Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnotherDesigner | Hacker News Reader

As someone that has a lot of Apple products I'm glad they have competition. I don't think any one company should have a monopoly on the modern touchscreen smartphone concept. That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that Google directly copied a lot of ideas from their competition. And that's okay. It would be one thing if Android looked like a direct copy of iOS but it doesn't. It just uses the same technologies. On the other hand, when unscrupulous companies like Samsung try to capitalize on Apples success by directly copying the product they should be slapped down and reminded to do their own thing. It's all about balancing the rights of innovators and the protections for consumers.

View on HN

"That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that Google directly copied a lot of ideas from their competition"

1. I wish Apple fans would accept that Apple does the same instead of seemingly believing that every feature Apple has ever added was brought down on chiseled stone tablets received on Mount Sinai :)

2. FWIW: Roughly this exact same story could be written about any good competitor reacting to any good launch by any company ever. It sounds sensational because it's "Google" vs. "Apple" or whatever, but realistically, companies react to each other.

re: 1, obviously this is true in any element of creative work. there is, of course, a line, where a creative work becomes distinctly new and reasonably un-plagiaristic even though it clearly draws upon the work of others.

in other words, pointing out copying by a copier does not make them a hypocrite, since there isn't just one definition of copying, and anyone doing creative work is by definition a copier. Apple defenders would argue that all of the other products they've built have been sufficiently innovative and improvements over their predecessors so as to make them genuinely new things. It's a hard case to make for Android if you consider iOS a predecessor to its design process, which it sounds like was rebooted upon iOS's reveal.

> re: 1, obviously this is true in any element of creative work. there is, of course, a line, where a creative work becomes distinctly new and reasonably un-plagiaristic even though it clearly draws upon the work of others. in other words, pointing out copying by a copier does not make them a hypocrite, since there isn't just one definition of copying, and anyone doing creative work is by definition a copier.

Exactly. As a wise man once said, "Good artists copy, and great artists steal".

If only I could remember who....

Igor Stravinski may have said "Good composers don't borrow, they steal".

Any decent company reacts to competitors to survive: witness iOS notifications in response to android notifications. Consumers benefit when companies are busy one-upping each other.

> instead of seemingly believing that every feature Apple has ever added was brought down on chiseled stone tablets received on Mount Sinai :)

My impression of Apple has changed dramatically in the past few years. I think a lot of it started with the iPad. I waited years for Apple to release a modern touchscreen computer. As a designer, I basically wanted a portable Wacom Cintiq so I could bring the Adobe Creative Suite with me and work anywhere. When Apple finally announced the iPad, based on iOS instead of OS X, it changed my opinion of them. Don't get me wrong, I like the iPad. I use it to browse the web, check e-mail and other basic tasks. But the iPad wasn't what Apple users had been asking for. We had been asking for what turned out to be the Microsoft Surface. And I'd own the Surface (Pro) today if it weren't for my annoyances with Windows 8.

I think the problem is the word "copied", it always comes with a whiff of "and hence worthless".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com