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Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

Well, the PADD designers there had little concern for function and a lot more interest in making the tech distinctive. I mean, you want Cardassian tech to look Cardassian. So minimalism wasn't what they were aiming for most of the time.

Even so, a few of the PADDs shown were more practical. In particular, take a look at these two PADDs:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Sarah_Sisko_reconstruct...

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:PADD_stylus_interface.j...

Between the two of them, they give you almost every design element except being black, depending on whether you think those things are buttons or that LCARS is clluttered or whatever.

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On both of those, the screen is physically depressed from the bezel like an etch-a-sketch, not flush like an iPad. They also have other extraneous design elements.

The red one is clearly inset, but I don't agree with you about the silver one. That one appears flush to me.

Maybe you can find another image of it or something and prove me wrong, but I can't seen an inset there.

It looks maybe a millimeter inset if you look around the edges. Nonetheless, the plastic casing around the edges is pretty clearly extraneous.

so we have an Apple supporter argueing that millimeter is enough of a difference to maintain originality, while several comments below another Apple supporter

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3334437

suggests that the home button was copied even though " They changed white square into a white rectangle and that's about it." So change of shape isn't enough to maintain originality.

In Russian we have a saying for such cases - "one's desire to climb up the pine without getting the one's ass poked/scratched by the needles".

I don't know about Russians, but I don't function in a hive mind with others, even if we both like Apple products. So don't ask me to answer for another individual's arguments.

The difference between flush and inset is qualitative, and even conceding that point there are significant design differences.

I can't see any inset at all, though a better picture might be able to resolve that. I'm not sure what you mean by the casing being "extraneous" either. It seems to be quite plain, actually, at least on the one. That red one, though, is pretty ugly. Frankly, the stylus is the most obvious difference.

I guess, ultimately, I don't know what to say about all of this. Minimalism has been a trend for quite a while now, given how many products (including many of Apple's) that display it. Is Apple one of the trendsetters? Do they make beautiful products? Absolutely.

But all this patent silliness about getting each others' products banned has just got to stop. Every penny spent on it keeps them from hiring engineers to make something even better than what we have now. I don't like seeing Apple's products banned for using a Motorola standard any more than I like seeing the Galaxy Tab banned for being too minimalist. If they had any sense, they'd call off the lawyers and settle with each other before they waste any more money.

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