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Comment by batista | Hacker News Reader

>So then Apple are now like the guys still in leather helmets that have been running exactly the same pass play for five years

No, they are the guys that created the whole game field as a massive market niche, coming from completely outside that market, and then 2 years later they jump started another market (tablets) that they pretty much own to this day.

Or, the guys that have another announcement on 9/12, with predictions for their biggest selling device ever, outselling previous models (that each outsold the previous anyway).

It's not like the fact that the other guys "run four or five different formations and pass all over the field" worked well for them in the smartphone/tablet market.

They used the same "four or five different formations and pass all over the field" in the PC market and it's now commoditized to death with minimal margins (ask Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc).

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And the main distinguishing feature of that new 9/12 device? A form factor very close to Samsung's last two flagship models. And that new iPad mini everybody's so excited about? Copying a form factor that Samsung pioneered and Amazon and Google validated. Maybe next Apple will copy the Note?

So who exactly is copying whom here? Surely the physical size of a device is more defining and market-making than the bounce back behavior of a scroll view? Where are the cries for protection of Samsung's innovations?

>* And the main distinguishing feature of that new 9/12 device? A form factor very close to Samsung's last two flagship models.*

You mean "a bigger screen"?

Well, it could have had even less distinguishing factors and it would have been just fine in my books. They created that kind of design, it's not like they have to differentiate for the sake of differentiation. Incremental cpu/memory/storage/batter upgrades are OK too.

>And that new iPad mini everybody's so excited about? Copying a form factor that Samsung pioneered and Amazon and Google validated. Maybe next Apple will copy the Note?

They actually had prototypes in various sizes years before Samsung, Amazon or Google ever thought of going into the tablet space, or even the original iPad come out.

Plus, Apple created the mass market for tablets. Before the iPad it was a wasteland with few inhabitants.

Samsung taking the iPad and offering something similar in a smaller form factor is something original, really? And Apple making a smaller version of THEIR OWN PRODUCT is copying Samsung? That's some twisted logic.

>So who exactly is copying whom here?

Samsung.

They copied the iPod in a smaller form factor, and now Apple will offer a small form factor themselves. Should Apple preemptively put out all possible form factors at once, to not be considered a copycat? That's some twisted logic here.

It's not like Apple didn't already have a smaller form factor device that was similar. Remember when they called the iPad (mockingly) "a large iPhone"?

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