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."
Thanks Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
A small thought (Score:5, Interesting)
In the long term, would the best outcome here be for Apple to *succeed*? I mean, if they manage to get their main competitor banned in the States, they look like a unbridled predator competing not with quality, but lawyers. (I know generally /. thinks that already, but general public perception is more important) If the reaction for those wanting a Galaxy III is going to be something along the lines of "why can't I have the shiney thing?" and turn their ire on Apple / lawmakers.
Apple might want to be careful what they wish for... the rest of the world will steam ahead unrestricted, and the case for software patents being harmful will get stronger.
Good? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is partly because of Samsung's stuff they stuck on top of vanilla android, right? I have an HTC phone and hate the Sense stuff. It would be great if this prompts phone manufacturer's to ditch their own UI "enhancements" for vanilla android, thus leaving any UI patent problems on Google's lap.
Re:Best advertising *ever* (Score:5, Interesting)
Ban the 'phone designed by lawyers'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember what the press was saying when Samsung debuted the SIII?
The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers [google.com]
And now Fruit wants to ban this lawyer-designed phone? Well smoke me a kipper, either the reality distortion field seems to cause lasting damage or they are communicating with St. Steve through an Ouija board. In any case it does not make sense. And they think they can gain what by doing this? Respect? Money? Time? What, exactly?
As far as I can see all they earn by going on a sueing spree is ridicule, contempt and hatred. For some reason many people seem to get almost religiously attached to their mobile gadgets, and Fruit now acts as if they are the Church of Scientology. Bad fruit. Soon anonymous will start staking out their sales churches.
Re:A small thought (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Galaxy SIII is on everyone's list (looks like it's a popular phone right now), and somehow the ban goes into effect, there will be tons of pissed people who will remember that Apple told them they couldn't buy a phone they wanted. (Regardless of who implements the ban, the courts, etc... it's Apple's wish, so it's Apple's fault.)
Telling a customer "Apple banned the sales of that phone here in the US" will piss them off for a long time. It's not good to tell someone they can't buy something. :) Apple should realize this by now... but they're just trying to kill off competition (this isn't about patents... it's about market share...) The top dog (now Apple) is taking a page from every other top dog's playbook and litigating their competition now that they're #1 (or perceived as such....) It's not exclusive to Apple, of course... lots of companies do it. Steve Jobs thought Android copied his iPhone, so this is a natural extension of his nerd-rage. Trouble is, Steve's dead... the RDF is fading... people aren't going to be pleased... and Apple may reap the benefits sooner rather than later of the old phrase "don't shit where you eat."
Re:Misattributed quote. (Score:5, Interesting)
Both of you are correct, pretty much. Pablo Picasso said "Good artists borrow, great artists steal" in 1934. And here is a link [gizmodo.com] of Steve Jobs saying "Good artists copy, great artists steal" in 1996.
Funny how the profit motive so strongly affects the moral belief system.
different case (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/31/apple-samsung-galaxy-s-iii-galaxy-note-patent-lawsuit/ [engadget.com]
'Just to help you keep things straight, remember this is a separate case from the one that ended exactly a week ago with a decision in Apple's favor to the tune of more than $1 billion in damages.'
The 'it could temporarily halt sales in the U.S. market even before the trial begin [sic]' in the summary should have been a tipoff.
And when you start getting angry over people's siglines, you really make yourself look petty and foolish. You also make yourself look like a person who doesn't have enough objectivity for your judgment of whether 'you're [Apple] pissing away whatever good-will you may have had left' to mean anything at all.
Re:A small thought (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Uhm, no. There's nothing stopping Apple from installing Android on the iPhone 5. Hell, Apple could have a dual boot phone and offer some real choice. Google Play Store doesn't prevent you from buying or installing software from other sources. However, Apple will not let anyone install iOS on a Non Apple device, and actively works to prevent others from selling software to people who own iPhones.
I get what you're trying to say, but maybe you've never used Linux? I can add multiple "App Stores" (PPA's) to my OS, then get all the benefit of having trusted sources of software, and the choice of deciding who to trust for that software... There is a way to do "Walled Gardens" that allow you to unlock the gate, and visit other gardens, and even make your own garden. Android .APKs are cross platform bytecode, you can take the .APK from the repository, and install it on multiple devices... even a new one you just got. I do fault Google with not giving us easier file system access to the Android devices to make such software migration issues simple. One of the issues is that Davlik VM modifies the bytecode on installation to fix byte order, and static linking on a per machine basis, and you don't really want to keep an extra installation .APK on the system for every program you install. Side loaded apps don't have this problem, but it's not a failure of the "walled garden" / Software Repository System itself -- I frequently mirror my package cache to multiple machines on Linux so public facing bandwidth for updates is only consumed once.
DRM and 3rd party Streaming are what creates the planned obsolescence and vendor locking you're speaking of with songs and software no longer being available. However, My own DRM system is merely PKI that allows the User to accept or deny game mods made from others -- That type of DRM that puts the User in control is Good. I use a streaming system on my desktop machines that lets me stream all my media to any device -- That type of streaming where the user is in control is Good.
It's when the User is not in control of the systems they personally use and rely on that you have problems. I encourage you to read up about Free Software: RMS may be fucking weird but he's damn right.
TL;DR: You just need more control over your software -- Can you access the location where the files are and copy them to another device? If not then that's Treacherous Computing, not a "Walled Garden".
Re:Snore. I really don't get the Apple Hater Choir (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, so you bought an consumer electronics device from them well over a decade ago, it had a feature on it that didn't work very well for your purposes, and you want to throw them in the same category as crApple? I thought that I had a grudge about Apple through their recent behaviour, ever increasingly closed O/S, and hardware that is becoming more and more difficult (read impossible) to upgrade - but your grudge is slightly alarming... and you got your money back from Best Buy!
As a former Apple employee and dedicated user of their products (I may have bordered on fanboy at one point), I've become so sick of Apple's despicable practices and direction that I've given my iPad to my wife and replaced it with a Google Nexus, replaced my iPhone (goodbye unlimited data!) with a Samsung S3, and my shiny late-2011 MBP has been relegated to a secondary laptop with a nice new Dell running Linux Mint 10... However, were Apple to change their business practices/policies I would again consider using their products as they are of exceptional quality.
Re:Thanks Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Never heard of enabling technology (such as high-quality low power displays)? Never heard of convergent evolution? Never noticed that many technical product categories come into existence almost overnight due to economy of scale effects?
Apple clearly benefited from work at Xerox. Without Xerox, we'd still be using text consoles. I'm not so sure Samsung benefited from work done at Apple. What Apple established was credibility of consumer demand for a new class of expensive toy.
Do they own that? Or is it just the nature of business that everyone piles on to a hot new product category?
Re:Thermonuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
No, "thermonuclear" would be Google mustering all of its available resources to get Android ported to the iPhone 5 within a month of its release, complete with "Nexus A" boot animation featuring an Android eating an Apple and pooping out a phone whose display expands to fill the whole screen at the end of the animation.
Apple would still be selling hardware, of course... a lot of it, in fact... but Google would be skimming 100% of the "Market" revenue and "Maps ads" revenue from any iPhone 5 reflashed to Android. Apple is probably selling iPhones at a small loss, with the expectation of making back the difference from other fees. Imagine if they found themselves in the position of Sony -- selling devices at a small loss like hotcakes, knowing they'd never see another cent from those same devices once they left their hands.
The goal, of course, wouldn't be to just make iPhones a first-rate Android hardware platform -- it would be to goad Apple into locking down new iPhones against jailbreaking and reflashing really, REALLY HARD. As in, "Motorola hard". Instantly, Apple would alienate their most influential and enthusiastic group of hardcore users, and drive them away from the platform. Consumers would scramble to buy new old stock iPhones that weren't locked down, and angrily return the ones that ended up being locked down anyway. More consumer ire.
Keep in mind, Google would lose nothing from this. A phone running Android is a phone running Android, insofar as Google revenue is concerned. It would be a bit of a gamble, because it would obviously horrify Samsung and HTC (who might, or might not, buy into the logic of using the move to force Apple's hand and goad them into totally locking down IOS devices against reflashing unapproved firmware). Ultimately, though, this isn't about money for Apple -- it's about control. If it were just about money, Apple would shake down Samsung for royalties and move along to HTC & LG. I can't think of any single act of guerrilla terrorism Google could do to Apple that would more effectively undermine the control Apple is determined to exercise than porting Android to Apple's newest and best hardware.
Re:So Apple is Evil now?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
SIII != iphone (Score:5, Interesting)
The SIII is like twice the size of an iphone. Nobody would ever confuse the two, no matter how rectangular or rounded or rows of icons. Microsoft never even took douchebaggery to this level.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
Asking for money is one thing. Seeking to ban products is quite another. Most patent cases between active tech companies get settled out of court, usually in a cross-licensing deal. Google's lawsuit will probably be settled that way, and both companies will continue on - no products banned.
Apple, on the other hand, just doesn't believe in real competition. They obviously aren't secure enough in their own products and capabilities, so they seek to ban other, arguably better, products from the market.
Re:Do it yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
Most don't fully get it or see the importance, but that doesn't matter either because they will easily get the fact that Android devices deliver a lot more value for the dollar and have a lot more good quality free stuff.
That's a matter of opinion.
I went from Palm to Windows Mobile to Apple to PalmOS to Android. Apple absolutely delivers the best experience, followed by PalmOS, then Android.
I hated Android. Seriously, with a passion. I loved the idea--a modern, open-source phone where I could install anything I wanted. In practice, I never found anything worth installing that wasn't in the market, the free apps were all ad-laden (taking up valuable screen real estate and slowing things down), the source was incomplete (drivers) and the phone vendor tried to lock the phone (and claimed that overriding it would void the warranty.) I couldn't even find paid versions of some classes of app that I wanted in order to avoid the ads because free apps are a race-to-the-bottom (on both platforms.) Paid apps seemingly have a hard time competing when there's any free version out there that isn't just a demo. The scrolling was horrible--I felt like I was using gestures to perform unrelated actions rather than directly controlling the on-screen elements. This probably sounds like a minor gripe, but UX is a rather important part of any design. I understand most of the UX is fixed in ICS. Maybe I'll give it a shot when my contract is up. Probably not, though--I'm practically locked into the ecosystem such that I the cost/benefit skews more in Apple's favor.
Regardless, due to the customizations, philosophical differences between vendors, and varying degrees of carrier influence, it's really not fair to compare Apples to Androids. You really need to compare specific phones (and specific OS versions). You might say Android is better, but I could show you phones being sold in stores today which offer a vastly worse experience and are as locked down as the phones being sold by Apple today. At the top end (best Android phone in all categories compared to best iPhone), things get tighter, but the price also get closer, if not exactly the same (16GB GS3 and the 16GB iPhone 4s cost the same.)