Live data from Hacker News

Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

techcrunch.com

241–250 of 372 posts

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#241

This is both unsurprising and somewhat meaningless as there will be an appeals process that will last for months and possibly years. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that Samsung made their products to look like Apple products. They changed their icon styles and other UI elements away from Android standards to match the Apple style. Some of the things Apple invented and patented on like pinch to zoom an…

Apple has done a good job of persuading people that this case was about protecting innovation and about Samsung's specific alleged infringements of their patents. But this is nothing more than a smoke screen for their ongoing proxy war on Android. They've refused to compete with Android on price, features, and form factors and the market has punished them for it. Expect more attacks on Android seeking ridiculous dama…

Yeah, the market is really "punishing" them all right: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AAPL (stock currently at $663)

Google and Apple may have, at a high level, opposing strategies, but Apple's approach is being adopted more and more (app stores, having more control on the experience, etc...) and companies wouldn't do that if it wasn't working. Hell Google's own products, the ones where they stamp "Google" on the back of the device, are very much in the line of Apple's usual MO. Sure Android will always have a few more "geeky" features (app side-loading) but the Nexus 7 is very Apple-like in it's execution (...and it's great!).

tl;dr - Their business models aren't as different as the old Windows vs Mac comparison.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they realize that this position is no more sustainable than their position was in the desktop market and they're acting out of fear. If you've used a recent, high-end Android phone you know that the quality gap is mostly gone and that the apps that most people care about are now available on both platforms. Apple is not going to be able to sustain their astonishing profit margins without the help of the court…

Don't forget that Apple has a mountain of cash and an insane advantage in the tablet market. Macs are on the rise too. All this can be used to keep people in the Apple ecosystem. (iCloud is surprisingly meh, though.) Not saying that Apple will succeed, but the future doesn't seem so clear to me.

It's the apple ecosystem that's the problem for me. Not everything they touch turns to gold, and force feeding us the lead with the gold is a becoming a turnoff.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't imagine that this ruling will be the end of Apple's war on Android. An emboldened Apple is going to go on the legal warpath like never before.

You make an assertion about future ctions by Apple as if it was fact. I tend to think Apple was particularly butt-hurt specifically over the trade dress stuff (rightfully so IMO). Why would this ruling lead to other flavours of Android being targetted so intensely?

Read Jobs' comments about going nuclear on Android and you can see this is just an execution of a strategy he set in place. If there are no more suits by Apple against Android vendors in the next year I will buy you a case of beer.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has done a good job of persuading people that this case was about protecting innovation and about Samsung's specific alleged infringements of their patents. But this is nothing more than a smoke screen for their ongoing proxy war on Android. They've refused to compete with Android on price, features, and form factors and the market has punished them for it. Expect more attacks on Android seeking ridiculous dama…

Apart from the specifics of this or any other court case involving Apple attacking Samsung, I find the desire to defend Samsung odd. Obviously they copied Apple as much as they felt they could get away with. They did this because it was a very conservative way to make a lot of money. This isn't an admirable strategy. It's annoying. It's precisely the strategy that major movie studios use to give us one boring, risk-f…

I don't have any particular loyalty to Samsung but these cases set a chilling precedent for the platform that looks likely to dominate the computing industry for at least the next decade. There's much more at stake here than a few billion dollars and a few icons and scrolling techniques.

If this continues we're going to spend the next decade tiptoeing around every trivial implementation detail of mobile UI instead of boldly exploring new ideas. Apple's successful use of the broken patent system sends exactly the wrong signal.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They take 73% of the profit in smartphone market I chuckle every time I hear this. How much profit of the web server market does Microsoft take with IIS vs. the free alternatives like Apache and Nginx? Who wins in the Server OS market of Windows Server vs. Linux/BSD? Who dominates the web dev tools market of Visual Studio vs. Eclipse/etc. ? The same arguments you make can be made against the above too. The idea of p…

Since when did profit become the one and true metric? This is like wondering whether you'd be better off running a grocery store rather than a software business. Profit is the only metric. The idea that this notion started with Apple is strange.

Of course profit is ultimately the metric that counts.

But time and time again in the tech world we've seen that it's much easier to build something cheap and ubiquitous and eat your way up the value chain than it is to start at the top and try to tenaciously cling there. It didn't work for Apple last time and I think it's starting to slip for them again now.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has done a good job of persuading people that this case was about protecting innovation and about Samsung's specific alleged infringements of their patents. But this is nothing more than a smoke screen for their ongoing proxy war on Android. They've refused to compete with Android on price, features, and form factors and the market has punished them for it. Expect more attacks on Android seeking ridiculous dama…

Yeah, the market is really "punishing" them all right: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AAPL (stock currently at $663) Google and Apple may have, at a high level, opposing strategies, but Apple's approach is being adopted more and more (app stores, having more control on the experience, etc...) and companies wouldn't do that if it wasn't working. Hell Google's own products, the ones where they stamp…

Apple's strategy assumes that a single company and a single line of devices can indefinitely command the lion's share of the most important computing platform of our time. This just doesn't seem tenable to me. For every consumer that's completely satisfied with the Apple experience there will be 3-4 others that prefer some other product for any number of reasons.

When in the history of the world have we ever seen a single company and a single line of products dominate a mass-market consumer segment for more than a few years?

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I disagree. I find Apple's strategy more solid and sustainable than their competitors'. BTW, I just wanted to say you have a GitHub link on your HN profile that leads to a 404. I thought maybe that was a mistake and you might want to fix it :)

It seems like essentially the same strategy that lost them the desktop wars after taking an early lead with the Mac. I don't see why we should expect things to be any different this time, although their vertical approach is better suited to mobile. Thanks for heads up on github. Fixed.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I disagree. I find Apple's strategy more solid and sustainable than their competitors'. BTW, I just wanted to say you have a GitHub link on your HN profile that leads to a 404. I thought maybe that was a mistake and you might want to fix it :)

It seems like essentially the same strategy that lost them the desktop wars after taking an early lead with the Mac. I don't see why we should expect things to be any different this time, although their vertical approach is better suited to mobile. Thanks for heads up on github. Fixed.

I can't see a meaningful analogy with the old Apple; to assert one is to assume that totally divergent situations (Apple owning a market wholesale, versus being a niche player) and companies (Apple 2012 is very different from Apple 1998) somehow combine in a way that papers over the very real changes that have happened internal and externally.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

she did make many decisions through out the trial as to what was admissible and not admissible , so she did effect the outcome.

By that argument, Samsung's lawyers are more at fault by not following the predefined rules for submitting evidence. In this case, the judge setup the rules, and it was up to the parties to play by them.

its hard to follow the rules when the judge defines them as they go along. If you followed it, sometimes decisions are left ad hoc up to the judge.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They take 73% of the profit in smartphone market I chuckle every time I hear this. How much profit of the web server market does Microsoft take with IIS vs. the free alternatives like Apache and Nginx? Who wins in the Server OS market of Windows Server vs. Linux/BSD? Who dominates the web dev tools market of Visual Studio vs. Eclipse/etc. ? The same arguments you make can be made against the above too. The idea of p…

Since when did profit become the one and true metric? This is like wondering whether you'd be better off running a grocery store rather than a software business. Profit is the only metric. The idea that this notion started with Apple is strange.

Looking at only the earnings reports and comparing profits is meaningless. If you follow the Gruber link it shows that Amazon's net profit is only $7M. That does not mean Amazon is having trouble making any money. It's that it's costs of expanding are swallowing the profits. Apple has a ton of cash in the bank lying around because they don't see a need for using it. Directly comparing the numbers makes no sense whatsoever except to people who's profit depends on telling people what they want to hear. i.e Apple this week is better than X in Y metric and hence Apple wins and X sucks, where X and Y are carefully picked.

Wasn't it just yesterday that Gruber was comparing revenues from a hardware business(iPhone) to Microsoft's primarily software business, instead of profits which would make more sense?

Post reply on HN