Apple accused of ripping off famous Swiss clock design
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
Why now is this linguistic bludgeon required?
We'll all feel a lot better, and the blunt and snarky will realize that their posts are having the reverse effect expected.
OK, well, we'll at least all feel better.
So there's nothing intrinsically wrong about snarky comments. It's when the snarky comments are targeted at individuals undeserving of such harshness that there's a problem.
If someone makes a "Show HN" post, and you think their work is incompetent, or that the problem they're solving isn't important, that doesn't excuse being snarky at them.
If, on the other hand, they have blatantly ripped off someone else's work, snarkiness would be fine (assuming you have damned good reason to believe that they did so intentionally, and that they did not ask permission).
We should be happy to make people worry about unethical behavior here before posting, because the ethics of your behavior can usually be assessed by introspection. We should not make people think twice about their work being incompetent before posting, because competence cannot easily be judged through introspection. Only by actually posting and seeing constructive feedback will someone be able to know how they can improve.
Of course, this applies to more than Show HN posts; people who read HN can also have their work posted by other people. The point is that we don't really need to worry about hurting Apple's feelings over blatantly ripping off someone else's work.
They probably thought the clock company should feel honored about it. I would like to see their faces now.
Nowadays, it seems they're quasi-governmental, but back then I think they were strictly a national org. It'd be like DARPA trying to get royalties on the internet or something similar. I could be wrong in this line of thinking, of course.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_New_York for one famous example.
So, while you are right about the ability of a gov to register and/or patent things, I'm surprised they'd be willing to follow through. It's not as though Apple is trying to make money off of them by selling a knock off product or piggybacking on an advert campaign.
Good point none the less and thanks for the explanation.
It's not about money being made, it's a legal necessity that a trademark owner needs to actively defend the mark in order to keep it.
Sometimes the claims of infringement are upheld, sometimes not. The more important thing, legally, is that NY needs to show that they are actively defending the mark to prevent trademark dilution.
For the record, the Department Of Defense frequently applied for new patents, many which I presume come from DARPA research.
In the USA, the government cannot have copyright and everything is in the public domain. This is not the case in many other countries.
This is an overly broad statement. Federal government agencies in the USA can hold copyright in certain situations, and the rule doesn't apply to state or local government.
This is a really interesting page that lists ways that the government can own copyrighted works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the...
(Also the design that Apple lifted is trademarked, not copyright, but that's a different issue).
It seems more likely you're trying to dig on Apple for going thermonuclear on trade dress while at the same time stealing somebody else's intellectual property. In which case you have it backwards, and the satire here should be something about how Apple has no right copying someone else's hard work just to make a quick buck, and that a numberless clock face with highly contrasting colors seems obvious now only because they went to so much effort to work it out.
Except that's not very funny, because it's exactly right. I doubt if even the most hardcore Apple fanatics would argue SBB doesn't at least have a case. So they'll sue, and Apple might pay a license fee, or change the clock, or argue that the clock has some reason for not being a valid trademark or infringing.
And my only question is, if that case goes to trial and SBB wins and Apple has to stop shipping that clock face and pay some compensation, will HN fill up with satirical posts ranting about how you can't copyright a minimal clock face in white, black and red, how this judgment is anticompetitive, stifling to innovation and will surely be thrown out in a higher court very soon now, how much an indictment it is of the copyright system in general?
Because that would be a funny joke. Seriously, this community has been weird about Apple of late.
There's nothing satirical about that. It's pretty obvious this is about perceived hypocrisy on Apple's part. Apple sues for trade dress violations and has now been caught for reproducing someone else's design. It acted against what it perceived as a crime against itself and yet committed the same crime. Simple hypocrisy, aka moral inconsistency in actions - nothing weird about it.
If SBB wins, the natural response will be to nod and say Apple got its just deserts. Some people will argue these designs shouldn't be copyrightable in the first place, but that's a separate criticism and does not invalidate the point of hypocrisy in the first place.
(Does it really surprise you that some in the community aren't happy about Apple's win over the patents?)
That's what I'm saying. This is pretty clear-cut. There's going to be a lawsuit. It's definitely ironic, and maybe a bit hypocritical, but when does it get actually funny?
Aside from the fact that it's IP infringement, this doesn't have a lot to do with the Samsung suit, and it doesn't even have that to do with Braun, which is whence the concept of "homage" enters the Apple lexicon. So where be the satire here?
The grandparent poster was satirizing Apple's hypocrisy, not the state of design patent/trade dress laws. The satire was not about those laws being too strong. It was about how Apple says one thing but does another.
Personally, my moral compass immediately feels that this is worse than just plain copying, and I assume that is why people are reacting with a stronger anti-Apple sentiment here.
(Assuming the people who made these decisions have any interaction with each other:) If intellectual property is well grounded, Apple is right to defend their own, but wrong to copy others'. If it is not, they are wrong to defend their own, but justified in using others'. Yes, they are wrong in either case, but tu quoque is the sorry refuge taken to avoid having to admit that they are also right in either.
When someone says "murdering people is OK" and then doesn't murder - nobody is going to accuse him of hypocrisy ;)
Sorry, it's a horrible and non-factual joke. But your theory is still wrong. There is consensus in society that racism is bad and racist with friends of other race is a classical example of hypocrisy. And if by lack of consensus you mean existence of other view then murdering example is wrong because it suppose lack of consensus and your theory is tautology.
EDIT: eh, I've read your post again and I'm wrong, you're right, it's the same situation.
But is racist with with friends of other races really classical example of hypocrisy? I hadn't encountered it (but I live in monocultural country).
He probably means the classic "I'm not racist, I have black friends and all, but blacks in general do [this and that]".
Which is often considered a classic example of hypocrisy but I don't think it is. In a lot of cases it's not even racism.
E.g a guy could have Mexican friends (in the US or Mexico) but be against mexican illegal immigrants.
This is often taken to mean he is racist, but in actuality he is against illegal immigration, not against a race in general (he might consider that low end jobs are numbered, or that wages in those jobs are getting lower due to increased competition from illegal immigrants, or that lots of hungry, unemployed opportunity seekers from Mexico could resort to crime to feed themselves etc).
Even if there's no consensus on whether some beliefs are good or bad, such as in politics, doesn't hypocrisy show some sort of "character flaw" in the perpetrator? It's dishonest to push views you don't hold yourself, or rules you don't even try to live by.
Regarding showing dishonesty - yes, but "supporters of X are dishonest" is "ad personam" - that's poor argument.
Better to use hypocrisy to show "even supporters of X don't really believe their view is right, so it probably isn't".
Still, not a good argument.
Their view could be right, whether they do really believe it or not.
E.g a politician could say "don't steal", and he could be stealing himself. That he is hypocritical about it, doesn't mean stealing is "probably" right.
Hypocrisy implies a blatantly willful action. It also obliterates your argument. It is arguing against your own case.
It's not anything that automatically refutes someones arguments, it just tells me that when it comes to that subject, they're an asshole. And when someone is being an asshole, I just don't care about their arguments.
But that's too bad. Better to do what a hypocrite proposes if it's the right thing, than to ignore it because of what he does.
Here's a nice article on the topic:
There are many reasons a charge of hypocrisy might be reactionary and counter-productive. First of all, the hypocrisy mindset pays too much attention to people's personal lives and too little to their programmatic or ideological outlook. If someone is a visionary, or is trying to solve a widespread problem, it's likely that his personal life will reflect the problem whereas his policies will reflect the solution. It would then be pretty stupid to accuse him of saying one thing and doing another -- especially if everyone were pretty much in the same boat, at least until an alternative infrastructure is set up. A charge of hypocrisy might well be a pre-emptive strike designed to stymie future solutions to universal problems.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of petty minds. Wanting things to be less complex, and wanting people and societies to be without internal contradictions is understandable, but small-minded. It ignores the fact that it is often only by sinning ourselves that we can learn exactly why sinning is bad. At a certain point we are all saying one thing and doing another. This is, apart from anything else, a sure sign of our complexity, and of our capacity to rise above our current way of living and search for alternatives, no matter how deeply we're mired. Allow it, brothers!
We often strike down people with a spotted reputation only to replace them with people who are unapologetically evil. We hate to be preached at so much that we ignore the sermons we need to hear and prefer unalloyed corruption. At least it's consistent, right? At least there's no hypocrisy there! At least change is taken off the agenda! Thank Christ "hypocrisy" has absolved us of the need to feel wrong, and to make a painful change!
There are 100 people in a room, all doing A Bad Thing. They know it's a bad thing, a thing that will damage the room and everyone in it, but they can't stop. Suddenly a Visionary makes a powerful and moving speech. "We must stop doing The Bad Thing!" he says. His speech is effective: everyone stops. Except the Visionary himself, who keeps doing it. This, however, is a minor detail: the room is a better, safer place. Instead of 100 people doing The Bad Thing, only one is doing it. Suddenly a Commentator gets up. "Suckers!" he shouts. "You've stopped doing The Bad Thing, but the man who made you stop still does it! You've been had... by a hypocrite!" Soon everyone in the room is doing The Bad Thing again.
But tell me, please, who has damaged the room more, the Visionary or the Commentator? Who has the best chance of helping the room?
>"I think the concern of hypocrisy keeps us small. It keeps our world small, it keeps our horizons limited, and it keeps our self-worth as low as it can conceivably go. Because we’re defining ourselves in large part by what other people claim that we are. When the truth is, we’re all a goddamn mess. [...] The people who obsess most about hypocrisy are the people who are least willing to change. They have the least room to change. If you set yourself up as this paragon of perfection, then you have a lot to lose by being shown as anything but 100%. But, like, once you allow yourself to be imperfect in this weird wabi-sabi way, your world gets a lot bigger."
You just gave a perfect example of the narrow minded logic explained in the article, that cares not what is good for them to do, but if the guy that advocates it is "consistent".
Not to mention the other three paragraphs I quoted, that explain why "avoiding being hypocritical" is not always possible.
To put it in very crude way, if you see a beaten-down meth addict telling you "just say no to meth", I'd say DO listen to him, even if he's doing it.
In the room example it is stated the bad thing affects everyone in the room to some detriment. Even though the visionary got everyone to stop, the eventual outcome is the detrimental one since the visionary keeps doing the bad thing. Therefore, in the end it doesn't matter if one of them or all of them does the bad thing. So, the fact that the visionary was a hypocrite has doomed them all. Only when the visionary is not a hypocrite can they all be saved. I believe the bad thing in a room is not a good example of the point to be made. This is more about the potential stupidity of groups of people following leaders (visionary and commentator both) without thinking for themselves. The best thing for the self-interest of the people involved was to individually decide to leave the room.
No, it's not the detrimental one at all. 1 person doing a bad thing (e.g farting in a room) is not at all the same as 100 persons doing a bad thing (e.g farting in a room).
>Therefore, in the end it doesn't matter if one of them or all of them does the bad thing. So, the fact that the visionary was a hypocrite has doomed them all.
No, it's their giving importance not to the idea of doing the good thing but to the consistency of the visionary that doomed them all. That's the whole point of the article.
>Only when the visionary is not a hypocrite can they all be saved.
No, they can also be saved if they STOP being obsessed with consistency in the visionary, and instead evaluate the visionary's ideas _in themselves_ and in how they benefit them all.
>The best thing for the self-interest of the people involved was to individually decide to leave the room.
In that thought experiment, as in lots of situations in life, there is no "leaving the room". Say, the room is earth, and the visionary is some early ecologist. If someone finds out that he doesn't recycle it shouldn't translate to "oh, hypocrisy, we shouldn't recycle either".
It would much better translate to: "Hmm, the guy doesn't do what he preaches, but we will continue doing it because it does good. He is a hypocrite, but, hey, at least the guy told us about the necessity of doing this thing in the first place, something we haven't figured at the time.".
But that's not a knee-jerk reaction, so it is too much to ask from some people.
It was stated that the bad thing damages the room and the people in it as well; I took this to mean physical damage possibly leading to death because otherwise it doesn't make any sense. Therefore, with the two options that we are apparently forced into, the group is doomed regardless. It's only a matter of time. I say forced into two options because of the artificial restriction that the people cannot leave the room, which was not stated in the original explanation. Another out would be for the group to kill the visionary once he started back to doing the bad thing, remember that this damages them, which showed he could not be trusted and did not care for the well-being of the other people in the room. Is that not an option as well? In the end, the only choice the people had to fit their best interests was to leave the room, unless you can justify the murder of the visionary. But you took that away and I'm led to believe that they have no other options, so in the end they are all doomed regardless of either choice they go with.
Changing the rules, or adding new rules as I respond, to change the thought experiment is not a good way to invalidate my conclusion. For instance, equating a room with the Earth doesn't work for me, that's different situations with different potential outcomes with different options. The bad thing in a room thought experiment, as presented, is simply a bad example if there are only two options allowed.
Now, if we're talking about a situation you are describing, where the outcome is not damaging to the people involved, except for maybe their sanity, then I can somewhat agree with what you're saying.
Also, you're assuming that a charge of hypocrisy automatically means the idea is voided. It's not - a charge of hypocrisy is an accusation of a serious character flaw.
I'm not assuming it's some general law. I know that it happens in lots of real life situations.
E.g people throwing the baby (idea) along with the bathwater (hypocrite).
Practically the problem with this is that unless you know the right thing to do before hand then you can't determine the right thing to do. The hypocrite does one thing and instructs you not to do that thing (or to do another instead) - but by their actions they're showing, rightly or wrongly, that the thing they're counselling against is something they've chosen [to some extent] for themselves.
In the case of the meth addict you assume that they're being helpful because you assume (barring personal wisdom on the matter) that meth is bad, m'kay. But perhaps they just want to keep all the lovely, lovely meth for themselves??
If a person espouses a universal good - avoiding meth is good for everyone. Or if that person espouses a personal good without explaining why it doesn't apply to them - avoiding meth is good for you. But still that person acts opposite to that they espouse - eg take meth. Then they're acting contrary to what they state will be to their benefit.
You can't trust such a person. Either they act in ways that they know are detrimental or they are lying to you about the benefits available by following their actions.
So you can't trust a hypocrites testimony nor can you - without outside knowledge - learn what actions are best to take solely from their testimony.
Coming back to the case in hand. Is it wrong to copy someone's design? We can't tell if Apple Corp consider it wrong or right. All we know is that they're untrustworthy. Then they use legal process to punish someone for allegedly copying a design whilst on the other hand copying a design and show that they're willing to act to the detriment of others who follow their lead. It's kinda hypocrisy+plus: not only do we say not to do that which we do but we'll punish you for doing that which we do.
>narrow minded logic explained in the article, that cares not what is good for them to do, but if the guy that advocates it is "consistent" //
Whatever a hypocrite advocates is basically irrelevant. One should discard their testimony about the good of an action and use outside sources/testimony to establish independently the nature of any good that can be derived by following their instruction. A hypocrite though, as you appear to contend, would be a valid source of ideas just not a sound source of wisdom (ie take their idea but don't follow it without independently examining it).
E&OE
tl;dr don't trust a hypocrite
Yes, this is where THINKING comes in.
First step, stop caring about anything specific about the person that gave you the advice, and only consider the advice.
Second step, try to think if it's good advice, in itself. If it is, follow it.
The guy being a hypocrite or not should not come into play at all. Neither should trust.
You should not follow some advice because you trust the guy who suggested it to you. You should follow it because you evaluated it.
Ish.
If the person is a domain expert (or probably just 'more likely than you to know about it') and you are not and you have other reasons, past experience perhaps, then trusting their advice with little analysis (beyond eg 'was it a joke') is pragmatic. One can't analyse everything there is simply not enough time.
At some point you must trust others or suffer. It's about balance n'est ce pas?
In particular, if a person's behavior or circumstances conflict with the advice, it becomes important to evaluate why that conflict exists. Is the advice fundamentally sound and there's something wrong with the advice-giver, or is the problem with the advice itself? There may be some subtle implementation detail that you overlook in your theoretical "ignore the person" evaluation, which is actually a fatal flaw with the advice (for example, it may require an unrealistic amount of discipline to undertake.)
Likewise, if a person's advice and their behavior/circumstances match up, it's important to evaluate whether the advice is actually effective. Did this person see this result because of the advice, or because of something else? It's possible the advice is fundamentally sound; likewise, it's possible the advice is a mistaken conclusion based on coincidence. If the person giving the advice is known to be insightful, self-examining, etc. that suggests a greater likelihood of the advice being valuable.
But it's quite another thing if someone tries to convince you to behave one way while s/he secretly behaves differently- and it is to his/her personal benefit and (perhaps) to your detriment to do so.
For example, if somebody makes a 'moral' claim that all feezos should be in the public domain in order to convince others to donate their efforts, but that person makes a best-in-class feezo based on all the others' work and doesn't release it into the public domain, that person is a hypocrite with bad motivation. I don't like those people. I don't excuse those people. Any public good that comes of it is likely accidental, although I am sure they will try to convince you otherwise.
So I agree with sbov with the following addition: I don't care about the hypocrite's arguments of persuasion. I won't throw out a good idea just because it comes from a hypocrite. But I won't believe it's a good idea just because the hypocrite says so even if the hypocrite is an expert in the area being discussed. I will seek other ways to validate his claim. And yes, I know, we should always do this, so I can state this a different way: I won't use the hypocrite to validate a claim.
1. What they do 2. What they say
And in that order. For politicians and celebrities with a large audience, it's possible that what they say matters more than what they do for the global good. However, the actions an individual takes can wipe out a legacy of saying the right thing.
Only those two are in totally unrelated fields, namely some railway clock and a mobile phone.
Samsung is copying Apple, arguably intentionally, to create directly competing products.
This is a very different thing.
But one face on one app of a multifunction device is simply not the same as aping a plurality of features and designs of a competing device.
Personally, I don't really care about people making knockoff Mondaine watches, I just find this funny and feel it is that peculiar form of justice that is generally known as "live by the sword, die by the sword".
Is like cannibals being left to their own devices till they get bored and eat each other.
That escalated quickly.
I'm both a Swiss Modern design nut and lover of clocks. I not only didn't recognize the clock as specifically Swiss, although it has that look, I had no idea it was a copyrighted design.
Chances are very low that a manager at Apple would notice what I didn't.
Mondaine clocks may be good for a train station, where they are meant to be read at a distance, by people with less than 20/20 vision
But it doesn't present any real advantage on an iPhone
Too much skeumorphism again
2. I guess many people will try and read the clock while not wearing glasses
SBB does not claim copyright or a design patent (although to increase their chances they might claim that too). Instead SBB claims that the clock design is their trademark.
This would be similar to Samsung putting the famous bitten apple on Galaxy phones.
And the problem with trademarks is that if you don't defend it, you lose it. It's not like with patents or copyrights were you can ignore infringement or selectively sue companies, depending on how much money you can milk.
Here in Switzerland you see clocks like these in pretty much every train station. I wouldn't call it exactly a "defunct" product. Mondaine sells this same design in a variety of products: just do a google image search and you will see some of those.
...and it's not that SBB is suing apple over the concept of a "numberless clock face with highly contrasting colors". They just look exactly the same. And when that's the case, I guess there's not much one can say.
Some context: The iPhone has a huge penetration rate in Switzerland (2.9 million devices sold for a population of 8 million people). Switzerland also has very good public transportation, held together by the train system of the SBB. And therefore, almost every iPhone user has the SBB Mobile App installed (http://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/sbb-mobile/id294855237?mt=8), 60-80% from what I heard. Which would put the install base to 1.5 to 2 million installations.
The elephant in the room is now this: Within this app, you are able to buy tickets. Train tickets, bus tickets, boat tickets. Not via in-app purchases, everything goes through the SBB ticketing system.
This has been working for three years now. Apple never blocked the app, despite it being in violation of some of the more prominent rules of the App Store.
My sources within SBB claim that there is no special agreement in place, mere toleration by Apple. I don't know if that's true, but one thing is for certain: The SBB has little interest of fighting with Apple on this front.
And Apple might not want to alienate such a huge user base, who would probably feel more loyalty to the SBB than to Apple, but that's pure speculation on my part.
On the other hand is the SBB fiercly proud of their design achievments, the clock in particular. Maybe that part of the SBB company (30 000 employees) doesn't care about electronic ticketing and will pursue Apple anyway.
IIRC the only time this has gotten sticky, is when it comes to apps that allow users to buy access to more content that is accessed by that app. (e.g. buying new issues of digital magazines, buying access to new in-game content, buying new ebooks, buying new digital music, etc)
https://developer.apple.com/appstore/in-app-purchase/In-App-...
"You must deliver your digital good or service within your app. Do not use In-App Purchase to sell real-world goods and services."
In-App Purchasing rules apply to purchasing books in an e-reader, levels in a video game, or music in a player, etc.
It doesn't apply at all to real-world items. (This includes something like train tickets via Passbook because they are not consumed in the app, they are consumed by the train conductor scanning your phone.)
For my part (and I'm Swiss, for what it's worth) I appreciate the homage; though I fully understand SBB/CFF's need to protect the trademark. These clocks in Switzerland are iconic and immediately associated with the SBB/CFF. Much like Apple needs to protect its trademark & trade dress in order to remain full owner, SBB/CFF must protect its design.
1) Apple didn't copy the design to make it's own clock rip-off. It is for a very tiny part of their original product.
2) Apple didn't copy the design to sell more iPhones.
3) The design is famous. It's not like Apple sneakily copied it thinking no one will notice.
4) It's a common "click of the eye" gesture to design-savvy public, like their basing their podcast app to classic 60's design, etc.
(Disclaimer: I am not an Apple fan.) As for the design itself, there is the blatant copying of the seconds hand, but otherwise it seems whoever did it took some care to differentiate the apple clock from the original. E.g. how the lengths of the hour and minute hands relate to the radius of the clock and the size of the hour and minute tick marks. Then of course there are obvious implications of being viewed on a tiny 4" screen. Whether that is enough to build a legal defense on, I have no idea.
So why didn't they license it?
Or it is just another case of Skeuomorphism gone wild. Not everybody who pays attention to design likes that kind of thing and appreciating it isn't making someone "design-savvy" either.
Edit: and [2] would make for a great 11.5" laptop sticker
[1] http://www.3quarks.com/en/StationClock/index.html
[2] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b2/SBB-CFF-FFS.sv...
http://www.mondaine.com/mondaine/
edit: Looks like you can buy the wall clocks online from SBB itself http://www.sbbshop.ch/pub/index.php?page=goods&c=8&s...
The real ones get a pulse over the power line from a master clock every minute setting the time. The rotation of the seconds is just a motor using the electric grid's 50 Hz.
At the end the author, Rüdiger Appel, points to his free iOS clock app: http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/clockmaker/id493255256?mt=8
By putting it onto a small, portable device, Apple arguably added the crucial ingredient to make it a mass success (billions of users instead of a few Swiss citizens, who even have to be forced by their government to use it).
So I think Apple added the most important aspect to the mix and should therefore be considered the inventors of the clock design.
1. Swiss people are not forced to use the railway, the literally love it. Also the design was licensed by other European railway companies e.g. Deutsche Bahn
2. You can already buy mobile devices (watches) and even a licensed iOS mobile app with the design. E.g. the German edition http://www.bahn.de/bahnshop1435/shopxml/design/zeitzeichen/a... or the Swiss original http://www.sbbshop.ch/pub/index.php?page=goods&c=8&l...
German: http://www.blick.ch/news/wirtschaft/apple-klaut-bahnhofs-uhr...
In a just world, this would constitute grounds for an appeal by Samsung all by itself, but I've no idea what the legal position is.
Hewever, SBB stands to loose a symbolic icon: What is now the Swiss railway clock may well become "that iOS clock". Mondaine will probably also not be happy when their watches will be recognized as "that iPad clock".
It seems like a significant dilution of trade dress/a trademark to me.
"Bud, that's crazy!", I told him. "We've hardly even
started yet. There's no way we can get it done by then."
"I know," he responded, in a low voice, almost a whisper.
"You know? If you know the schedule is off-base, why don't
you correct it?"
"Well, it's Steve. Steve insists that we're shipping in early
1982, and won't accept answers to the contrary. The best way to
describe the situation is a term from Star Trek. Steve has a
reality distortion field."
"A what?"
"A reality distortion field. In his presence, reality is
malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.
It wears off when he's not around, but it makes it hard to
have realistic schedules. And there's a couple of other
things you should know about working with Steve."
"What else?"
"Well, just because he tells you that something is awful or
great, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll feel that way tomorrow.
You have to low-pass filter his input. And then, he's really
funny about ideas. If you tell him a new idea, he'll usually
tell you that he thinks it's stupid. But then, if he actually
likes it, exactly one week later, he'll come back to you and
propose your idea to you, as if he thought of it."
I thought Bud was surely exaggerating, until I observed Steve
in action over the next few weeks. The reality distortion field
was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an
indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the
purpose at hand. If one line of argument failed to persuade, he
would deftly switch to another. Sometimes, he would throw you
off balance by suddenly adopting your position as his own,
without acknowledging that he ever thought differently.
Amazingly, the reality distortion field seemed to be effective
even if you were acutely aware of it, although the effects would
fade after Steve departed. We would often discuss potential
techniques for grounding it (see Are You Gonna Do It?), but
after a while most of us gave up, accepting it as a force of
nature.
Apple is doing great service by redesigning the Swiss clock design.
In fact the watch manufacturer is to blame for badly designing the watch before its time.
Apple is doing great service to humanity by redesigning this clock to its right position in the world they must be rewarded for it. Swiss clock maker must be punished for badly designing this watch which is rightly fully Apple's, stolen by this maker before its time.
Yes the appropriate response to Apple's ridiculous actions is to act in the same manor. /s
Rather than pointing out hypocrisy, how about pointing out how EVERYTHING is a copy of everything before it in design. That is a constructive position, this is just inflammatory.
That was the sensible position to take before courts started to award billions of dollars in damages for design infringements.
Made bed, meet company laying in you.
The small second markers seem to collide with the neighboring bigger 5-second markers. While the original design keeps an equal white-space between the markers, which leads to differing angles between the markers centers. Apple has all the same angles, not differentiating between the big and small markers which lead to this crammed looking version.
[EDIT, got curious and started measuring] Apparently I was wrong, the angles are also all the same (6 degrees) in the original. But still, optically the space between the hour and adjacent minute markers looks way better in the original.
Judging from the Swiss trademark registry, the protection as a trademark ended a few days ago on September 3, 2012:
https://www.swissreg.ch/srclient/de/tm/512830
In addition, the trademark is only protected for class 14 as clocks and its parts but not for other classes and in particular not for software.
Should they have copied it in the first place? No. They were wrong to do it and they need to make amends.
Is this similar to the Samsung case? Let's see, we have 400 page Samsung documents explaining in minute detail exactly how they intended to duplicate the iPhone user interface, and when asked to stop doing it they refused. Hopefully Apple will show more grace and honesty. Maybe they won't. But right now that's all up in the air.
Edit: I see this case as a litmus test for the anti-apple crowd the way the Aliyun case was a litmus test for Apple supporters. In the Aliyun case, it would be easy to accuse Google of hypocrisy and make jokes about openness when in fact it was just about Acer meeting their contractual obligations as members of the open handset alliance. In this case it would be easy to paint Apple a plagiarist and hypocrite, when they still clearly have an opportunity to come clean and make right. IMHO both are good ways to tell if someone is actually capable of being fair minded or not.
This is the same reason that the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 are receiving so much criticism. When you strut around in public trumpeting your deep cultural devotion to innovation and use shaky patents to get competitors products yanked off shelves you damn well better walk the walk.
I don't see what this has got to do with any general criticism of the iPhone 5 or iOS 6 though.
Still, trade dress (and accusations of douchebaggery) still apply -- and, in a broader sense, Apple are still hypocrits for decrying "copying" while still doing it themselves. The exact nature of the copying is simply different.
Copying yes, but with the intention of confusing buyers, I don't think so.
Well, if they weren't intending to do it, then it was quite a happy accident. http://www.bgr.com/2012/07/27/samsung-tablet-returns-best-bu...
Thats it. That was the test. If you have some space at the bottom of the phone thats not part of the screen, go to jail and dont pass go.
Samsungs argument is that the space is functional, ie, serve a functional purpose, and thus make the bazel invalid as a trade dress for the iphone. Requirement for being granted trade dress is that it does not serve a utility or function outside of creating recognition in the consumer’s mind.
Take a stop sign and its color red. Can the color red become trade dress for signs? The answer is no, as the color serves a second purpose, which is that red is associated with danger/attention required information. Since the color now has a function, it can not be trade dress.
Originally the clock app wasn’t included on the iPad.
This version of clock is well made, simple to use as this kind of app should be. Not rocket science but alternatives version are clearly missing on the Appstore. (I looked for one of them that could replicate the one I have on my Android 4 Galaxy S2).
(Re)introducing the Clock app is great, but borrowing the design of very well known clock is a even better.
It fit the trend of Apple reunding well known texture and design. If that trend is good or bad is another question fueled by love and hate feelings.
But Mondaine, the owner of that clock design, have licensing option already in place : http://www.mondaine.com/private-label/
Apple could have just bought the licence of this design. End of story.
Apple could also have taken this opportunity to ask worldwide watchmaker to give their clockface designs for the official Apple Clock application.
I am sure every watchmaker in the world would have even paid fro that privilege. After all they are all spending millions in magazine adverts.
I don’t understand the position of Apple just after the Samsung lawsuit.
The result is to show Apple being arrogant once more and it put the company in a mismatch branding situation that could have been avoided.
Clearly somebody at Apple is not doing his / her job.
We’re talking about a Clock application here! Not Maps which is another fiasco much much more difficult to fix.
That kind of decision never been the role of Steve Jobs. Who else is missing at Apple ?
I would like to expect better from them. It's a beautiful design and a smart addition, but doing this at all, regardless of the Samsung case, is shameful.
It's not going to confuse anyone. Zero iPads will be returned because the customers thought this was the famous Swiss wall clock they'd heard so much about.
So it doesn't have much to do with Apple v. Samsung. Let's not try so hard to make everything about that; high-resolution thinking should allow for similar but separate conflicts to exist.
This version of click is well made, simple to use as this kind of app should be..
Borrowing the design of very well known clock is a good idea too.
But Mondaine (the owner of that design) have licensing option already in place : http://www.mondaine.com/private-label/
So clearly Apple could have just bought the licence of this design.
But they could also have taken this opportunity to ask worldwide watchmaker to give their clockface designs for the official Apple Clock application.
I am sure every watchmaker in the world would have paid without questions. After all they are all spending millions in magazine adverts.
I don’t understand the position of Apple just after the Samsung lawsuit.
The result is to show Apple being arrogant once more and it put the company in a mismatch branding situation that could have been avoided.
Clearly somebody at Apple is not doing his / her job.
Personally, this walking stereotype wishes that the cnet article had been typeset in Comic Sans so that the typeophiles could get outraged too.
It looks very nice but I thought it broke with design patterns of iOS in terms of color scheme, ambiance, typography (all cap text label), or even button size. It felt more like an Android interface than an iOS one. Anyone feeling the same way?
The recent rise in Apple bashing and calls of hypocrisy is even stranger in historical context[1]. Perhaps more of us should try and empathize with Apple's situation and history before passing fashionable judgement.
The difference I suspect is that Apple will pay up the same way they did when they just went ahead and named products identically to other companies' products (iPhone belonged to Cisco, etc.).
And truthfully, seeing it in ios, I must say I kinda like it, even though its obviously ripped off and the anit-apply-fanboy in me wants to see blood
If Apple refuses to acknowledge its error, and refuses to fix (however it's required to), then it'll be a big f'ing deal, for anyone other than the anti-Apple zealots.
In fact, I once made a mechanical clock that looks virtually identical to the iOS example and this was years before iOS was unleashed on the world. It's just thick lines and thin lines thrown together. The hands aren't even tapered like the Mondaine's.
This seems like a desperate grasp from Apple critics, why don't they go after more obvious examples, like the pull-down menus they borrowed from Android?
Heck, I don't even see all this "stealing" to and fro as a bad thing, but rather paradigms moving forward.
Edit: some people pointed out the red line, which this color-deficient, sleep-deprived person failed to notice. But still, doesn't this fall more under homage than rip off?
It's not identical though, the minute markers are thinner, and the minute hand doesn't reach all the way to the rim.
That said, how many way are there already to design a clock?
I've seen a lot of clocks in my life, but never one with a big red dot at the end of the second hand. So I would say enough not to blatantly copy what appears to be a non-standard/unique design.
So yeah, blatant rip. For folks pointing out the Braun parallels, it's important to remember that Braun never made an iPod. Apple transposed design cues from one long-since discontinued product to a different product in a different time. It was an inspired move and I applaud them for it.
With this clock, they're transposing nothing, they're adding nothing, they're improving nothing. This is just unlicensed copying. It's a credit to their good taste, perhaps, but not their sense of ethics.
I see it more of a homage than plagiarism, though. It would be plagiarism if it were a physical clock with the same design and they were selling it. It's not like Apple makes money selling this app.
Mondaine has the right to ask for change or compensation if they feel they got ripped off, though.
Apple is not a charity and this app, though very minor, is part of their overall strategy to make money. It's 100% a commercial endeavor.
That said, this isn't quite like-for-like. Apple isn't producing a clock for your home to compete with licensed replicas; it's producing an app that mimics the look of a famous (within a niche) clock; it's more like Samsung producing a kitchen appliance that looks like an iPhone than producing a smartphone that looks like an iPhone.
That describes so many design patents (including but not limited to Apple's collection) that I've lost count.
Honestly, to my eye, they look identical but for the logo.
(Not that I'm endorsing the accusation, but many actual lawsuits, including Apple's own, are founded on far less clear evidence).
Honestly, I'm expecting these things to happen more and more as people look at Apple with a finer-tooth'd comb, what with the general view of Apple gradually diminishing.
Apple's profits are very down-to-earth compared to some of these brands
this just goes to show that good art really is timeless. it's not about bs marketing hyping up art that isn't art without the hype. as apple just found out, it's still art without the hype.
Is this particular instance copying? Yes.
Will it affect the popularity of said designs in a positive manner? Probably.
Will they sell more of their $400 clock (see: http://www.momastore.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDi...) as a result? I'd guess at yes.
So, in any case, they sell more clocks, or if they litigate and win, they get a license fee out of Apple. So getting copied by Apple has a downside where?
Are you out of your mind?
What's with the sycophantic comments all over this story excusing Apple's terrible behavior?
Look at all of the designs that Dieter Rams did, that Apple used in their own products:
http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secr...
And look what Dieter things about this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-R...
Can you not see the difference between what Apple is doing and what Samsung is doing?
Edit: It appears to be merely "almost" identical to the Swiss clock and instead is a slavish copy of the Austrian clock, given the weight of the minute hash marks.
They absolutely intended for anyone who see's this clock to immediately recognize they were paying tribute to the original.
Traditionally, designers have appreciated these little nods of respect.
I'm not sure what happened with SBB, but I'm sure it will play out to their benefit.
In the case of Samsung, Apple _wanted_ Samsung to pull their product from the market. In the case of SBB, it would be slap to their face if Apple just decided to yank their clock off the iPad.
Hopefully it will all work out for the best - Apple will license the likeness for some moderate fee, and everyone walks away happy.
s/were paying tribute to/copied.
Surely the point is that an ethical business seeks license from those they choose to copy before doing so. It is not at all respectful to copy verbatim without seeking any form of warrant or approval.