HP introduces new Apple iMac | Hacker News Reader

HP introduces new Apple iMac

thenextweb.com

201 pointstomschlick247 comments

Ridiculous. Other than the bezel color, bezel shape, metallic logo, logo positioning, aspect ratio, foot design, choice of materials, choice of finishing, keyboard design, key coloring, key layout, keyboard LED, keyboard footing, trackpad design, trackpad footing, keyboard battery chamber, and trackpad battery chamber, this is a totally unique design.

You make it sound like HP copied someone here. HP's designs just follow the natural evolution of computers.

Things like choice of materials and finishing aren't "the natural evolution of computers". There are deliberate design decisions to the brushed aluminum design, decisions that HP didn't even bother to make for themselves.

This product from HP is shameful.

So if Apple uses brushed aluminium design, and brushed aluminium is better, nobody else should use it?

I don't think HP is using brushed aluminum.

It was an example my parent post referred to.

Faster is "better" than slower. Easier is "better" than harder. Cheaper is "better" than more expensive. These are pretty obvious and well understood.

I can't really see brushed aluminum as "better" finish choice than satin nickel, semi-opaque plastic, oil-rubbed bronze, polished marble, cherry burlwood, or rich Corinthian leather.

Other companies should feel free to use it, but they must understand that they will suffer the withering wrath of my derisive scorn if they are going to be so unabashedly derivative in their design choices.

I strongly disagree. These are aesthetic design choices, and are not fundamental to the evolution of personal computers. HP clearly copied the design of the iMac.

Note : copying does not necessarily == morally reprehensible. However, facts are facts.

I think he was joking and making an allusion to a commonly voiced opinion in favor of Samsung from the Apple trial.

At this point it's becoming extremely hard to tell.

For anyone who doesn't already know about it: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire

Can someone explain why copying is bad? Do people really believe that a marketplace is so fragile, that unless an omnipotent actor interferes with trade, consumers will become victims to "copying"? Or that the poor consumer won't be able to distinguish between the box that says "HP" and the twice as expensive box that reads "Apple"?

>Can someone explain why copying is bad?

Because it limits choices. Instead of 2 different options for your all-in-one desktop you have 1 multiplied by 2.

The only similarity between these options are aesthetics. To argue they're the same product is to say all red coups are the same. No, they just happen to be red.

2 * 1 = 1 * 2

Mathematics aside, you would've hoped that they could come up with an improvement over the iMac, instead of a copy. Perhaps the port access on the side of the base counts?

"2 * 1 = 1 * 2"

You forgot the "2 choices" part, ie that the numbers are pointers to qualitative differences, thus 1A + 1B != 2 * 1A.

This is why copying is sad not why copying is bad. One of the coolest things is to look at personal computers built before the IBM PC and then look at computers built after the IBM PC. You can do this if you go a Vintage Computer Festival [1] at some point.

Prior to the PC there were lots of different kinds and styles, and post PC there were 'beige boxes' everywhere. Now true there were still outliers like the Epson QX10 and some others but they were quashed by the larger market.

[1] www.vintage.org

You're right... instead of copying they should steal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

Damn right. Plus: way to get the quote wrong. It's about stealing some concept and making something of YOUR OWN with the inspiration, vs copying somebody else's work verbatim. That is, it applies exactly to this situation.

When you thought it was damning of Apple or ironic that people accuse HP, didn't it trouble you that the quote presents copying in a worse light that stealing? I.e didn't it occurred that stealing, as defined in the quote, must describe something much more creative than mere copying?

Sorry if I didn't explain my point with the quote. It wasn't obvious to me when I wrote it that it could have several interpretations.

Artists commonly quote Picasso to refer that when practicing you should copy another artist that you admire. In the process you would develop you own style and in a sense you stole that from the original artist.

My point in this case (and I am not an Apple fan), is that HP didn't differentiate enough in this product. I was being literal on the quote, they should steal the iMac, no just copying it.

Oh, I see. I thought you were using it ironically against Jobs, which would be missing the point.

Without copying, design and implementation and business practices become bundled, reducing my options in a different way. If I like the kind of industrial design Apple encouraged but not the prevalence of non-commodity components or the aggressive deprecation of ports and interconnects or their policies towards independent developers, I can't get the product I want. I'd rather have commodity hardware that's beige and commodity hardware that's shiny and boutique hardware on the market, rather than have to choose one or two. It'd be one thing if Apple were willing to produce a wide variety of price/perf/design selections, but they're deliberately not.

If you own IP rights to something generating [m|b]illions of dollars, you'll agree it's bad. ...and persuade lawmakers to keep the system in place.

It seems like IP exists to empower corporations to monopolize segments of the market. Does anyone actually believe it's to empower consumers? Because that's the argument I typically hear.

Edit: I just want to know if we're all on the same page that IP exists to monopolize the market, not benefit the consumer in any way.

>It seems like IP exists to empower corporations to monopolize segments of the market.

It only started to "seem" that way in 2008 or so when Google-- a large corporation that wants to monopolize a segment of the market- started a propaganda campaign against Apple to try and rationalize ripping off the iPhone with android.

>Does anyone actually believe it's to empower consumers?

The really unfortunate thing about this propaganda campaign is that it has been so successful that it has gotten people to close their minds off to not only other viewpoints, but the very nature of the system.

Patents allow the advancement of science to occur more rapidly by incentivizing disclosure. When someone invents something really new, they could keep it a secret and have a monopoly on that product for as long as it takes their competitors to figure out how to do it-- which is often many years. The patent system gets them to reveal it so that the competitors can start with the state of the art, and then extend it.

Google, et. al. want to perverse this system by, instead of extending the state of the art, simply copying the state of the art and then hoping to get away with it in court. To provide cover they've got legions of people clamoring that "patents are "bad" and stuff like that".

The reality is, getting a patent is not unreasonably difficult. Thus small startups (like google once was) can patent their technologies (like google once did for page rank) and get protection from major existing players (like google once needed from Yahoo, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Wired Search, etc).... and leverage that protection into investment from Venture Capitalists (like google did.)

If you have any question about googles hypocrisy, note that they only say patents are bad when it comes to other people's patents-- they viciously protect PageRank and they sued Apple with motorola patents they acquired for that specific purpose... and are trying to reneg on their agreement to license patents under FRAND terms in order to get leverage to force Apple to license its patents.

Patents do empower consumers, when the system works- when companies abide by the rules and use them to get a leg up in advancing technology.

We are not all on the same page, though HN may seem like a monoculture because there are a lot of Apple haters here. But if you look at these discussions you'll notice they are generally uninformed about the history (eg: bringing up Xerox) and don't even know what patents are (eg: confusing design and utility patents, thinking 2001 or Star Trek are "prior art" or citing the LG Prada, or claiming Apple is claiming a patent on rounded corners.)

One thing you'll never see an anti-IP person do, in my experience, is consider the ramifications of getting rid of all patent laws.

For instnace, consider how locked down devices would be when there was no such protection. Companies would hermetically seal devices to make it difficult for competitors to get inside them to understand how they work-- this would be bad for consumers.

Plus progress would be retarded. Most drugs that have been invented never would have been, and technology progress would be much, much slower.

It's popular to hate patents, and that position comes from taking for granted the benefits patents have provided, and focusing on perceived (and hypocritical in my opinion) problems with them.

Due to the contentious nature of this position, and the fact that every time I've expressed it on HN, I've been personally attacked, this will be my one comment on this subject, Sorry. Your question seems genuine, so I took the time to respond.

I should have known my distaste for IP was out of historical ignorance and susceptibility to propaganda campaigns! Only a fool would ignore the self-evident and empirically observable benefits of the Courts! I have since shed my contemporary principles of non-violence and adopted "the central planners know best!".

> they viciously protect PageRank

Made a quick search. Couldn't find a single lawsuit that Google had brought upon on a smaller or a bigger player. They protect Search technologies using Trade Secrets not Patents.

> they sued Apple with motorola patents they acquired for that specific purpose

Well technically it was still Motorola that sued Apple using it's own patents. And that was after the patent war had already consumed most of the tech media.

> get leverage to force Apple to license its patents.

Which is something that should be done! Why is it that technology that is essential for building cellphones has to be licensed (and at a pretty cheap rate) but technology that is selectively applicable like the dozens of patents including Swipe-To-Unlock, Unified Search, Pinch-To-Zoom etc are okay not to be licensed and yet be used to ban devices altogether?

> Most drugs that have been invented never would have been, and technology progress would be much, much slower.

Straw-man. Most people who are Anti-IP (I am not BTW), are against software patents NOT patents in general.

  They protect Search technologies using Trade Secrets not Patents.

There is an actual patent on PageRank: http://www.google.com/patents/US6285999 in case that statement is implying there isn't.

  It only started to "seem" that way in 2008 or so when Google-- 
  a large corporation that wants to monopolize a segment of the market- 
  started a propaganda campaign against Apple to try and 
  rationalize ripping off the iPhone with android.

This is incorrect. There have been written concerns about software patents being monopolies at least since the year 1990 (http://deoxy.org/swpc.htm), not to mention the Free Software movement spreading the word against patents a lot earlier than 2008, the first Pirate Party was founded in 2006, and I bet I could dig a lot more examples of "prior art".

There is a whole lot more than Google versus Apple in the software patents story, please read some more about it.

Obviously, not everyone here is on the same page, but there is a general consensus that patent laws are being used to suppress rather encourage innovation. Apple's suits against Samsung are an egregious recent example of the patent system harming innovation. There is room for nuance though; saying that the system is being abused doesn't mean that no ideas should be patentable.

One reason is because bottom-feeders will simply wait for others to spend all that R&D money. This is a big deal when it comes to hardware.

Copying can be good and bad. I think most people would say that a copy that beats the original would be good. A knock-off or plagiarism would be bad.

It's bad for the original creator, but long term it's probably bad for the copy-cat as well. How are you going to keep and foster top notch design talent if their assignment is to copy the competition instead of working on making something better?

And if you don't have good designers, you're at a disadvantage if the market starts to appreciate good design (as they seem to be doing more and more).

I think many people are surprisingly untechnical. Samsung had many tablet returns from customers who thought they had bought an iPad. I wouldn't be surprised if many companies would buy this computer because it "looks about the same" as the more expensive iMac.

Isn't it funny people's habit of confusing evolution for design when it suits them?

There's one computer that looks like the Apple iMac. Well, there was until HP came along and there was two.

From the horse's mouth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

Irrelevant and misapplied. This tape was from an era where foundational ideas in personal and graphical computing were being hashed out. Concepts like pointers, modality, bitmapping, state representation, humane I/O, task management, and basement-level software plumbing were being worked out. Basically: how do you turn massive industrial installations into a comprehensible and affordable machine that can fit in a home?

Those decisions, insights, and the attitudes that evolved early personal computing have flipping zip-all to do with trade dress in the early 21st century.

It is kinda astounding how often people use this quote and seem to think it means the opposite of what it means.

Steve Jobs is saying it is easy to copy. But if you're great, you steal the fundamental idea and do something totally new with it.

Apple didn't just copy the phones already on the market, they stole the idea of a cellphone and did something fundamentally different.

So different that we had 6 months of people saying it was going to be a failure, Ballmer going on the record saying there's no way they'd sell any significant numbers, and the RIM engineers telling upper management that the iPhone couldn't possibly work the way apple said!

Thats "stealing" -- doing something for which there is nothing comparable on the market, in Steve Jobs view.

Copying is when you look at a successful product and mimic it down to the millimeter.

The distinction (I believe the original quote is Picasso, and the difference is that the great steal while others borrow) is that once you've STOLEN an idea your version is so much better than what you took the whole thing becomes YOURS. Borrowing an idea means that your version ends up simply looking like a lame attempt to copy the older idea, and people prefer the older idea.

So while there were GUIs before the Mac, once Apple had stolen their ideas and transformed them the stuff that had come before simply looked like crap. Similarly previous attempts, including by Apple, to create tablet devices look like crap beside the iPad.

>Steve Jobs is saying it is easy to copy. But if you're great, you steal the fundamental idea and do something totally new with it.

Is there an extended version of the linked video? I don't know where you got "and do something totally new with it" from his original quote. How did you extrapolate his true intent from the provided quote?

>Thats "stealing" -- doing something for which there is nothing comparable on the market, in Steve Jobs view.

That is certainly not the accepted definition of the word. I still don't understand how you've managed to take Steve Jobs words and claim they're a metaphor for "innovation". In what world are invent, innovate and steal synonymous?

From the video: "And I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, and poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world."

Forgive me if I depart a moment from the explicit and literal, but I fail to see how you can apply ideas from music, poetry, zoology, art, and history without "doing something totally new with it." Did 19th century bookmakers and typesetters have the faintest idea what a computer was when they were practicing their craft? And would somebody making a computer screen without the slightest notion of what really went into calligraphy know which ideas to capture in writing rendering software? This is the essence of what Jobs meant by stealing. It wasn't, hey, let's just copy our competitor but make it cheaper.

As for "stealing," it's unfortunate word choice because the original quote from Picasso was in Spanish and he didn't say it in a trade (high art) where copying could be justified as "natural evolution."

When you copy, you do something others have done.

When you steal, you make something others have done yours. While Apple built upon the work of others throughout its history, they made their products so distinctive that nobody would say could have come from anyone else.

I think you might be getting carried away here.

Apple really hasn't "invented" anything. What they HAVE done is apply a keen sense of design and an obsessive focus on execution to a segment of a very diverse industry.

I think it goes without saying that Apple has had serious problems over its lifetime and there isn't a guarantee that they wont find themselves in that predicament again. My first computer was an Apple (//c, natch) and I can tell you that they nearly did themselves in a couple of times while IBM/Microsoft were leading the way.

Sic Transit Gloria.

I didn't say Apple invented the personal computer, or the portable music player, or the smartphone. What they did, and did very skillfully, was to appropriate the ideas and make a product so unique that it redefines the market around it. This is stealing the idea rather than merely copying it.

It's most interesting that the biggest problems Apple faced were when it was trying to copy the IBM PC by building dozens of different Mac models with expansion slots.

Uh, I think you're missing the part where Apple didn't copy or steal the Windows OS design and fell far behind in operating systems.

Or when they forgot about developers and let MSFT gain 90% of the market.

Or: Lisa. The Apple ///. Etc etc etc.

"Stealing" in the sense that Jobs means it is a reappropriation of an idea from a seemingly unrelated field into the new one to solve a problem (typically in design it's a teaching problem).

That's why his example from the Macintosh days is about applying calligraphy to rendering typefaces on screen, or why later in the interview he talks about how Apple took great pride in hiring people with a diversity of backgrounds (ex. zoologists and poets)--all to maximize the probability that someone would make an unexpected connection and hence, innovation. It's a subtle point that I frequently see people overlook here, but anybody with humanities training will tell you that there is a tremendous difference between inspiration and plagiarism.

How do you people know what Jobs meant by the word "steal"? And it's always kinda opposite of what the usual meaning is. Is there a Steve Jobs dictionary somewhere?

How do you people know what Jobs meant by the word "steal"?

It's easily gleaned from the context. Clearly he is distinguishing between stealing and copying, the key differentiator I believe to be some metaphorical notion of possession.

From this idea you can infer that Jobs is saying that you can take a solution designed for (or, by possession, owned by) a given historical problem and repurpose it so that it can now solve a new problem.

That's the only way the quote makes sense, and that's the only way you can read Jobs's reference to the diverse fields of study his early Macintosh people had under their belt before tackling computer science. It was all about repurposing old ideas to meet new challenges.

I get it now. Thank you for the explanation.

Or not... for example:

http://images.apple.com/imac/images/overview_allinone.png [0]

versus

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2012/09/hp-spe... [1]

Not limited by, but your key(board) comparison completely skips over reality.

[0] http://www.apple.com/imac/ [1] http://www.engadget.com/photos/hp-spectre-one/

That profile shot of the Spectre is a bummer. They made it so ugly. So top-heavy. I feel bad for the industrial designers who had to work on this small-minded disaster, they must hate their jobs.

> Other than the bezel color, bezel shape, metallic logo, logo positioning...

We can't have an HP logo in a circle because Apple has an apple that resembles a circle!?

We can't center an HP logo because Apple centers their logo!?

We can't have a metallic logo because Apple does that!?

We can't have a rectangular screen because Apple has one just in that shape!?

We can't have a silvery finish because apple has one!

We can't have a qwerty keyboard because Apple has one!

And so on.

Are you joking?

These are all done 100 times over. In combination with each other.

The only resemblance I see are standard design choices being implemented. Like a monitor on a stand.

Oh, come on. If you make the same choices as your competitor for nearly every item, that's copying.

These "standard design choices" hadn't ever been common in other products. Were all designers suddenly enlightened at some point on what computers should look like? (oh, wait! they were, by Apple)

Really? Having a centered logo is part of a trade dress? Is it supposed to be 2 inches to the right for everyone else?

And when you place that centerd logo on a thin form factor display/pc, that becomes a violation? Or is it when you make the keyboard silvery in color? Or is it when you make the frame as thin as possible given the technology and manufacturing capabilities you have at the time?

That's like saying Ford violates Toyota's "trade dress" when they combine 4 tires on a car, with an engine somewhere inside, and paint the body red. And the vehicle weighs less that 2000 lbs.

4 or 5 standard design choices in combination with one another is not a "trade dress" when those choices are generic and have been done a million times before.

No, that's like saying that Ford would violate Audi's trade dress if they combine slim headlights flush with the body, a large front grill in trapezoid shape with the logo on top, and two air intakes at the bottom edges. It would.

That's all design is: a combination of functional and aesthetic choices, that lead to a particular look.

Silver wasn't very popular until not long ago. Black was the default, and still is for many manufacturers. It is also currently possible to make the frame even thinner, or non-existent. The choice to make it that thick (and black) shows that it's not about technical limits or 'evolution'. You can absolutely make a computer that doesn't look like an iMac; in fact everybody has been doing it for years.

Indeed, there was a huge production of so-called beige PCs, and nobody complained that they looked the same, since they looked like crap, and people wouldn't purposedly copy crap, now would they? The fact is that Apple products look gorgeous, and they want to keep it that way. Commoditization of that style would destroy its value completely. That is, unless they keep leading the pack in design innovation, instead of trying to protect their old productions, and milk their fan base out of recycled ideas.

"These are all done 100 times over. In combination with each other."

That's exactly the problem. HP is using the same combination here, the resembles is obvious and the sad part is to give the reason to Apple on this :(

Come on, if you covered up the HP logo on that thing you would have called it a iMac. That was absolutely my first thought upon seeing it.

Copying one thing, maybe two things is a coincidence, copying everything is flat out cloning a design without a lot of thought or innovations. Hell, they even copied the finishes on the metal.

The monitor looks to have a completely industry standard bezel width and corner shape that you can find on any number of monitors and TVs. And lacks the huge white 4 inch strip at the bottom.

The stand seems to be a different size and shape.

The OS, the most important part of that device, is completely different.

Now if that's what you call an iMac, then you must also call every PC made a Dell and every truck a Ford.

You conveniently forget the look of keyboard and mouse.

Either you're being willfully obtuse, you're unaware of what the market for all-in-ones looks like right now, or else the entire tech industry is filled with dummies who aren't as observant and correct as you. Pick one.

(And while we're nitpicking, the iMac hasn't had a white acrylic chin in five years.)

HP has multiple different lines of All-In-Ones that have absolutely no resemblance to anything Apple makes, meaning they haven't ~chanced~ or ~evolved~ into doing this look. Even Vizio (a company that was dinged for -substantially- replicating Apple's accessory design for their first all-in-one outing) managed to use a completely different finish and different foot profile.

The gestalt of Apple's desktop lineup was needlessly duplicated by a company that has the talent and resources to do otherwise. Argue another angle.

BezelColor + BezelShape: the shape is similar but without the lower white area.

Metallic Logo: Nope. Appears to be a back-lit logo which is white in color [1]

Logo Positioning: Is similar but not the same. Apple's logo is not in the black frame region. They both are centered though, I give you that.

Aspect Ratio: iMac seems to be 8:5. This is 16:9

Foot Design: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/10/hp-imac/ Check the last image.

Choice of Material/Choice Of Finishing: Someone pointed out on the thread that HP is using plastic and not brushed aluminum.

Keyboard Design: There aren't many side shots of the smaller keyboard from Apple but [2] looks different from Spectre One.

Key Coloring: White on White vs White on Aluminium Grey.

Key Layout: Is Also different. Have a look.

Keyboard LED: Cannot deduct from image, so I will give you that.

Trackpad Design: Yes similar from top

Trackpad Footing: Check the side shots, they are different

keyboard battery chamber and trackpad battery chamber: Sorry cannot see from the shots.

[1] http://www.engadget.com/photos/hp-spectre-one/ [2] http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page...

Edit: iMac has 16:9 screens as well. So adding that here.

That's an honest effort but not enough. Throw the Apple Thunderbolt Display and the correct Apple Wireless Keyboard into the comparison and points 1, 3, 4, and 7 evaporate.

You're standing on a single extra key, a logo that might be backlit instead of foil, a different trackpad/keyboard foot arc, and the fact that they used plastic designed to mimic a specific metal with a specific finish. It's not enough for most observers, and HP is right to take some lumps over this.

This makes me sad for a variety of reasons. One, because HP are being assholes and making what is clearly a knock-off product. Apple has every right to be upset, and probably sue them for trade dress infringement.

And second, because everyone (on both sides) is going to be conflating this with Apple's UI patents, which are total bullshit and which they shouldn't be able to sue over. Ah well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star

As you are obviously implying, Apple secured the rights to Xerox's technology, very much unlike HP.

No, Apple paid to visit the PARC, they did not buy or licence any patents

False. Apple obtained a license from Xerox for the technology being developed at PARC by selling them pre-IPO Apple shares.

Further, by bringing this up, you are trying to say that Apple copied Xerox years ago, which is a form of trying to say "its ok to copy apple or steal their technology because apple did it in the past".

Which is silly because if it was wrong for Apple to do it, as you imply, it is also wrong for HP or Samsung to do it, as you are trying to justify.

Further, when you tell a falsehood like this-- one that you really, if you're at all informed on the issue, would know is a falsehood, you impeach your own integrity.

Is the Wikipedia article then also incorrect when it states clearly that the shares were exchanged to get a visit NOT A LICENSE: "In return for the right to buy US$1,000,000 of pre-IPO stock, Xerox granted Apple Computer three days access to the PARC facilities."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.#Xerox_PAR...

Yes, like an expensive trip to the park, just for a little fun.

That's willfully disingenuous. One does not pay a million dollars of pre-IPO stock to see a bunch of ideas and not use them.

Well, licence implies that there was some kind of license-agreement or contract. Was there? Where is the evidence?

Presumably, the inventions at PARC were protected by nothing but trade secret, so the only release of IP involved was to literally reveal the secrets to Apple.

You'll notice that Xerox never filed a patent suit, that Apple's industrial design and trade dress were in fact remarkably different from Xerox's, and that the Lisa and Macintosh interfaces were remarkably different from that of the Alto in any case.

What you've said is true, but it should be noted that not only did Xerox never file a patent suit - nobody filed a software patent suit for at least a decade afterwards. Software patents were at that time unknown. If Xerox had wanted to file a software patent suit, a good lawyer would have disabused them of that notion instantly by pointing out that that wasn't how patents worked then.

So the fact that Xerox didn't file a patent suit doesn't say much, I don't think. That doesn't mean that Xerox wasn't in the wrong or that Apple wasn't in the right; it just means that patent lawsuits really weren't the way people went about these things then.

Conversely, if Xerox had software patents, they would have likely licensed them to Apple anyway.

It's probably likely that not only did Xerox not imagine that software patents were a thing, they probably didn't even imagine that you could copyright the "look and feel" of software.

It seems that Apple did financially compensate Xerox for both the visit and the ideas:

"Fact: Apple obtained permission ahead of the Xerox PARC visit. In addition, Apple provided compensation in exchange for the various Xerox PARC ideas such as the GUI"

http://obamapacman.com/2010/03/myth-copyright-theft-apple-st...

Apple paid to have access to PARC ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.#Xerox_PAR...

"Xerox did go to trial to protect the Star user interface. In 1989, after Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement of its Macintosh user interface in Windows, Xerox filed a similar lawsuit against Apple; however, it was thrown out because a three year statute of limitations had passed. (Apple eventually lost its lawsuit in 1994, losing all claims to the user interface)."

Apple didn't pay for any patents, it paid for a tour.

False. Apple obtained a license from Xerox for the technology being developed at PARC by selling them pre-IPO Apple shares. Further, by bringing this up, you are trying to say that Apple copied Xerox years ago, which is a form of trying to say "its ok to copy apple or steal their technology because apple did it in the past". Which is silly because if it was wrong for Apple to do it, as you imply, it is also wrong for HP or Samsung to do it, as you are trying to justify. Further, when you tell a falsehood like this-- one that you really, if you're at all informed on the issue, would know is a falsehood, you impeach your own integrity.

Sorry, I don't want to imply that Apple was wrong for copying Xerox. I was trying to make a point about the similarity of the act (though it's possible that you hadn't seen the explanation I gave (you asked for it) when you wrote this).

I'm interested to see a citation about this license you claim that Apple bought. Xerox didn't seem to think that a license was bought. They sued (much later).

Nirvana's mistaken a bit here. They didn't license the technology, but they "did" allow Xerox to buy 100,000 Apple shares for just a million dollar (a year before their IPO).

This long article has much more details: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_...

I was aware of the share deal but I wasn't aware that this issue had been covered in the New Yorker. Thanks for this.

I really don't think that posts that consist of nothing but a single link, like this one, should be acceptable. You link to a web page and don't make any argument. This is disingenuous.

It lets you pretend like you've taken a position or refuted the person you're responding to, but since you haven't actually said anything you can't be debated with. You can't be pinned down on saying any position, which means you can't be refuted.

Now, if you made an argument, and then linked to a wikipedia page to support that argument, besides the fact that wikipedia is not authoritative and is edited by amateurs, often with an agenda, that would be much better. At least then you're introducing potential facts to support an argument.

I think pointing out the Xerox Star is sufficient to make my point.

I agree that it's important that you can pin my argument down though so hopefully this will make it clear: HP's copying of the iMac is not much different from Apple's copying of the Xerox Star. The two main differences are that a) Apple copied a huge amount from Xerox and HP seem to just have copied the UI rather superficially and the end result seems mediocre and b) America has software patents now.

Apple licensed the technology that it "copied" from Xerox. Are you suggesting that HP has licensed the loc of the iMac from Apple?

I don't know whether HP licensed anything. I doubt it, I suppose.

It seems Apple didn't license anything from Xerox either. Considering you think otherwise, I'd be interested in a citation. It's well documented that Xerox tried to sue (but they failed).

Xerox and Apple had a deal, so all you are implying is wrong. I found this article, it's German, but a couple YT videos are embedded about that time. I read about it in the Steve Jobs bio too.

http://www.mac-history.de/die-geschichte-des-apple-macintosh...

I googled the Xerox v Apple case, and in the first paragraph of section I ("ALLEGATIONS OF XEROX' COMPLAINT"), it says:

> On June 9, 1981, Xerox granted Apple a license pursuant to which Apple agreed to "participate in a project with the Learning Research Group at PARC/Xerox for the purpose of implementing the Smalltalk-80 language and system on a hardware system to be developed by [Apple]."

So clearly even Xerox admitted they licensed some of their work to Apple.

[1]: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3538913398421433...

Hold on - that doesn't seem to say what people want to think it's saying, does it? That's a license to use Smalltalk-80 in products. It isn't a license to use the Xerox Parc system or look and feel at all. I think the point remains: if there had been software patents at the time of the original litigation, Xerox would have won. Am I missing something?

Here is a referenced blog post, that also discusses the lawsuit:

http://obamapacman.com/2010/03/myth-copyright-theft-apple-st...

I wonder if all those beige PC clone makers did licence anything from anyone design wise. In other words, what if Apple design is to become the ned beige PC style? Cheap PC keyboards all look the same, and nobody complains. Same for screens, etc. What makes Apple design so distinctive is partly because it's neat, and partly because they're the sole computer makers to use it.

read "new" beige PC, not ned (or nerd, or nod).

I hate this. You're attempting to re-litigate something in public court that was already handled in actual, real-people court almost 20 years ago. Read the Legacy[0] section of your link.

Apple also licensed the tech behind Xerox Star. At least Xerox was compensated for their work in some manner.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star#Legacy

Sorry you hate it. I'm not sure how I'm attempting to re-litigate...that is something to do with litigation, and I'm not a lawyer.

That article absolutely does not say that Apple licensed anything from Xerox. It only says that Xerox later tried to sue over it but it was thrown out due to age.

From the page linked in footnote 10 I found the following tidbit:

> Tesler: No, we didn’t have one here. We went to the NCC when the Star was announced and looked at it. And in fact it did have an immediate impact. A few months after looking at it we made some changes to our user interface based on ideas that we got from it. For example, the desktop manager we had before was completely different; it didn’t use icons at all, and we never liked it very much. We decided to change ours to the icon base. That was probably the only thing we got from the Star, I think. Most of our Xerox inspiration was Smalltalk rather than Star.

Just thought this was interesting. And it's probably the modern equivalent of being inspired to move to touchscreen-based devices instead of keypad devices. Which, I might add, is pretty different than being "inspired" to completely clone a competing touchscreen-based device instead of coming up with your own UI and behaviors around the touchscreen metaphor.

That strikes me as an oversimplification. According to the NYT article [1], Xerox filed an "unfair competition" lawsuit, which was correctly dismissed (as Apple never tried to mislead consumers about whether they were buying an Apple computer or a Xerox computer, among other things).

The only reference to age I found is, according to a lawyer quoted in that article, "Xerox had waited too long to file a copyright infringement case and had to resort to a weaker charge of unfair competition". It looks like the statue of limitations on copyright infringement was (at the time) 3 years [2].

It's not clear to me if this is true or not. According to the case itself, "Xerox argues that an infringement action would not afford the relief it desires". (Is that lawyer-speak for "oops we forgot to file the right charges in time"?) Either way, I can find no record of a copyright infringement case brought by Xerox against Apple.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/business/most-of-xerox-s-s... [2]: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#507

So, you're saying that you hate it when people express dissenting opinions after cases have been decided? Should civil rights activists not have brought up their opinions after Plessy v. Ferguson?

In the long run, the court of public opinion is the driver of change. What makes the status quo so great that you hate it when people dissent? I don't agree with the person you're disagreeing with, but where would we be if we couldn't even discuss it?

Frm what i have read about the Star, nobody would confuse it with a Mac or vice versa. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s... indicates that at least some of the people who built the Macintosh Think similarly.

Probably no one would confuse it, but I don't think many would confuse this HP with a Mac either. The HP is, like the Star, running a different OS.

Is it? I boot my Mac into Windows fairly often. And that's irrelevant anyway, because HP is not selling an OS, they are selling hardware that happens to look extremely similar to an iMac.

In fact, on that first photo on the linked article I genuinely thought they had placed an Apple wireless keyboard and magic trackpad in front of the HP computer. And the only reason I knew that wasn't an iMac was because of the lack of the apple-logo-on-aluminum bar at the bottom, which was simply replaced by an HP logo in the exact same spot.

> I really don't think that posts that consist of nothing but a single link, like this one, should be acceptable. You link to a web page and don't make any argument. This is disingenuous.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

But seriously, a post which is a single link seems fine to me, so long as the information is related to the discussion at hand. For all one knows, the commenter was in line and commenting from her cell phone, and had to talk to a salesperson the next second.

Please see my list of ways to reassign credit for everything Apple does to save time:

http://loewald.com/blog/?p=4423

After all, you don't want to just admit that Apple invented the rounded rectangle.

Hard to tell whether you're being sarcastic or not, but for what it's worth I wouldn't say that Apple deserves no credit. (I think they deserve lot of credit, but copying is something they do too.)

I really don't see how Apple's actions some 30 years ago excuse obvious trade dress violations by HP. Even if we accept that Apple "copied" Xerox, it is still clear that HP is grossly copying the iMac design. How is that remotely acceptable?

Sorry, I'm not trying to say that its relevant to any case that Apple might raise. IANAL, let alone an American one. I'm trying to point out that copying is rife (and, I would argue, legitimate) in technology.

For the record, I am being sarcastic (which I believe the linked post makes clear).

That's not really the same at all: hardware design and software design are very different legally. Apple didn't copy the physical design of the Xerox Star, whereas it's pretty clear that HP are 'inspired' by the iMac here.

Industrial design and software design are rather different.

- And they didn't copy the software or GUI either. They took the concepts and did something, if not entirely different, then at least something fairly original with them.

It might be bullish, but at least it was not blatant copying.

This bubbles up every time one of these arguments appears, bear in mind industrial design around that point was heavily constrained by toolchains and what could be manufactured. This does not give Apple a free pass, they could have picked different colour plastic, or different proportions or a dozen other things.

Manufacturing has improved massively in 30 years, that's why the argument is about now and not then.

The Xerox Star computer did not look like a Mac. That was a totally different machine.

Your comment would be fair had Apple built the Lisa to weight 100 pounds and boot in 10 minutes. If you never saw a Star in operation, I strongly suggest you watch one of the many videos available on YouTube. You'll see how little Apple borrowed beyond black letters on a white background.

And how unusable the Star really was.

I'm sad because there are a lot of great design solutions waiting to be discovered. I think a company the size of HP (and especially with their roots) should be able to provide the market novel and world-class design. The problem is that they don't want to take the risk anymore--they'd rather copy market-proven concepts. The modern film industry is in a very similar and sad spot.

I wish HP saw your comment.

This is romanticising the film industry; it has not changed much in the past few decades. People remember one or two films a year out of THOUSANDS. It's always been that way; there are a few gems in a sea of the same old shit.

I agree that this may be a decades-old problem. But it's not just that there are that many bad scripts and movies by the numbers. It's this sad reality: creating sequel 4 of a known series is a much safer financial bet than greenlighting something original. That was my analogy here.

Thousands overall maybe, but the number of mass market films is in the hundreds.

I, personally, have a familiar definition of "mass market film". I grew up in a small town with about nine total screens, usually one movie per screen and one screen per movie. Figure they turn over 4 screens per week for new releases. That's 208 movies per year. You'd need 3-4 more doublings to get it over 1000, so it's pretty clear that "hundreds" is the better order of magnitude.

I picked a year at random: 2008. The following movies were all released in 2008: The Dark Knight, Wall-E, Iron Man, Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, In Bruges, Kung Fu Panda, Gran Torino, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, and Quantum of Solace. Your average moviegoer will easily remember more than "one or two" of those (though not necessarily the same ones).

So the proportion goes from two in a thousand to maybe five in 250, or from 1 in 500 to 1 in 50.

Is this a 'good artists copy, great artists steal' example? I get the sense they're underestimating the modern consumer. Even though the shape and color have been duplicated, the slightly educated consumer will likely notice the cheap plastics and same crappy OS that made up the beige boxes.

I am not a lawyer but it seems to me that the concept of trade dress is being abused here.

Trade dress like trademark doesn't exist to protect design. It exists to prevent consumers from actually thinking they are buying a different product. However much of a "knock-off" this might be, can you seriously argue someone would actually believe this is an Apple? Seriously.

You don't argue it, you do surveys and see if it confuses people. Remember, trade dress doesn't just protect the dress as seen in store. It protects, e.g., someone noticing their neighbor's new computer that she says she is very happy with. I can totally see an unsophisticated consumer confusing the two.

As a consumer, I couldn't care less. Android makes dropdown notification screen: good feature -> apple steals it -> yay. Apple makes slide to unlock: good feature -> android steals it -> yay. Honestly I'm more frustrated when the don't incorporate good ideas: Win7 & Ubuntu unity have awesome keyboard window management features and when I use OSX I find myself wondering why the hell Apple hasn't stolen these features yet. They are good features, your OS is WORSE for not having them (i.e. it's not just a "design choice" imo, window management/tiling is simply worse on Mac). I wish some pc manufacturer would rip off the MPB as faithfully as possible so I could have a decent linux notebook!

Listen to Steve Jobs v1, steal good ideas! Furthermore, this article only speaks to superficial "features", i.e. the look of the box, so I care even less. Insofar as it hurts consumers by confusing them, it's bad, otherwise I say steal and steal alike.

Assuming consumers are not confused/misled, is there any harm to consumers posed by this sort of copying?

There's a big difference between stealing and outright copying.

Android didn't see iOS and then steal every single of element of it, they looked to it for inspiration and incorporated the parts they liked with their own ideas. Same thing with Apple introducing new features to iOS inspired by Android or WebOS.

If HP had looked at Apple products, and incorporated certain aspects of the design (say, the matte aluminum finish), while adding their own ideas, people would be lauding them for moving things forward. Instead, we have this, which is an outright clone.

Slide-to-unlock was pioneered by Neonode long before Apple even considered going into the phone business.

Apple's patent references the Neonode patent. I don't think patent law works the way you think it does. Neonode's patent 8,095,879 was only granted in January 2012 (filing date Dec 2002.)

See the references on Apple's 8,209,637 patent. It references Neonode's patent 8,095,879.

I think this is a good thing. I know plenty of people who have bought an iMac because it looks cool, not because it's a Mac running OSX. Now people can have a machine that looks trendy like a Mac, but (I'm assuming) at a lower price, and without the hassle of having to install Windows on bootcamp afterwards (or learn how to use OSX and then complain when they realise it's not Windows).

For Mac users looking for better keyboard window management, I recommend Spectacle. It's free and open-source:

http://spectacleapp.com/

Who cares.

This is getting ridiculous. Originality counts when buying art, not tools. This is a box with some electronics inside. Does it do the job better than other computing devices?

This is like complaining when Craftsman came out with polished metal wrenches that look just like Snap-On. Stop trying to make computing into a fashion statement.

While your viewpoint is in a way logical, that's just not how the average consumer operates. Design aesthetics absolutely do impact consumer's purchasing decisions, whether or not they are explicitly aware of it or not. Poor design can undersell a great working product. And vis versa.

Design matters even when it's not art. There's a great little documentary called "Objectified". It's worth watching if you want to see a rebuttal for your opinion.

You misread my point about tools. Design has value. Originality doesn't. Nobody is complaining that HP's new product has bad design; in fact, they seem to be complaining that it follows Apple's good design.

This is petty vanity.

He said originality doesn't matter, not that design doesn't matter. Design is very important, in fact it's probably so important that when faced between the choice of good design and original design it's probably best to err towards good design.

I do care what my kit looks like.

Part of my consideration of price of the Apple kit I purchased was that it is prettier than a lot of other kit. I spend most of my life looking at it so I'd prefer it to be pleasing to the eye.

HP isn't making your kit any uglier. What you're saying is not that you care what your kit looks like, but that you want to make sure that the other person's kit looks uglier than your kit.

Ok, I get it. Computers are the new fashion item for the masses, and Apple is the current trendsetter. Don't whine when other companies follow the trend. You really aren't special because your handbag has little LVs printed on them.

No I am saying I care what my kit looks like, I don't care what other people's kit looks like or if they care.

I was stating that in my case it's slightly more than just a tool, nor did I say that I buy my kit based on what other people will think of it.

You're right, fashion is bunk, I made a decision based on a personal aesthetic and an enjoyment of nice design, which at the time Apple best met (and currently still do). I would love it if every computer on the planet was a joy to look at, pretty things make people feel good.

To actually give an opinion on the HP machine I do think that what HP have done here is extremely lazy. There is nothing wrong with people taking influence from Apples (or anyone elses) successful design work, look at the Samsung Series 9 for a good example of matching the trend whilst being novel.

Design is constantly inspired and influenced by what comes before. Everything is a remix. There is an obvious and often noted influence upon Apple from Dieter Rams work at Braun, but never outright copying.

> This is a box with some electronics inside.

Except HP tried this for years, and apparently decided it didn't work. It turns out that aesthetics actually do matter. After all, if they didn't, why would HP copy Apple at all?

I think the reason this gets attention is that it's a symptom of one of the underlying problems with the PC hardware industry.

The big guys tend to be, for lack of a better term, lazy. It's not just that they copy, it's that when they copy, they tend to do so poorly and miss a lot of what made the original design good in the first place.

PC users have been suffering through bad design and questionable build quality for years, and rather than sit down and think through their designs, the major manufacturers have taken to making superficial copies of Apple's hardware.

This is the reason I've been so excited about Vizio getting into the PC market.

http://www.vizio.com/all-in-one/overview

http://www.vizio.com/thin-light/gallery

They've done a decent job of showing that it's possible to design nice-looking, well-built PCs without outright aping Apple. I actually think the AiOs are prettier than the iMac, personally.

Which isn't to say they're perfect. I own one of the 14" T+Ls, and while it's very good on the whole, it has some issues like a meh-tastic touchpad.

But it's still worlds better than what any of the established PC manufacturers have been doing, and it's kind of sad that a company that had never built a computer before has managed to design one that's better than most of what's being built by companies with decades of experience.

Sorry, but this is pathetic, are you saying there is no application of human creative skill, no imagination, no expression involved when Ive (and team) designed the iMac? How is it not copying to take all these creative ideas and slavishly copy them?

To dismiss industrial design as only valuable as a tool, never to be considered art, is completely close-minded. Art is in the eye of the beholder, what is art is subjective, and last time I checked nobody made you in charge of what art is.

Edit: Expanding on my point, why not think of this instead as an art movement? A group of artists have agreed on general principles, but this does not give license to slavishly copy each other to the finest details, to make exactly the same paintings. They can use the same materials, the same paint, the same brushes, the same techniques, but not paint exactly the same picture. What HP has essentially done here is said "I like the Mona Lisa, let's make one exactly like that".

It's a different form factor. Unlike the iMac, the Spectre One contains electronic components in the stand.

A stand which is very "unMaclike."

Images here: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/09/hp-spectre-one/

It's not as if HP just entered the all in one PC market.

And this one may get something the iMac's probably won't - a touch screen.

Yeah, it does look quite a bit different in most of the press shots than it does in the first post of the blog. Similar, but not enough that I would be that upset about it.

The keyboard and trackpad though? Blatant ripoffs.

Yeah, the profile of this machine looks radically different than the profile of an iMac.

People forget that almost all all-in-one desktops are effectively just clones of past flatscreen stands/mountings, with computer bits crammed in, the bended metal stand of the iMac already existed as a mounting choice for some monitors, then from a design standpoint Apple effectively just stuck an extremely thick monitor on the bended stand.

The only exception to this was the sunflower iMac, which I don't remember seeing any monitor with a stand/mounting system anywhere close to it (though perhaps there were some in the medical field that had similar types of articulating arms, just mounted to hard surfaces), and of course even that mounting system wasn't that different than many amazing lamp/mirror designs, they just stuck a monitor on the end instead of a lamp/mirror.

This whole design recrimination thing is rather silly way to treat these design choices. Any field that has similar bare minimum elements/requirements and is focusing on functionality instead of artistic flare, only has a small number of design choices within the chosen design philosophy. Minimalism when applied to tools will only produce so much variation, the stand on this thing itself certainly qualifies as being quite different.

What's interesting is that HP also has the all-in-one Z1 workstations[1] that have a more interesting design than the iMac. What's especially nice about them is that it's designed so that components can be replaced.

[1] http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/workstations/z1_fe...

Maybe not an example of great or innovative design (other than the replaceable components part) but clearly something original. While we've seen black monitors before, the feet and the arm and all that are interesting and different.

Contrast this with the iMac "inspired" one and you can see that this Z1 looks the way it needs to for its function- while the iMac one is an attempt to copy apple's aesthetics.

Its a confusion of the purpose of design.

Apple makes their products look good, but they are designed for functional reasons, not looks. The Z1 is a design that is made for functional reasons as well.

That's indeed a very, very interesting design. And it looks good to booth. I hope they're not abandoning that idea, this is the kind of innovation that really benefits the consumer.

The headline confused me, then I checked the article and laughed.

Seriously, though, I'm really curious what HP is thinking here. I honestly can't imagine Apple not suing them over this. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with it, but after the Samsung/Apple iPhone lawsuit, it's pretty obvious Apple is going to defend their design IP in court.

It just seems like HP is inviting a big headache when there's a lot of other designs they could have used. Heck, they'll need to sell a lot of these just to cover their lawyer costs.

I'm still confused. What would they sue over? A qwerty keyboard? A rectangular monitor? Having a silvery stand? What?

I've looked at the two pictured presented and I don't see anything similar besides standard design choices.

I'm certainly no expert, but Apple successfully sued eMachines over the eOne that, to my eye, looks "inspired" by the then-current iMac, compared to this HP that looks like an outright copy of the now-current iMac. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EOne

A qwerty keyboard? A rectangular monitor? Having a silvery stand? What?

Surely you don't think that's the extent of the similarity, right? Nearly anyone that sees this machine and is familiar with the iMac is going to say "that looks like a copy of the iMac"; people don't say that about every machine with a QWERTY keyboard and a rectangular monitor on a silvery stand.

> Surely you don't think that's the extent of the similarity, right?

Yes I do. I don't see anything apple inspired here? Again, what would they sue over? Having a thin form factor?

> I don't see anything similar except standard design choices

How do you classify design choices as standard?

What kills me is there is a great touchscreen with dramatically different design headed to market, just need to add a CPU:

http://www.wacom.com/en/products/cintiq/cintiq24touch.aspx

I think the Cintiqs are a little more expensive than a multi-touch monitor.

but why? I'm betting part of their cost comes from their limited scale.

because Wacom makes pressure sensitive tablets/screens specifically for cases where pressure sensitive is necessary.

Apple would need to outright purchase Wacom if they were going to incorporate pressure sensitive screens - because to do it right, you need to license Wacom's patent library. Which Wacom won't do because they make a killing already by having exclusive technology.

So everything "converges" to Apple designs because it is the end all designs of everything ... Or so say the anti Apple crowd in here and Samsung and other copycats. Disappointed with HP in this shameless look a like product.

The all-in-one doesn't look all that much like an iMac but the keyboard and trackpad sure look like they copied Apple.

How would you envision a desktop trackpad that doesn't converge on the design of the apple magic trackpad?

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/mice-pointers/mice/wireless-to...

There can't be any other possible design, can it?

http://technabob.com/blog/2011/09/13/logitech-wireless-touch...

WACOM tablets http://www.wacom.com/en/products/bamboo.aspx

Indeed, instead it just looks like an ACD.

http://www.apple.com/displays/

I'm not sure if you are kidding, but I'm quite certain that my dad (who owns an iMac) wouldn't be able to tell them apart at BestBuy.

You realize the second photo actually is an iMac, not the HP product? There is a huge white (or aluminium) bar at the bottom of the screen of the iMac, which the HP doesn't have. From the photo I'd estimate it is at least 10cm high.

If your dad couldn't tell the difference, maybe he needs new glasses? Or perhaps the money for an iMac was wasted on him and he could have gone with a cheaper (plastic instead of aluminium) PC.

It's more like a thunderbolt display: http://www.apple.com/displays/

EDIT: I see that lloeki said the same already.

"If your dad couldn't tell the difference, maybe he needs new glasses? Or perhaps the money for an iMac was wasted on him and he could have gone with a cheaper (plastic instead of aluminium) PC."

I wouldn't expect a comment like this from someone with over 14,000 karma, and who has been a member of HN for over 5 years.

That makes it even worse. This whole "X is not copying Apple" is getting ridiculous at HN...

Whatever - the whole thing is so pointless. Just downvote me into oblivion and be done with it.

27" iMac owner here. The bar at the bottom of an iMac is more like 5-6 cm.

Not having an aluminium bar at the bottom makes it very much look like the Apple Cinema Display, though.

Your point is ridiculous! I'm so angry at the moment... How can people say something like this... I don't get it. Non-tech-guys don't see such little differences. Especially if they are bit older. They just don't care and often people wouldn't even see the HP logo on the bezel either. They don't care. It looks like an iMac, which saw in a TV ad and want to buy one. Plus if the best buy guy says it is the same thing they will believe your words cause they don't know better.

It's not even about design but also about marketing budget which Apple pays for it's products. With copying the design, you even get the marketing for free...

I hate to say this but at the moment the whole PC / Tablet industry is copying Apple. And this nothing good at all. Not for Apple and not for everyone else!

I'm absolutely baffled by the emotional reaction of anger over this.

Is this really something to be angry about?

I mean, I feel anger at times. Anger at libraries being shut, poverty in the local estates, jobs being cut, growing up without a father present, that we go to war, that cycling in London is more dangerous than it need be.

But I don't get angry when <company A> does anything to <company B> for any values of A and B.

I didn't get angry because someone copied Apple but that someone would say that old people like my would need new glasses if they couldn't differentiate both machines. This arrogant and offensive at the same time. What makes you say something like that? Not everyone knows everything about technology. My Dad is 67 and I know he couldn't distinguish those machines but that is ok. He doesn't need to.

HN is not Digg or Youtube comments.

It's ok if your dad can't distinguish such things - but maybe you shouldn't quote him as authority for "x copied y" then.

"I hate to say this but at the moment the whole PC / Tablet industry is copying Apple. And this nothing good at all. Not for Apple and not for everyone else!"

I understand you took it as an insult to your dad. But from your comment, it seems you are also angry because someone copied Apple. I really don't understand that part. I also don't understand why this is bad for anyone other than Apple.

It's not that bad for Apple cause if you copy Apple you will never be better than Apple itself. Think about it. You can't win Apples own game. You could win if you would come up with something better BUT if everybody is busy copying who will do exactly that? Don't get me wrong I'm not talking about hardware specs.

It is bad for everybody because a) if this trend goes on there will be no "different" products anymore and everything will at some point look like it comes from Apple and b) there will be no competition at all. Competition is good for a industry. Even Apple needs some competition to get better and better.

HP sells better hardware for less price than Apple. Their only problem was design and now they have solved it by copying Apple. I was looking for an all-in-one computer to buy and now that HP computers have both great design and great specs, I will probably buy them. I am no longer in a trade-off between ugly design and worse specs for my money.

His point is completely sane. Your point is completely delusional. Having a rectangular monitor on a stand is not Apple's "trade dress", "IP", or anything else. It is a standard design choice that has been around for ages.

HP didn't copy anything here worth mentioning.

> Non-tech-guys don't see such little differences. Especially if they are bit older.

Just because my mother can't tell any of the modern cars apart doesn't mean they don't look different in some way. She's just not educated on the differences, and doesn't know what to look for. That doesn't mean that Hyundai and Kia should be sued for designing their cars to incorporate styles from the most popular luxury cars on the market; in the end they're still selling you something that isn't nearly as high quality as the competitors they're imitating, and nobody walks into a Hyundai or Kia dealer thinking they're getting a German piece of engineering.

It's worth noting that older non-tech-guys haven't been able to tell the difference between Macs and PCs forever, even when they have wildly differing designs, to the point that it's a tech support cliche now.

"If your dad couldn't tell the difference, maybe he needs new glasses? Or perhaps the money for an iMac was wasted on him and he could have gone with a cheaper (plastic instead of aluminium) PC." Yes, because the reason people pay "more" for Apple hardware is only because of the looks. It wouldn't take new glasses to see the difference between Windows 8 and OSX.

Maybe you need a refresher on what constitutes a constructive comment.

I should have mentioned that it doesn't look like an iMac if you go to the Engadget article that TNW references. They have pictures from different angles and those don't look much like an iMac to me.

i.e. http://www.engadget.com/photos/hp-spectre-one/#5256830

Congratulations HP, and good luck with that.

I realize that many HN readers (including myself) are working on their own products which are almost indistinguishable from what came before and what will come after, and we hope that no competitor will ever be able to get a slice of our pie, but if I put on my consumer hat for a minute, here's what I have to say:

Thanks goodness most cars have round wheels, steering wheels at chest height, and reasonably similar control layout. Had that industry developed in today's environment they'd all be suing each other left and right over door handles that pulled upward to open the door and sun roof patent licensing deals. Who knows, maybe back in the day they did.

Thank goodness for wintel and competition. How dare people look down their noses at the market forces that produced a sub 1k laptop (or sub 400). Many people, myself included, are pretty lucky that the "race to the bottom" resulted in home computers that we (or our parents) could afford, allowing us to eventually become part of the hacker community.

Congratulations to Apple for making a beautiful high end product, but the fact that their product is beautiful and high end should be all the market advantage they need/deserve, and if they can't out compete imitators like HP, they don't deserve our business.

While they are similar in some ways, they are not as similar as the article makes them out to be. From images I found elsewhere, the iMac seems to have its components behind the screen, and a very thin stand, while the Spectre One seems to have its components in its thick stand, while its screen is thinner. I think the article is misleading by not showing that, which to me makes them completely different designs. As for the keyboard and trackpad, of course they're going to try to make them as small as possible.

Let's turn to our wise friend Macalope[1] and hear what s/he said just last week:

    Samsung wasn’t copying Apple, it’s just that smartphones naturally evolve into 
    flat touchscreens with minimal buttons on the front and slide to unlock and 
    a virtual keyboard and an Apple logo on the back and oops we went too far.

[1]: http://www.macworld.com/article/1168385/macalope_the_sincere...

It surprise me that it took pc makers this long time to finally copy macbooks and imac.

Really this is worth getting worked up over. Honestly it looks a bit like an iMac, who cares, it's clearly not an iMac and the HP logo is an extra big giveaway for anyone who might be confused.

The aluminium iMac design has been around for 5 years now it's hardly surprising that what is obviously a good design is going to be copied by its competitors. Why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth?

This looks as much like an Apple as one PC clone looked like another PC clone years ago, which is to say "a lot but who cares..."

It almost seems that we're to a point where we just have to accept this as an industry. The frequency of outright copies seems to be increasing, and there's not much the Apples of the world can do about it. Seems like this is common place on the web too, where various design memes (the ribbon thing, etc. etc.) eventually spread to a large number of sites. Given that Apple is still making boatloads of cash, it seems like this isn't reducing their incentive to innovate.

(Not that I'm endorsing what seems to be an outright copy)

The frequency of outright copies seems to be increasing, and there's not much the Apples of the world can do about it.

Well, they did just win $1.5 billion from Samsung…

Not much different than doing nothing about it when companies the size (and of the profit) of Apple and Samsung are the involved parties.

I worked for HP in 2011 and at that time (after Hurd was fired) they were clearly making only a very small profit on the computer business and the different business units justified doing so to get brand recognition despite 1 digit profit margin (compared to double digit from the PSG group). But they had no will to compete on the consumer market, it's probably a change of strategy to try to make double digit profit margin on consumer device. The sad thing is they didn't even try to be innovative they just copy whatever Apple is doing.

You may agree/disagree with the patent system but you have to be really dishonest or blind to tell me it's not a copy of an Apple product. They will probably fool some family with it but I suspect the majority of people are going to buy the "original" Apple.

Really sad, HP can't stick a valid strategy or a CEO ;)

Yea, Leo tried to sell it which led to backlash. Luckily Leo was replaced with Meg in time to stop this.

So no one else can create a minimalist style keyboard without being accused of copying Apple?

That's like plagiarizing an entire novel and saying "what, I can't use the phrase 'it was dark and stormy'?"

Its a commodity PC filled with Samsung guts.

Is the keyboard the only thing you looked at in this picture?

Take a look at this one http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4500970

"I have always regarded Apple products – and the kind words Jony Ive has said about me and my work – as a compliment. Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses. [...] I am always fascinated when I see the latest Apple products. Apple has managed to achieve what I never achieved: using the power of their products to persuade people to queue to buy them."[1] --Dieter Rams (Braun designer from 1961 to 1995)

[1]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-R...

I think Apple's clear use of Dieter Rams' design language is more of an "homage" than a "ripoff". The fact that the Apple products and Braun products are separated by decades and in different product categories makes a difference.

Disagree, in at least terms of the Calculator - that's not homage, that's blatant copying. Colors, identical, button shape and layout, identical, ratios, identical. The thing looks like someone traced it in Photoshop. That's not "homage".

Dieter Rams made toasters and radios, and Apple extrapolated his design cues to things he never made, like laptops and trackpads.

That's a far cry from HP taking someone's design decisions for a all-in-one computer, doing no extrapolation, and using them to make a competing all-in-one computer.

Comparing the design of a toaster with the Mac Pro design is not the same thing as comparing the design of a standalone PC with a standalone Mac. Especially if the company who copies had much different design before "everyone started copying Apple".

Inspiration is one thing but copying even the keyboard, mouse and the trackpad is a bit too much, don't you think? PC makers seem so desperate at the moment...

Apple took a design that was made 40 years ago and used it in their products. Ofcourse, Apple is not in radio or toaster business. It may be correct from the eye of a lawyer. But, if you show both these designs to someone who is neither affiliated apple or technology what would they think? It looks like a blatant copy to me. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would agree. We should not confuse good marketing with innovation.

I think this is hard for engineers, software engineers probably particularly, to get, but there's a thing called a design language.

No question Apple has used Rahm's design language, they're unapologetic about it. In the past, Apple used Frog design to make a design language for Apple (you see this most notably on the Apple //c and products of that era.)

If Apple were mindlessly copying Braun products and selling turntables and radios that looked just like the Braun versions then we'd be saying that's very stupid and unoriginal.

But understanding the reason Rahms made certain choices and then applying that set of perspectives and perception of the utility of objects to another context, namely computers and accessories, is a very different thing.

Sure the calculator app on the iPhone is a clear homage to Rahms, but this is very different from the iPod which uses the same design language for a completely different product with different needs.

I think there might be a level of observation that engineers sometimes don't have, such that they think that "this just looks good" and "You're paying a lot for it being pretty" (which is funny about products that are actually cheaper, and have been for 1.5 decades.) This leads to being unable to tell the difference between samsung slavishly copying Apple's look, or HP drawing very heavily from Apple's look to an assumption that its the "only way this can be engineered."

The reason you think that it is inevitable that products would end up looking like the iPhone is because Apple makes them look inevitable-- eg: they are very well designed.

A very well designed item is perfect-- it is the perfect form for its functions.

But Apple's competitors are making different products, and if they were competent at design, they would end up looking very different-- are these not differentiated products in terms of function? Features? Obviously they are. But the reason they fail is they then try to slavishly make it look like the Apple product, which undermines the whole point of differentiation in the first place... and also forces the product into a design that was created for a different product.

Nothing is inevitable. Think of the history of mouses and how clunky they were in the 1980s-- and Apple's mice in the 1980s and 1990s had a great deal of human factors engineering and design in them-- they have always been well designed-- were each one of them the "ultimate" inevitable design? Obviously not.

I'd just like to add something: there are some of us that love nice (alternatively read: Apple) hardware but do not want to run OSX. Sure I could buy a MBP and install linux or Windows on it; but that is absurd. Mac hardware is designed to work with Mac software and it does a great job at that.

I really was hoping someone would do a nice job of making a macbook-like product without having to rip Apple off wholesale; I'm still waiting for this. No other laptop in the world feels as good to use as an Apple notebook.

Do you know how horrible every other trackpad in the world is?

Why can't HP copy Rahm's language?

The could use the same language, but they aren't. Even in this device which is copying the iMac, they copied the look of it, and failed to use the same design language!

If I have to boycot every company that does stupid shit, I'll have to manufacture my own hardware, if this keeps happening.

This goddamn industry.

so no one is now allowed to make silver screens and keyboards, they only allowed white, beige and black!

the design have differences, minor of course, but ... its just a keyboard and screen

While it definitely resembles an iMac, HP has been exploring the post-mouse era a bit with their Touchsmart series, and this could be seen as a cousin to that brand.

I think that’s exactly what makes this so strange. HP already was selling all-in-one PCs that did not look like iMacs at all. They could have continued with that – but for some reason decided not to.

In fairness to HP, the Touchsmart line is terrible. Bad build quality, BSOD's on first boot, awkward design decisions, atrocious touch experience, and literally forty preinstalled and thoroughly rotten "touch" apps that join forces with dozens of sludgeware packages to make the first hour of use punishing. The Spectre looks like a work of art compared to them.

(By awkward design decisions: there's a secret chamber that holds a secret USB port that's already got a secret USB stick in it that drives the radio for the included wireless keyboard and mouse)

Here's another angle[0]. It doesn't even begin to ressemble an HP TouchSmart[1].

[0] http://www.engadget.com/photos/hp-spectre-one/#5256829

[1] http://img1.lesnumeriques.com/produits/23/3739/23_3739_2.jpg

To be fair looking at these it's a fair distance away from an iMac as well.

That's where we disagree, looking at these it's a completely unfair distance away from an iMac (read: way too close to even slightly think it's not a design copycat game)

There are designers out there that know how to put both original and great designs: [0] is my keyboard and mouse at work. [1] is good design, except the front begs for a 4:3 screen (which would make it gorgeous) instead of that 16:9+big block below. [2] shows how good artists steal instead of copy.

[0] http://a404.idata.over-blog.com/1/68/27/41/logitech_dinovo_m...

[1] http://www.mydigitallife.info/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/gat...

[2] http://static.pcinpact.com/images/bd/news/62654-sony-vaio-js...

"Post-mouse era"? Really?

So where's that iMac with the multi-touch gesture capable IPS display again? Looking, looking...

What's that you say? Such a product has never existed? Apple has never made a touch screen iMac? Oh dear.

What's that you say? HP introduced their first TouchSmart system featuring a polished aluminum housing with integrated display and touch screen on JANUARY 7, 2007, putting them only 8 months ahead of Apple's release? (IQ770. Look it up, kids.)

CURSE YOU, FACTS!

This is about trade dress, not features. Multi-touch and IPS are irrelevant.

And the IQ770 looks like a hideous product Apple would never, ever make: http://www.strongengineering.com/images/products/detail/hp40...

Oh my god, that's a real picture.

When I pulled it up, I figured it was one of those "Here's the kind of thing PC maker build" pictures, where a bunch of irrelevant things are put on because people might want them. It had to be a joke image.

Nope. It's on Amazon[1]. Their picture looks a tad better though. Were there any industrial designers on that project?

[1] http://www.amazon.com/HP-TouchSmart-IQ770-Processor-SuperMul...

I was curious how the fashion industry deals with this problem.

I mean when is a pair of slacks a knock-off, a copied design, and an original design. I would think the clothing fashion industry would have way more experience with this.

This came up via Google: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/business/worldbusiness/04i...

Somewhat old, but it reads just like these Apple v. whomever stories. Unfortunately it looks like they landed on the same solution as the tech industry; litigation. But now that I really think about it, what else can one do?

Yeah, Apple clearly invented plastic and shapes.

HP deserves to get roasted in the court of public opinion on this one. Absolutely pathetic. This is the type of stuff no-name Chinese fly by night companies do to make a quick buck hoping they can trick consumers into buying the wrong thing. It's so shameless I'm surprised they didn't change their logo to a pear or something. If HP has any self respect left they need to just discontinue this product now and publicly apologize to Apple.

The look of all-in-one computers is fluff. What people are doing with computers is the heart of the matter. Why aren't people doing more with such large multitouch interfaces available for so cheap? (I've seen all-in-one multitouch PCs for a little over $1000.)

I think one could do something really cool with statistics and scheduling programs using such interfaces. Why aren't more people using these things as little physical desktops?

A big screen laying flat on a desk is uncomfortable to look at, and a big screen facing towards you like a computer display is uncomfortable to touch continuously. The term is "gorilla arm".

> A big screen laying flat on a desk is uncomfortable to look at

What about a "drafting table" setup?

> a big screen facing towards you like a computer display is uncomfortable to touch continuously. The term is "gorilla arm".

Please re-read my proposal as written by someone who's already aware of this.

> What about a "drafting table" setup?

Sounds interesting.

Keeping your hands up or head down for long time sucks.

Funny, but I used horizontal workspaces with high-contrast stylus driven reflective display/interfaces for decades. When I was a kid, those were called "desks" with "paper."

Working like that for a long time sucks, but so does an "ergonomically correct" PC workstation. Also strange is that my girlfriend's RSI (non-carpal tunnel) is more aggravated by the PC workstation than it is by writing with pen and paper on a horizontal desk.

Sure, but the keyboard-down-display-up workspace dates back to the typewriter.

Workspace "up?" From what I remember of using a typewriter, I was still looking downwards at the "display." All of the people I see in co-working spaces and the like on laptops, even the 17" ones are mostly still looking downwards. Maybe they aren't looking so far downwards as the desktop, though my impression is that people still look downwards a lot at their keyboards.

I don't think that we're so vulnerable to looking downwards as people seem to say. So long as we have someplace we can rest our arms, I don't think we've exhausted the possible good workstation/display configurations.

This all-in-one is ok but their Z1 workstation is actually pretty nice. It actually has easily accessible internals.

HP Makes the TouchSmart line which is an all-in-one computer and is not similar to an iMac so clearly they know how to do original design. So what they heck were they thinking when they released this product? Did they think no one would notice? It boggles the mind.

I wonder why there was no such furor when refrigerator companies copied each other's designs.

If I was HP I would be ashamed of releasing such a product. I would not want to be an engineer working there. Perhaps they don't have any engineers left which is why they are releasing such a knock-off.

In my opinion, the computer itself looks nothing like an imac. The keyboard, and touchpad however, do look exactly like Apple's equivalent products.

Apple preys on the ignorant. HP now preys on the ignorant of the ignorant who don't know the difference.

? Because they take design seriously? And another company wants in on their success? Is this not normal for design - cause i feel like it is. Company X finds pleasing design, others copy. Some other company / designer innovates, some other company copies.

I really don't know what all the fuss is about.

No, I meant the Apple consumers who make the decision to buy a product based on looks over most other factor due to their cognitive ability. Within that subsection of consumers lays an even more naive group of consumers who would buy an HP Spectre, not knowing the difference from an iMac.

It's what's on the inside that counts.

The marketing tag line being: "Sue us!"

so the Personal Computer industry is like every other industry. How is this news.

Don't manufacturers/designers in the fashion industry (sunglasses, clothing, hats, shoes ETC.) The auto industry, house design, art, home furnishing, appliance, Hollywood movies and sitcoms, advertising industry, landscape (I could go on and on) do the same thing?

Please stop with this...

Yet this is a site that mostly focuses on the tech industry so of course we are going to focus in on stories like this as opposed to other stories in different fields.

You are missing my point completely.

Fun sidenote, the sunglass industry doesn't actually copy anyone else... they literally OWN the entire industry themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica

Secret monopolies ftw. (LensCrafters' doctors have you buy designer glasses you need. Vertical integration gone wrong.)

There is a slight difference though, you should still be able to tell distinctly at a distance this is an HP vs. a Mac. Having a high resolution display built into an all-in-one body makes sense to copy, but using the same color scheme regardless of materials with the same shapes makes it look like a copy of an iMac.

I am not disputing that HP made it to look like a Mac. I am only saying that this happens in literally every industry, yet we don't see headlines because some pair of Walmart imported sunglasses look like Oakleys.

Yes, but there's more than one fashion house or car company that people imitate. It's not like everyone is wearing obvious Versace knock-offs and driving Ferrari clones.

As much as I love my Apple products and will probably continue to buy them, I wish some other people were coming out with interesting ideas that would gain traction.

<start pathetic argument> I can't believe Apple is suing HP for making a computer with a keyboard, mouse and a monitor with round corners. Apple is a patent troll, suing instead of innovating</end android fanboi argument>

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