You could have written the same about MS in the 90s.
It's not just that they're suing folks, it's that their actions seem to be deliberately designed to suppress the market and suppress competition. It doesn't feel genuine.
And while they do innovate, I don't think they do half as much they're given credit for. They didn't invent the smartphone, nor the mp3 player, yet most people likely think they did.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Apple has only really gone hard against Samsung over the design patents? There are lots of other Android makers who produce models very different to the iPhone but haven't come under attack (maybe because they aren't as successfully though). So it doesn't really seem right to say they trying to suppress the whole market.
At least with Apple they are trying to protect (justifiably or not) genuine, recent innovation, and they are being open about it. MS is suing more Android makers than Apple over alleged Linux patent violations in Android that it will not disclose (thus prevent Linus from fixing the supposed infringements), but probably relate to some ancient, legacy FAT file-system standard. This is just as dirty as the worst of MS misbehaviour in the 90s and shows they have not changed at all.
'(maybe because they aren't as successfully though)'
I think this is the key. Samsung are the target because they're making a huge success of their phones and threatening (even in the US) Apple's position as the perceived 'gold standard' for smartphones. That perception has already faded away in other parts of the world.
Perhaps they are only suing Samsung because only Samsung's designs are close enough to be covered by their design patents. That doesn't mean (to me) anything other than that the patent system is broken. I don't think that proceeding with these lawsuits is the right thing to do. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
An anecdotal example: a couple of years ago, I mentioned to my mother that I had bought an mp3 player. She sounded puzzled for a moment and asked 'is that like an iPod?'
Me and a group at my school are currently developing a mobile communication app for elderly for a interaction design-course, and we are in close cooperation with two local elderly homes for testing and feedback. During the initial phase we didn't settle on whether we should develop for iOS or Android but focused primarily on how the interaction should work. But after a while the local leader/our contact insisted that we develop for the iPad since the elderly at both homes had been to a iPad-workshop.
2 weeks later she tells us that she's bought two iPads for us that we could use for testing. When we get there, with our low-fi PowerPoint-prototype, it turns out that she's bought two Galaxy Tab's!
It's not just that they're suing folks, it's that their actions seem to be deliberately designed to suppress the market and suppress competition. It doesn't feel genuine.
And while they do innovate, I don't think they do half as much they're given credit for. They didn't invent the smartphone, nor the mp3 player, yet most people likely think they did.