Samsung reveals its pre-iPhone concepts: 10 touchscreen devices
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> One of these phones (the bottom-right one) became the Samsung F700 - a product Apple once included as an infringing product, but later withdrew once it learned Samsung created it and brought it to market before the iPhone
The more this thing goes on, the more it feels like Apple is filing all the possible lawsuits they can more in order to slow down their competitors than because they have valid claims.
I miss the days when they did not need to do this because their products were simply better than the competition.
So the days when Apple thought they didn't need to do this were the days of the Apple II.
Apple added all that and Windows 1, after the Lisa was launched, opted to also have them. So, yes. Both Apple and Microsoft borrowed a lot from Xerox, but Microsoft really copied a lot from what Apple did.
Apple's Jef Raskin did come up with drag-and-drop though so that's pretty much the one original thing they did.
The Star didn't have overlapping windows either I believe (Atkinson believed it did, so he implemented it). I think the clipboard was invented for Lisa as well.
Was that necessary?
HTC has had their own design language for quite some time. If you can't immediately tell the difference between an HTC phone (or tablet) and an iPhone (or iPad) when they're put next to each other (and I've seen plenty), you either have rocks in your head or you're lying.
Apple suing HTC is the easiest way to see that they're not going after "copyists" (whatever they are), they're going after competitors wherever they can, by hook or by crook.
"the phone was first introduced at the 3GSM World Congress that was held in February 2007. Sales to the European market started November 2007" [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGH-F700
Edit: typo
I make no assumption on whether they did or didn't, but couldn't samsung have cribbed some notes during that timeframe?
Other problem is that Samsung only makes some parts of the iphone -, there is no reason to think they had finished product design before the iphone was announced.
Also, I saw Korean patent reference in the article I've linked to. There is no proof of that patent. Korea patent search [1] probably broken. Doesn't return any phone patents or design patents applied for in December 2006
[1]http://detseng.kipris.or.kr/ndetsen/loin1000a.do?method=logi...
The argument isn't about the devices on that poster. It's about Samsung's a posteriori "design" and marketing process. Their product guy's "can't design patent a black rectangle" comments are a bit disingenuous:
http://copyrightcommerceandculture.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
Also worth noting their tablet PR screenshots, like their boxes, have stopped using the iPad's portrait icon array and started featuring landscape TouchWiz widgets instead.
They were fully aware of what they were doing:
Boxes before: http://www.thegalaxytab.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/galax...
Boxes after: http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/9172/width...
When I go to a clothing store, all the jeans and dress shirts and folded the same way and look nearly identical, same goes for the milk and eggs at the grocery store.
In spite of all this I always manage to come home with the brand I set out to buy in the first place.
Jeans are somewhat less complex. There are fewer ways to differentiate, so those differentiators become more signficant. And the makers try to differentiate across as many of them as they can.
Meanwhile, Samsung's own market feedback shows customers were coming home with the wrong box:
http://www.bgr.com/2012/07/27/samsung-tablet-returns-best-bu...
EDIT (ADDED): If you think this is "customer stupidity", you haven't been paying much attention to normals' interactions with technology, or to Samsung's deliberate packaging and presentation.
See the "What did you do with my Facebook?" incident:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_google_failed_inter...
Recapped here, "These are your users, read and be horrified":
http://uxmag.com/articles/these-are-your-users-read-and-be-h...
In both images, the boxes clearly state in large lettering "Samsung Galaxy Tab."
Also, like I related above, I'm a normal with regard to clothes and food, not a fashionista or a chef yet I have no problem distinguishing between any number of all but identical products.
Stop grasping.
That was not a single anecdote, that was a rollup of return reasons. Quoting Samsung's own document:
"The most common pattern is that a customer returns the product which was purchased because the customer thought it was an Apple iPad 2."
Also, places like BestBuy often display things out of the box, and parents often buy the things their kids showed them.
Consider:
"Mom, buy me this," showing Mom an iPad.
Mom gets to the store, and sees these on display:
http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/default...
Mom buys the one on the right. If you really think that confusion is so far fetched, you are not the typical Best Buy customer.
As this article[1] says, "There’s little doubt those of us familiar with techie gadgets aren’t going to mistake a Galaxy Tab for an iPad, it’s of little surprise plenty of customers have been fooled, and although Samsung claims to have shipped many millions of units of the slate, it’s currently unknown just how many of those were sold."
1. http://www.redmondpie.com/best-buy-galaxy-tab-buyers-thought...
Just because it was the most common reason for a return doesn't tell us how significant it was. What was the overall return rate? Of the devices returned, what fraction cited confusion with an iPad? Depending on the range of possible return reasons that might be large or small.
Beyond that, there's the question of how many customers are telling the truth why they're returning something. Plenty of people don't, for all sorts of reasons. Especially if they'd had any exposure to Apple's lawsuits, I'd expect the easiest way to return a Galaxy Tab would be to say "I thought it was an iPad", even if you had known the difference and just decided to spend the money on something else or whatever. Sadly, we can't figure that out from Best Buy's data, but is a possibility worth noting.
Big. It was a huge fiasco at the time.
For a "huge fiasco" there's a distinct lack of coverage (that didn't occur in the last week as a direct result of the discovery in this case) to be found via Google.
Apple has already done this with the iPhone 4/4s - namely the antenna array composed of segments of high tensile stainless steel that can only be machined with very expensive, very limited availability hardware.
Apple already understands how to beat the copycats, they simply want to spite Samsung/Google.
Another point is that copying is good for Apple. Johanna Blakley again makes an excellent point: "One of the magical side effects of having a culture of copying is the establishment of trends." Apple needs the copycats in order to drive smartphone adoption, with Apple remaining the top tier innovator akin to high-end fashion labels.
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...
Samsung was dangerously close to the line.
It's not just the boxes either. See the cabling and power adaptor.
This whole trial has been enormously educational. Stuff like this rarely sees the light of day.
Absolutely. And now they're diverging again. But it took courts to force that shift.
- the 'before' shows more in the iphone-like category and less in the other category of phones than the 'after'. Also the iphone-like cateogy has heaps of phones compared to other categories. This plays with your sense of weighting and importance because automatically you assume that you can compare numbers of phones on this chart, which you can't (mostly because iphone-like pre-iphone devices are all prototypes, whilst others are just a fraction of produced phones.)
- many of the 'before' phones in the iphone-like category are '2006', probably after Samsung would have known what apple is producing.
that being said apart from the package printing the rest of the package design is not apples design or idea, I think the benefon Q had a similar set up, (first thing you see it the phone).
10.1v http://www.techspot.com/images/products/tablets/org/96609971... 10.1 http://cdn.androidcommunity.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/g...
disclosure: I own a 10.1v
The article loses credibility when it suggests that the invention of the GUI stops at Xerox, when Apple invented (among many other things) drag and drop, overlapping windows, a practical mouse (that could track diagonally, didn't break down, and did more with one button than xerox did with three).
But what would I know?
"The Macintosh was the first computer worth criticizing." Alan Kay
I'm totally on board with apple not owning rounded rectangles, but Samsung's copying of Apple has extended to literally using Apple's UI graphics in store displays.
This isn't a question about Apple owning rounded rectangles - unless they happen to be phones and tablets. This rounded rectangle thing has gotten a little out of hand. It's easy to see why Samsung has framed it in this manner; because, of course, Apple couldn't 'own a rectangle with rounded corners', how absurd! Does that mean Apple owns tv remote controls, or keyboards or all the other rectangles with rounded corners on them?!
But that's a false argument and analogy. Apple is not going after keyboards, tv remotes, etc. They are going after Samsung's copied phones and tablets. It's that simple and to dream up analogies is to try to derail the real issue.
However, if some still feel that Samsung is an inventive company that would never outright steal any ideas, all you have to do is look at some of these examples:
App store icons:
http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Samsung-Mo...
Black iphone cables:
http://cdn.mactrast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Samsung-A...
Black iphone square charger:
http://site.accessorygeeks.com/yswimages/samsung-micro-usb-d...
These are just a few things but it's pretty clear that Samsung has no problem just copying outright. I don't think they're going to win this trial and I don't think Apple is going to own all black rectangles.
None.
At all.
So why is it protected by a patent?
In an event, speaking as someone who actually used Xerox's systems years after the Mac shipped, it was hugely inferior in all important respects to the original Mac UI -- any superficial similarities notwithstanding. Again, see Alan Kay's comment.
This is new to me, cite? Obviously doing that would amount to cut and dry copyright violation, and Apple would be well within its rights to demand the in-store displays be removed.
But this isn't a spit about clip art. They're claiming ownership of an increasingly nebulous idea of a "tablet" (it seems it's no longer just about the narrow design patent, or about the size, or aspect ratio, or curved corners). That's a different thing, and not at all related to what you're talking about.
Last I checked the App Store and Safari were not available on Android. In fairness its a store within a store so the Samsung might not have been directly responsible.
I hardly think that reliability is an invention.
I think this situation goes to show that Apple aren't as revolutionary as they lead on or people think. Steve was a great sales man, but certainly not a visionary. Nothing about the iPhone appears to be revolutionary any more, considering Samsung amongst others were working on the same idea, it's evolutionary not revolutionary.
It will be interesting to see where this leads, could Apple lose some of their iPhone patents because of all of this? This of course doesn't change the fact Samsung copied Apple's charger design and accessory packaging, but ripped off the iPhone? Nah.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/11/iphone-and-lg-ke850-separ...
The rest of them are just dragged into this war. But they will fight. They will do bussiness. They are profit chasers off course.
Apple on the other hand, their legal strategy is not rational. They picked a fight they couldnt win, they shouldnt win, and even if they would, we would change the rules on them; because in the end we all want some choices when buying products.
Does anyone truly expect Apple to launch a full scale legal war against of all its competitors, and not get burned in the proccess?
I honestly dont care. From Samsung to Google, to Microsoft. There are no saints. But these days im rooting for Apple downfall. Just because i get so tired of all the Apple apologists.
I know they are victims, but at a certain point the whole Stockholm syndrome gets kind of old.
The purpose of this is to establish that Samsung did not wilfully infringe even if Apple's patents are valid (they will argue they were just in good faith continuing to evolve designs they already had that were similar), but that Apple's patents are invalid because they are dictated by function - it is logical for touch screen phones to get a large screen and reduce number of buttons, for example - and because the design elements were obvious (arguing that the existence of a wide range of similar designs, even if not published, shows that no knowledge of the iPhone was necessary for someone with ordinary knowledge of the arts to come up with something similar).
Samsung has previously argued prior art previously in the form of prototype / design studies for tablets by Knight-Ridder.
As I've said before (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4244317).
Apple can't demonstrate 10, let alone any meaningful number of people who accidentally bought a Galaxy when they meant to pick up an iPad/iPhone.
It doesn't happen.
So yes. It does happen.
"One of these phones (the bottom-right one) became the Samsung F700 - a product Apple once included as an infringing product, but later withdrew once it learned Samsung created it and brought it to market before the iPhone"
Secret prototypes would not be prior art, though.
Samsung might be well within their rights if they say "See, we invented it first, but didn't think it was patent worthy." I don't know the particulars on the "patent worthy" consideration.
No, you would need to prove that your documented development of the invention predates the other party's documented development of the invention. Filing date does not matter in that case.
It makes you wonder if Apple really was copying off Samsung, as this article suggests, then why was no single Samsung model was as least as successful as the iPhone in the same time frame?
Except in the PDF linked in the first sentence of the first paragraph.
That is not AT ALL what the article says. It doesn't even hint at it. Hell, it even almost says the exact contrary at the end when drawing a parallel with GUIs.