple logo, which provided them with both the funding and the opportunity to target the deep-pocketed early-adopter market. But in a world where Apple didn't exist, Samsung would have shipped the Galaxy family of products around the same time as they eventually did - and they would have looked just as they do, too. Any resemblance in design between Sammy's products and Apple's is due to convergent evolution: it is simply less efficient, if not thoroughly impossible, to make a smartphone or a tablet that doesn't feature that shape, that button, that grid of icons in those specific colors - or even one that doesn't ship in that type of box. But this is simply not true, Samsung and LG were working on a variety of different devices, advanced devices with mobile TV for Asia and basic feature phones in a variety of designs, but primarily flipphones and Nokia-like candybars. The same is true of Motorola which was trying to retain the marketshare they were quickly losing with the Razr and Razr-like devices. I'm sure Samsung had something like the iPhone in development, running one of a variety of underpowered home grown OSs or maybe Symbian. I'm sure that they had something like the devices they had been building with Windows Mobile. I'm sure they were slowly getting to a device resembling in a number of superficial ways the iPhone. But they did not have an iPhone in development, a device with an OS designed to run fully native applications, a device embracing the "real web." We can see this in the devices that were out at the time of the iPhone being announced, the web browsers were these limited "mobile web" browsers designed for stuff like "compact HTML" but mostly running WAP sites. I will agree with you on the shape, and an Apple design patent claiming ownership of any rectanglular device with a screen is truely absurd. On the other hand, the Apple earpiece was a unique design element that was very quickly copied by almost every phone out there after the iPhone was shown to the world. I rember browsing Engadget and BGR in the months after and seeing just the tops of the product shots, almost all of them featured the Apple earpiece design, even in feature phones and flip phones. The four icons below the screen is not as much of an innovation as Apple claims, and certainly not a unique look and feel element of the iPhone. The four main applications were represented by physical buttons on the Palm devices, located directly below the screen. (Apple made some subsitutions for the modern mobile device and to tie the iPhone back to the iPod.) The application grid was present on the Palm as well. (And arguably can trace it's history to Apple's own Newton, but that's irrelevent to it's status as prior art and commonly accepted design.) But you claim that these are the only possible choices as far as design and color? I can't see that. I would suggest that the iPhone followed the trend towards more colorful and thematic interfaces started by third-party software for the Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices and possibly Symbian. As far as timing, the iPhone caught other manufactures unawares, pushed the CPU speed forward (indirectly, the original iPhone was using an outdated CPU but one on Samsung's roadmap meaning that Apple could move to the next version of that chip without a full redesign of the circuit layout), and pushed the carriers towards Android. While Motorola had already come out claming they were going to focus on Linux their actions did not match that statement. HTC was one of Microsoft's biggest OEMs before they took a chance with Android on the G1. LG had a prototype "Prada" device, the closest to the iPhone that had been publically shown, but it may have been rushed to coincide with the iPhone.

by Camillo 14y ago

ghshephard 14y ago

Brilliant. You actually had me spitting mad until I got to the last paragraph. The real question I would like to see answered, either here, or in the Fast Company - is what will the _next_ major advance be, that everyone is (presumably) hard at work on right now? I'm very, very impressed with Google Voice on my iPhone. Much more so than Siri (in terms of speed. Integration with the phone is obviously better with Siri). I would like to suggest that high-resolution stylus input, equal to or better than what you can do with a pen-to-paper in terms of resolution and responsiveness, will launch the next round of advances.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
"I would like to suggest that high-resolution stylus input, equal to or better than what you can do with a pen-to-paper in terms of resolution and responsiveness, will launch the next round of advances." What would be the point? Using touch is faster and more direct for operating a UI. As for text input, I can type a lot faster on the iPad's onscreen keyboard than I can write with pen and paper. Granted, I rarely write anymore, mostly signatures. But I also don't print documents and I don't keep a paper archive. I think those are all going the way of the dodo.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  I'm just reflecting on the fact that when I get together with a group of people, and we start sketching out an idea, none of us would ever consider using our iPads (and all of us have them) to do it - iPads are crappy for that sort of quick, on the fly diagraming. We always end up with napkins, notebooks, and pens. If we're in the office, we always go to a whiteboard. Nobody ever uses computers/tablets to sketch out a concept - too slow, too low resolution. A good high resolution, highly responsive tablet/drawing interface would be a revolution.
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    I use a Wacom drawing slate for that. It works great, no need to waste dead trees. However, sketching is a very specific use case, I suspect that many people never do it.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Oddly I've found that since I've got my iPad I've switched to using Paper over, well, paper. Note, my basic diagrams and workflows and other concept sketches would make most people cringe in horror, so high fidelity is not a big sell for me.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      Try OmniGraffle for iPad, it's awesome. I use it extensively, and its interface allows me to make diagrams faster than I could on a desktop computer. At $50, it's not the cheapest iOS app, but it's worth every penny. http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle-ipad/ http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle-ipad/

mdonahoe 14y ago

Thanks for the ending. I honestly wasn't sure. The colors bit was the biggest hint.

recoiledsnake 14y ago

>This is what Android fanatics actually believe No, this is what Apple fans think Android fans believe. There is a difference between legal copying and illegal copying. Samsung did the former and the copy is legal for good reason. Apple is and continues to be handsomely rewarded for innovating with $110B+ cash in the bank and counting. There is no reason that laws should be changed to allow it to have a monopoly for 17 years. If Apple wants to make even more money at a even faster rate, they should continue to innovate new things rather than rest on their laurels and sue competitors over silly things like slide to unlock which had precedents.

Surio 14y ago
> There is a difference between legal copying and illegal copying +1 Good rebuttal. This is being forgotten in all the melee. > sue competitors over silly things like slide to unlock which had precedents Not to go far. The syntax of all major computer languages borrow elements from one another freely....

Surio 14y ago

Despite the last para of yours, there is lot of truth in what you've said about convergence and coming together of various trends, that are shaping the overall trend in computing..... and I upvoted you because of that, and NOT the last para and definitely NOT for all the (faux) sarcasm in the rest of the article either. (Just so I'm clear) Note: I am neither android nor apple fanboy.

tmzt 14y ago

Let me start by saying Samsung didn't copy Apple. That out of the way, there is simple no way that "Apple fanbois" could make a market for Apple, people have selected the iPhone in the numbers they have because they like the iPhone. The same was true for the iPod, you simply can't explain the popularity of that device by citing only the early adopters that first embraced the new device. Early adopters lead the curve and the rest follow, that the reason companies like Apple work so hard to court them. effect of the fact that Apple had access to a mass of brainwashed fanbois that will buy anything with an Apple logo, which provided them with both the funding and the opportunity to target the deep-pocketed early-adopter market. But in a world where Apple didn't exist, Samsung would have shipped the Galaxy family of products around the same time as they eventually did - and they would have looked just as they do, too. Any resemblance in design between Sammy's products and Apple's is due to convergent evolution: it is simply less efficient, if not thoroughly impossible, to make a smartphone or a tablet that doesn't feature that shape, that button, that grid of icons in those specific colors - or even one that doesn't ship in that type of box. But this is simply not true, Samsung and LG were working on a variety of different devices, advanced devices with mobile TV for Asia and basic feature phones in a variety of designs, but primarily flipphones and Nokia-like candybars. The same is true of Motorola which was trying to retain the marketshare they were quickly losing with the Razr and Razr-like devices. I'm sure Samsung had something like the iPhone in development, running one of a variety of underpowered home grown OSs or maybe Symbian. I'm sure that they had something like the devices they had been building with Windows Mobile. I'm sure they were slowly getting to a device resembling in a number of superficial ways the iPhone. But they did not have an iPhone in development, a device with an OS designed to run fully native applications, a device embracing the "real web." We can see this in the devices that were out at the time of the iPhone being announced, the web browsers were these limited "mobile web" browsers designed for stuff like "compact HTML" but mostly running WAP sites. I will agree with you on the shape, and an Apple design patent claiming ownership of any rectanglular device with a screen is truely absurd. On the other hand, the Apple earpiece was a unique design element that was very quickly copied by almost every phone out there after the iPhone was shown to the world. I rember browsing Engadget and BGR in the months after and seeing just the tops of the product shots, almost all of them featured the Apple earpiece design, even in feature phones and flip phones. The four icons below the screen is not as much of an innovation as Apple claims, and certainly not a unique look and feel element of the iPhone. The four main applications were represented by physical buttons on the Palm devices, located directly below the screen. (Apple made some subsitutions for the modern mobile device and to tie the iPhone back to the iPod.) The application grid was present on the Palm as well. (And arguably can trace it's history to Apple's own Newton, but that's irrelevent to it's status as prior art and commonly accepted design.) But you claim that these are the only possible choices as far as design and color? I can't see that. I would suggest that the iPhone followed the trend towards more colorful and thematic interfaces started by third-party software for the Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices and possibly Symbian. As far as timing, the iPhone caught other manufactures unawares, pushed the CPU speed forward (indirectly, the original iPhone was using an outdated CPU but one on Samsung's roadmap meaning that Apple could move to the next version of that chip without a full redesign of the circuit layout), and pushed the carriers towards Android. While Motorola had already come out claming they were going to focus on Linux their actions did not match that statement. HTC was one of Microsoft's biggest OEMs before they took a chance with Android on the G1. LG had a prototype "Prada" device, the closest to the iPhone that had been publically shown, but it may have been rushed to coincide with the iPhone.