I'm getting pretty tired of these stories and tech companies in general. At the end of the day it's a touch screen that can connect to the Internet and run some software. When will the patent/IP madness end?
And yet somehow they're wildly more successful than tablets were a decade ago. Perhaps there actually is something more to them than a touch screen, an internet connection, and the ability to run software...
Yes, the battery of the previous tablets were much smaller. But don't forget, the previous tablets also cost close to 2k at introduction, had similar speed processors (but running more complex operating systems, with lower responsiveness), had lower quality displays, were thicker, and weighed a lot more.
I don't see any of those improvements as being particularly non-obvious.
Previous tablets were a completely different beast. Microsoft spent 10 years trying to graft a touch-layer on top of a traditional operating system.
The iPad's non-obvious innovation was essentially to roll back PC innovations: they massively pared down the operating system, stripped out the legacy overhead and focused applications on small, tightly controlled and limited, optimized binaries, so they could scale back the hardware to the point where the battery could last more than 20 minutes.
Truly, innovations in hardware allowed them to put more horsepower with a longer running time in the case than MS could have ever achieved in the 90s. But as of 2008, Microsoft was still following the "full PC+touch" strategy. (For that matter they seem intent on continuing to flog that horse even today.)
And let's not forget that what looks obvious now, looked like a failure to most industry observers in 2009. Even the more optimistic observers forecast merely a solid niche product.
Now I'm not arguing that what Apple did should necessarily be protectable under the various forms of IP law, but implying that it was "obvious" seems deeply unfair.
Particularly if the story of the birth of the iPhone was accurate. That is: that the iPad was not born of a project to scale up the iPhone, but that iPhone was born from the idea to shrink an already-under-development iPad. Pushing the iPad concept and strategy back to at least 2005/2006.
>The iPad's non-obvious innovation was essentially to roll back PC innovations: they massively pared down the operating system, stripped out the legacy overhead and focused applications on small, tightly controlled and limited, optimized binaries, so they could scale back the hardware to the point where the battery could last more than 20 minutes.
>And let's not forget that what looks obvious now, looked like a failure to most industry observers in 2009.
All well and good, but what does that make the Crunchpad? Chopped liver? Imagine if they had the backing of a multibillion dollar company or weren't ripped off by their partner with the JooJoo.
And, IIRC, the Crunchpad concept was widely met with doubt and derision as well. A niche within the core geek niche was on board with the idea. But by and large, netbooks were expected to win out.
Arrington's publicizing the concept may speak to whether the invention ought to be legally protectable (depending on whether the iPad did precede the iPhone). But given that no tablet producers were on board, it certainly doesn't somehow invalidate the non-obviousness of the concept.
Certainly, I grant all credit due to Arrington and the FusionGarage folks for recognizing the innovation. I just don't see how their experience is any sort of counterpoint.
I remember a visit to Redmond back in 05 where I saw a large number of Microsoft employees using old "tablet" form laptop computers (those where you'd rotate the screen over the keyboard to use a pen-like pointer). It looked ridiculous, except for being a clever/good use for Microsoft OneNote at the time. There's no way those tablets can be compared to today's tablets, which are a fraction of cost, weight or thickness.
I'll also say that while battery life did make a difference, the actual way you interact with the OS was one of the mian reasons for the tablet tipping point. The clunky mouse pointer (controlled via pen) of yesteryear pales in comparison to what we use today. The fact that the bar for interaction is so high now makes people crave a tablet experience, even if only for experiencing the novelty of touching interfaces they used to only be able to point to, with their full hands.
What kind of internet connection did you people have in those tablets a decade ago? How about the screen? Or the software (that was easily found/bought/installed)?
Multi-touch, flash storage, wifi, and UIs honed over several generations to cater to the specific needs of touch based computing in a small form factor.
I agree with you, but you have to admit Samsung is pretty clearly copying Apple's trade dress. It's the only tablet that could be confused with the iPad at a glance. Especially for non-geeks.
If Apple weren't suing everyone else too they would have a lot more general credibility in my eyes. By suing everyone they just look scared of competition.
Not that I agree that other devices don't look quite like an iPad, but...
Exactly how many possible styles are there for a handheld LCD device with a touchscreen as its primary / only input?
That's what's so utterly ridiculous about this; even if Apple hadn't altered pictures to make the Galaxy tab look more like an iPad, what were Samsung going to do? Make a circular tablet with ridges all over the screen and a fold-out table in the back? Apple have tried to assert that a the look and feel of a device where about the only practical variations are how big it is and which way round it defaults to being held is somehow theirs and theirs alone to exploit.
Exactly how many possible styles are there for a handheld LCD device with a touchscreen as its primary / only input?
Certainly more than one. Just as not every smartphone has to look like an iPhone, not every tablet has to look like an iPad. Even something as simple as rounding the corners differently[1][2] seems to have eluded or been intentionally ignored by the Galaxy Tab's designers. Just as there are limits on practical designs, there are limits of those limits, and we benefit when companies push those limits in a way that Samsung (it is argued) is not presently doing with the Tab.
> I agree with you, but you have to admit Samsung is pretty
> clearly copying Apple's trade dress. It's the only tablet
> that could be confused with the iPad at a glance.
I don't think I have to admit that. Is it really any more iPad like (at a glance) than this:
No, to many non-geeks all tablets appear to be "iPads" and all touch screen phones "iPhones". Apple has had superior marketing and sales but they certainly weren't the first to use a touchscreen display. How many ways can you make a device with a touchscreen display? Can you imagine if this happened to TVs or computer monitors?
Depends on your "at a glance" definition, but yeah, photos don't do it much justice. Both the Xoom and the 2.0 Galaxy look nothing like an iPad 'in real life'. It's like comparing a Vaio to a MacBook, only the form factor is the same.
(I have no idea about the new Galaxy but I suspect it's the same - EDIT: by "the same" I mean different from an iPad)
I don't think the design of Samsung's tablet, accessories and it's packaging is a coincidence. While you can't blame Samsung, or anyone, for the general shape of a tablet, I do think they crossed a line here.
He was talking about admitting that Samsung was copying Apple - which they are. But yes, yes it is more iPad like if you look at it from more angles than a shot from the top. The back is similar too, whereas that on the Xoom is not so much.
1.) A German court lifted an injunction in the EU nations, except Germany itself
2.) Apple misled the courts by offering altered images of Samsung's Galaxy Tab. In the filed documents, the pictures of both the iPad and Galaxy Tab appear to be the same size. In reality, the Galaxy Tab uses a different sized screen and aspect ratio than Apple's tablet.
Intriguing, but apparently not related to each other. The injunction was suspended outside Germany solely due to a dispute over whether the Düsseldorf district court has personal jurisdiction over Samsung Korea.
The funny thing is, this whole court decision has made me aware of the new GalaxyTab 10.1 in a way I would not have been if it was not for Apple's litigation. I checked out reviews on YouTube and compared it to the iPad, etc.
Isnt it counter-productive for Apple to make customers aware of their competitor's products that way? A lot of customers are gonna think "If they are sueing them, that alternative tablet must be worth checkin out."
I doubt that any average user has any idea of what is going on. I'm sure their concerns lie elsewhere. Anyone willing to pay attention to this is a minority within a minority.
True, I fully agree. But Apple is loved by a somewhat large contingent of developers, small software vendors, and tech enthusiasts. That relationship can quickly turn sour, which may harm them to some extend. Not directly, but tech people's hate of Microsoft 10-15 years ago also had an effect on the larger group. The NT branch of Windows has always been very stable, and supplanted 9x a long time ago, still for many people Windows is equivalent to instability and blue screens of death. There's a lot of parrotting.
I think that Apple's relationship with geeks/tech-enthusiasts has been sour since the beginning. The "I'm a Mac" advertisements make it pretty clear that they definitely don't want to be a "corporate brand" or a "geeky brand", even though they're mainly an engineering and industrial design company.
In fact, the more Apple distances itself from those kinds of geeks/tech-enthusiats, the more successful it is.
Actually, I saw this story on the general news. Major companies suing each other counts as somewhat newsworthy, and one of their products getting blocked like this definitely is.
I've seen the same but when those stories are next to the debt crisis, high unemployment and the London riots, they will most likely concentrate on those stories first.
To this day it surprises me how little the average person knows about technology. They know much more than a decade ago but it is still minute.
EDIT: As a personal example, I have a kid sister, 13 years younger, who is in her third year at Cornell studying law and just had intern job at Google this summer in which she wrote a Google student blog post (Yes, I am very proud). She didn't know how to right-click using her Macbook. She can type like the wind and knows the features of every phone but she wan't aware of tapping two fingers on her trackpad.
To me this is very representative of the average user today. They know enough to get by but don't have the depth of knowledge when it comes to the details. If they read a patent story I don't believe they would understand what they were reading unless there was a perceived gain to it.
How on earth do you expect somebody to know to operate something they have never seen before, when it doesn't work like anything else? I remember asking how to right-click on a Macbook before and I am feeling insulted... Unless it's her own Macbook that she uses to type like the wind, in that case, well I agree.
To be honest, I'm feel a little regret that I posted the edit but you're partly right. We didn't have a father and my mother worked close to 60 hours/week. So I treated her like she was my own child. I should've taught her but I didn't. In that regard I did a poor job.
In my situation, I explored what my computer could do. She did not because she wasn't interested in opening System Preferences to see the options. Most people won't. The computer is merely a means to an end. Further than that, they're no longer interested. This is why, I believe, that the iPad (or other tablets)is so important but that is another story for another day.
I dont know about average users in general, but non-tech-savvy people in my environment were aware of "Apple preventing some sort of GalaxyTab from being sold". They dont care about the underlying issue, but they know about the consequence and the free PR that the tablet received.
If Apple's got a serious chance at a long-term disruption of their competitors' business, then giving them a short-term publicity boost is nothing to worry about.
Of course, if this lawsuit is just a stalling tactic to interfere with Samsung for months instead of years, then the payoff isn't as big. But Apple still has the highest profit margins and the most cash available for tactics like this, so they're not really in much danger of shooting themselves in the foot.
I was undecided if I wanted a tab or an Ipad 2, apple pulling this strategy rather than trying to win on product merit pushed me over the edge into getting a galaxy tab 10.1v, happy with that decision thus far.
From the article: " this time suggesting that Apple misled the courts by offering altered images of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab".
Isn't it amazing that the court can make such wide-reaching decisions just by looking at images, rather than the actual devices? It would not be a very complicated thing to present the physical devices as evidence in this kind of case.
They make that because the evidence is given under oath and it’s supposed to be a quick (and preliminary) decision.
It’s also not the final decision. The evidence will be examined again at a later point in time and Apple is liable for all damages should the court decide against them at that point.
The actual Samsung aspect ratio (of the full device) is about 1.46, while the photo makes it look closer to 1.36. The iPad's image is more accurate at around 1.3. The vertical lines in the image (closer together around the Galaxy) probably make the aspect ratios appear even more similar.
If Apple did indeed fake some of the evidence, it will be interesting to see how Samsung chooses to retaliate. This surely has to border on anti-trust?
