Is anyone following the Apple v Samsung battle?

Mike Lucey

I see now that the San Jose CA jury has ruled in favour of Apple and awarded them over a $1B in damages.

What Tim Cook has to say in interesting but I am inclined to take it with a grain of salt. We all know what's it about and its not 'about values' ...... well maybe the 'value' of the shopping $

Tim Cook tells Apple employees that today’s victory ‘is about values’

http://9to5mac.com/2012/08/24/tim-cook-tells-apple-employees-that-todays-victory-is-about-values/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+9To5Mac-MacAllDay

I have read, and am inclined to agree with, that the hand-held devices will gradually take over from the PC for many user over the next few years. I would not agree with a monopoly situation being allowed to arise as this is bad for consumers.

Looks like this may well be the reason that Apple brought this matter all the way I don't think the verdict will however hold much water in the rest of the World though but it probably will curtail Samsung's pad and phone growth in the USA and that must be worth a pretty penny to Apple.

As long as Apple manufactures the hardware end of their products using what I consider to be opportunist cheap labor sources I really cant take their 'value' statements very seriously. All I would ask of them is to be straight about their motives and stop BSing around.

Still, this ruling is something that those of us designers should be interested in

ArCAD-UK

I'm sure I read recently that Samsung are opening up a manufacturing plant in the US allegedly to spread their natural disaster risk and also to ease access to certain metals for manufacture. In light of the ruling there might also be a line that they wish to gain favour as a major employer in the US?

As Samsung is the supplier of some crucial components in the i-series I don't quite get the adversarial positioning of Apple, I would have thought they both needed to be best of friends?

Finally from a personal perspective I'm not a fan of Apple due to my experience of the iplayer and itunes where the programs overrode my preferred settings without asking. I was contemplating an iPhone, but in light of their continued arrogance it looks like Samsung would be my preferred choice and the Galaxy seems to be getting the better reviews.

solo

Apple have become 'THE MAN' that they advertised they were against in their 80/90's adverts referring to Microsoft.

I like their products have both an iMac and iPhone, however my wife has an Asus tablet and a new Samsung galaxy 3 phone and I can certainly say they compete well with iProducts, in fact the Galaxy IMO is way better than the new iPhone.

Paul Russam

I'm a recent apple convert having got my 1st MacBook pro about 4 years ago and since then another MBP (after the 1st was stolen), 3 iPhones, 2 iPads, Airport networking and most recently a 27" iMac so you could cal be a bit of a fan.
My wife just can't get on with either the iPhone or OSX and uses windows via Parallels desktop to do her work. (though she loves her iPad...weird)
She's had 3 or 4 blackberry's but her most recent one, a Bold 9900 was such a PoS that we replaced it with a Gallaxy S3 a couple of weeks ago and I must say........

I'm impressed, it's thinner, lighter, obviously bigger and possibly clearer than my iPhone 4s.
There was nothing during the setup that I felt was 'from apple'. but I think that Samsung saw the court case coming and had got rid of a lot of the 'features' that Apple were bugged about when they did the S2/S3.
If it wasn't for the seamless integration between my apple stuff I'd quite happily give up my iPhone for a S3.

But I still prefer sketchup on windows

Mike Lucey

Yes Trevor, you are right about Apple relying on Samsung for various components. But I imagine when lawyers and the like got into the mix as they so often do when they get the smell of cash, things took a turn for the worse. I won't voice my opinion on lawyers in general as I want to keep my blood pressure normal

I am an Apple user and I DO find their knot tying frustrating but there are a number of ways I have circumvented this on both the computer and iPhone. If fact a small industry has built up offering some Apple users a freer usage experience. Its a real cat and mouse game and quite enjoyable to watch. I just wish Apple would have a two tier OS, one which totally hand-holds and another that allows more 3rd parties to get involved. Not doing this could yet be Apple's downfall.

I also think that we will be seeing a lot more startups widening the computing horizons over the next few years. Wasn't Apple a garage startup back in the day? When it comes down to it, Apple is a great innovation company not a true inventive company. What have they invented that is truly ground breaking ..... nothing I can think of. Steve and Co. took existing good ideas and improved them, nothing more from what I can see.

Okay, I want a retina MBP but its really just a higher resolution lappie, all be it a nice one.

Companies like Lenovo with its ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkPad X Series Convertible Tablets are widening the goalposts.

X1 Carbon

X Series Convertible

I imagine with a few years we will be smiling at 'has been' retina display as we get truly immersed in interactive 3D on our laptops. In fact its here but the glasses have to go!

arail1

I'm not sure about this but I believe the basic premise of patents has changed over the last few decades. There was a time when it was assumed that patent infringement meant that you couldn't copy another company's (or individual's) methods but if you could achieve the same ends by a different route you were okay. So, for instance, you couldn't use another company's code but if you could write new code to achieve a similar result you were in the clear. Apparently not so now. Apple didn't 'invent' round corners and Samsung isn't in any way trying to confuse their customers into thinking they're buying an iPhone so why is there a case? Most of my original Palm Pilots had rounded corners and they preceded the iPhone by years.

I wish copyright and patent laws were much tighter and were restricted to something you could prove was unique to you, invented by you, not in common use before you and the patent only applied to your particular means of achieving that particular end. 'Occupy Wall Street' is an example. The man who claimed a copyright on that slogan didn't invent it, create it, nor was his use of it unique in any way. But he was allowed to proceed with a copyright claim just because no one else had yet copyrighted the phrase. Imagine if this patent logic was common to the earlier part of the century - one company would have a patent on the steering wheel in cars and no other company could introduce a competing version if it was a round disc at the end of a column. And so on.

Not a good idea.

cosycat

Thought you might like to see an image of the next ipad.
Though larger , do notice that it is still rectangular, still thin, still has rounded corners and users can continue to use the 'pinch to zoom' geature.

Hang on a minute.

This pic is from a 1983 book - The Joy of Computers - Peter Laurie.

Didn't apple invented all of these design features and the pinch gesture ?

o2bwln

What scares me is that the jury didn't question the nebulous concept's that Apple claims is theirs. Once of the patents for the Macbook is 'a rectangular plane with a wedge shape'. This constitutes their reason for a patent and anyone copying this will be sued. It's scary.

While the ruling is sad for anyone trying to bring a unique product to market I'm more concerned with the intelligence of the jury that does not question the judge or laws that allow for these types of insane copyright patents.

tomasz

@unknownuser said:

This morning more than 30 trucks filled with 5-cent coins arrived at Apple’s headquarters in California. Initially, the security company that protects the facility said the trucks were in the wrong place, but minutes later, Tim Cook (Apple CEO) received a call from Samsung CEO explaining that they will pay $1 billion dollars for the fine recently ruled against the South Korean company in this way.

the funny part is that the signed document does not specify a single payment method, so Samsung is entitled to send the creators of the iPhone their billion dollars in the way they deem best.

This dirty but genius geek troll play is a new headache to Apple executives as they will need to put in long hours counting all that money, to check if it is all there and to try to deposit it crossing fingers to hope a bank will accept all the coins.

Lee Kun-hee, Chairman of Samsung Electronics, told the media that his company is not going to be intimidated by a group of “geeks with style” and that if they want to play dirty, they also know how to do it.

You can use your coins to buy refreshments at the little machine for life or melt the coins to make computers, that’s not my problem, I already paid them and fulfilled the law.

A total of 20 billion coins, delivery hope to finish this week.

Let’s see how Apple will respond to this.

This belongs to jokes thread though.

solo

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

This morning more than 30 trucks filled with 5-cent coins arrived at Apple’s headquarters in California. Initially, the security company that protects the facility said the trucks were in the wrong place, but minutes later, Tim Cook (Apple CEO) received a call from Samsung CEO explaining that they will pay $1 billion dollars for the fine recently ruled against the South Korean company in this way.

the funny part is that the signed document does not specify a single payment method, so Samsung is entitled to send the creators of the iPhone their billion dollars in the way they deem best.

This dirty but genius geek troll play is a new headache to Apple executives as they will need to put in long hours counting all that money, to check if it is all there and to try to deposit it crossing fingers to hope a bank will accept all the coins.

Lee Kun-hee, Chairman of Samsung Electronics, told the media that his company is not going to be intimidated by a group of “geeks with style” and that if they want to play dirty, they also know how to do it.

You can use your coins to buy refreshments at the little machine for life or melt the coins to make computers, that’s not my problem, I already paid them and fulfilled the law.

A total of 20 billion coins, delivery hope to finish this week.

Let’s see how Apple will respond to this.

This belongs to jokes thread though.

iCount

Dan Rathbun

Which one of those coins is your "5 cents worth" ?

Mike Lucey

"A nickel weighs 5g. It would take 2,755 18-wheeler trucks (max legal tare 80,000 lbs) to carry the money."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/aug/29/apple-samsung-trucks-nickels-fake?newsfeed=true

I remember story some years ago where a person paid a fine by writing the payment amount and bank account details on a cow, then stuck an appropriate postage stamp on the cow and delivered it the the fine office. Seemingly it was a legal method of payment at the time! In those days cheques were always returned to the payer so the cow had to be returned. It turned into a messy situation

Marian

If Samsung had really paid Apple in coins....at least those 30 trucks worth...they would be my all time favourite company.

Richard

I'm not sure if anyone has ever looked up the register of registered designs but when you do it is a real shock! The simplicity of schematic representation that can be registered would be I'd suggest likened to that of a station wagon versus a train!

Dan Rathbun

Just saw on the FoxNews ticker...

A court in Tokyo has ruled that Samsung did NOT violate Apple patents.

Battle between jurisdictions.

Marian

Interesting..

http://gizmodo.com/5937493/samsung-vs-apple-the-south-korean-verdict-is-in

@unknownuser said:

A judge in Seoul ruled Friday that Apple infringed on two of Samsung's technology patents and must stop selling the infringing products in South Korea. In addition, the judge said Samsung infringed on Apple's "bounceback" design patent, but not its icon design patent.
The judges ordered Apple to pay 20 million won, or $17,650 in damages for each violated patent. Samsung was ordered to pay 25 million won, or $22,000. Both companies had sought damages of 100 million won, or about $90,000, from the other.

@unknownuser said:

The patent-infringing products banned from sale are: Apple's iPhone 4 and iPad 2, Samsung's Galaxy SII and Galaxy Nexus smartphones, and the Galaxy Tab and Galaxy 10.1 tablet computers.

ArCAD-UK

Makes you wonder if some of these court cases are mutual publicity stunts. Looking at some of the claims and counter claims then the final balance is probably quite small in relation to a global advertising campaign that would raise both companies profiles to the same level, although that last USA decision looked eye wateringly expensive for Samsung.

Wasn't there a company called Micro$oft that had some new product in development...