Apple Adds Samsung Galaxy SIII To Its Ban List 553
After its big win against Samsung, Apple named 8 Samsung products it wanted an injunction to ban from sale in the U.S. Apple wasn't content with that, though; USA Today reports on the state of the expanded list: "The new list of 21 products includes Samsung's flagship smartphone Galaxy S III as well as the Galaxy Note, another popular Android phone. If the court finds those devices are infringing Apple's patents and irreparably harming the U.S. company, it could temporarily halt sales in the U.S. market even before the trial begins."
Best advertising *ever* (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A small thought (Score:5, Informative)
Customers are fickle (outside of the the fanboy spectrum) and will jump on whatever is "hot" at the time. That's the whole purpose of the "walled garden" that Apple - and yes, Google "Play Store" also - encourages. It's an attempt to lock people into a specific set of devices (ones that you profit from) by discouraging change. Who wants to lose music, games, etc just because there's a new device out that is a little better? The better they can convince people to stay, the more money they can extract.
So yes, outside of the walling of the gardens, I suspect people want those choices. I would find it really interesting to see people genuinely upset that they're getting taken away from them.
Re:Thanks Apple (Score:5, Informative)
What you just described - making a new product by slightly altering an existing one - happens in the food world all the time with no legal issues at all.
What you didn't describe but probably intended to - copying a bread recipe - also happens all the time with no legal issues at all. When either of these things happen, the baker is thrilled. Some of them actually publish books helping you infringe on their own products!
In short, your metaphor fails to map to the primary event in every way possible. Please stick to car metaphors in the future. It's traditional.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Informative)
Already done. Will NEVER buy an apple product and actively work to undermine their market share.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Informative)
Just because the rules of the game allow you to play in a certain way, does not mean that everyone must actually do so. IRL we have laws, and then we have conventions. When people don't follow those conventions, we call them assholes and shun them, but we don't lock them up and don't rewrite the laws.
Similarly here. Not saying that patent reform isn't needed, but hey: of all the companies on the mobile device market today, Apple is the only one engaging in blanket bans on their competitor products and refusing to license some of their patents outright, forcing others to remove features from their phones (including even those already sold, as was the case with S3 and Nexus). So, as far as limiting my choice as a customer goes, they are the worst offender by a large margin. Of course I'm going to bash them more.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Informative)
A pretty large number of IT, CS, and other technically-minded folks seem to like Apple's products (and they are generally apathetic when it comes to Apple's tactics, licenses, or how Apple is pushing for the destruction of PCs), and quite a few Slashdot readers are big supporters of Apple.
It is changing. In our clinic we were in the process of transitioning towards an "all Apple" environment (iphones, ipads, Macbooks, imacs and mac minis). However, witnessing with great concern Apple's customer hostile approach worsening rapidly over the last couple of years we decided to reverse the process. In phones it was easy - the Galaxy S3 is a vastly better device. In laptops it is not easy, we still find Macbooks unrivaled in build quality and features, and there is nothing on the market we could find that would come close to the desirable specs of a mac mini.
As a result, we are now transitioning to a mix of generic PC hardware and Mac hardware mostly running Linux (some desktops still running OSX), and Galaxy S3 phones and soon the new Galaxy note tablet too. While it is a slow transition, I can see many like minded people in my area making a similar transition - the walled garden walls have become far too high for many, the sun is not coming through any more.
Only two years ago I probably would have still praised the advantages of the OSX ecosystem. Nowadays, they have become as disgusting as Microsoft had 10 years ago - and that was the last time I used any Microsoft products. The writing is on the wall for Apple too - instead of keeping innovating they merely try to maximize their profit through litigating any competition and locking their existing customers completely in. When corporates become intolerably arrogant it is only a matter of time before people turn their back.
Re:So Apple is Evil now?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple is evil, period.
Not only on Slashdot, everywhere.
It's time to FSF to restart its Boycott Apple program from 199x. The things Apple does are far worse now than back then.
Re:Best advertising *ever* (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple will not stop until they have 100% monopo (Score:5, Informative)
That may or not be true, but the fact remains that someone may have violated another's patent. If you don't go after them, then you lose rights to said patent. Besides, if you are a company and feel someone is violating your IP, it would be silly not to do something about it.
You are confusing patents and trademarks. Please get your facts straight before commenting.
And most of that IP is considered as such only because of the crappy US patent system.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Informative)
The font was small and had no background box, making it unreadable in many scenes and useless for my then fiance.
That's in large part the fault of your DVDs rather than the player. DVD subtitles are bitmap overlays which don't generally have any kind of background box. Whilst some DVDs do support old-fashioned closed captions, a lot of DVD players don't handle outputting them because they use a really old and quirky and US-specific data format in the vertical blanking interval that's really hard to support (and apparently can't be supported at all on high-definition outputs).
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Informative)
Did MS seek injunctions against products from being sold? No.
Do they get some money from Android units sold? Yes.
MS is certainly bad. Apple is far worse.
Re:So Apple is Evil now?!? (Score:2, Informative)
Do your research on the Apple Corps vs Apple. Apple bought out the Apple Corps rights and name for $500M US and licensed back the record label back to them.
Don't think that Apple corps actually suffered any damage here. I;m sure they're all fine thanks.
And if you're old enough to remember the dispute against Franklin, you are delusional if you think Apple wasn't in the right here. The outright stole the ROMS. They admitted to it in court! They said it was too hard to copy Apple if they didn't. Well no shit!
Apple didn't get "evil" on slashdot until Android became a darling.. It's quite comical to me that the former evil empire (Microsoft ) hardly gets a nod from current slashdotters. One day many slashdotters will wake up and see they were on the wrong side of this battle.
Eric Schmidt is the reason all of this happened. He was on Apple's board for crying out loud. He knew absolutely what Google's plans were and he did not recuse himself. He was privy to a huge amount of Apple's plans. Pure 100% evil.
Re:Thanks Apple (Score:4, Informative)
Can you imagine the state of the automobile industry today if there had been a patent on the 'look and feel' of the original automobile, and Ford had aggressively sued other automobile manufacturers?
Actually Ford would be the one being sued to hell and back by Daimler-Benz. His mass production on an assembly line was revolutionary but he did not in any way invent the automobile.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:3, Informative)
And just what/how are you restricted on your OSX system?
I like OSX and feel in no way restricted by it. A month ago I bought an iPad however, and I am hugely disappointed about how primitive iOS is and at all the things it can't do. It feels like a 21st century device with the capabilities of a Commodore 64. On the iPhone I don't notice the constraints of iOS so much but I expected the iPad to be sort of a laptop without a keyboard. But it's completely unusable if you approach it like that.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:2, Informative)
Err, this is about Microsoft and Google. Specifically, Google abusing FRAND patents to get the Xbox 360 banned. I would have thought all the cries of "patent abuse" would be deafening. Unfortunately, I'm deafened by the silence from all the hypocrisy.
And anyway, what has the Google/Microsoft/XBox 360 ban got to do with the Apple/Samsung fight?
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft patents troll Google for money. Google patents troll Microsoft for money. They make agreements and continue to be. That is basically a zero sum game. Obviously it helps no one but the lawyers but it does not harm the consumer.
Apple is trying to patents troll Samsung into oblivion so they don't need to compete anymore and can have a legal monopoly over smartphones and tablets, and US courts apparently are fine with monopolies and Crony Capitalism so they get away with this.
Re:US Patents lead to technological backwater (Score:5, Informative)
Re:US Patents lead to technological backwater (Score:4, Informative)
I've been following this on Groklaw for a while, and it's obvious yet again how badly the US patent system is broken when Apple can patent a rectangle with rounded corners and succeed in banning devices of the same shape, and yet refuse to licence the basic technology that is needed for the phone to actually behave like a phone and make calls.
You may be glad to hear that the "rounded rectangle" patent, design patent 504,889, was actually NOT found to be infringed, meaning Apple can NOT patent a rectangle with rounded corners.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:4, Informative)