Samsung and Apple fandom aside, patenting a smartphone UI is patently absurd.
Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
341–350 of 372 posts
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, because I see this from exactly the opposite side. Apple hardly needs a billion dollars, but I don't think this does anything to strengthen their image or their power in the marketplace, but I do believe it emboldens people who already dislike Apple, and begins to alert people who do that Apple doesn't put innovation and consumers first. That is to say they are no longer viewed as a company that out-inno…
Do you think Apple will appeal to get more then? I can certainly see them appealing if they don't get an injunction but I'm not sure they would want to reopen the damages part. There are a range of views around here about what should happen. The middle ground area is possibly that iPhone lookalikes are blocked (but fairly narrowly defined lookalikes) and possibly Android needs to work around a few minor unimportant p…
I don't think Apple will appeal, but Samsung will, which is a good move because if they concede and pay up hoping that this goes away then Apple will use that as a springboard for a thousand more lawsuits.
I guess it depends on what you consider to be an iPhone "lookalike". I don't believe that much about the iPhone look and feel that people usually point to is actually patentable- trademarkable, maybe, but not patentable. The things that Apple is attacking Samsung and Android over are fairly specific functions. For the practical purposes of the mobile market, I truly don't think this outcome is going to effect Samsung (or any other manufacturer) a great deal.
As for MS, yes, they are highly profitable, but my point is that they used to be the feared leader that owned the software market and all distribution to it. Now they have very little respect in the consumer electronics market which is quickly moving up-market and disrupting the enterprise market. I think Microsoft continues to lose market share into the foreseeable future because 1) their leadership is pretty bad in the sense that they are all over the map in terms of product development and lead on very few products and 2) their software is shit and their strategy of getting people into their full stack of web hosting/development/browser framework will never get them any kind of dominance there.
I am a bit biased here because I absolutely hate Microsoft's implementation strategy. For example, at our office we use Microsoft Project Web Access which they only allow you to use in Internet Explorer, offering its users no choice of browser. In the long run that doesn't seem like a wise choice. They're building in an unnecessary limitation that any competitor can exploit. Do they really think I or anybody else won't use Chrome or FF or any other browser just because they make me run their shitty software in IE?
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#343I was shocked to learn this case is basically being decided by people who have no idea what they are really deciding on. Here is the jury according to techcrunch 1. An electrical engineer 2. A homemaker 3. A construction worker 4. A young unemployed man who likes video games 5. An insurance agent 6. An ex-Navy avionics technician 7. A store operations manager for a cycling retailer 8. A project manager for wireless c…
Honestly that sounds like the perfect group to decide this. The whole point of this lawsuit is to prove that your average Joe would have a hard time distinguishing Samsung's product from Apple's.
It seems like there's an Average Joe approving tech patents as well.
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was obvious that samsung tried to make their devices look and feel like apple devices. what isn't obvious is why apple should have exclusive ownership over things making a stretching gesture with your fingers to make something bigger. not only were they not the first to implement it, it is entirely a natural movement and is not something that should be anybody's property.
Yeah, because I do that all the time to my newspaper to see the small print. It's a natural movement now , but in 2006, not so much.
That's irrelevant, because apple didn't invent the gesture. Microsoft's surface table, minority report... Every time we've seen multi touch screens, we've seen pinch to zoom. When I bought my grandma an android tablet, pinching to zoom was the just about the only thing she didn't need instruction on. She didn't understand that tapping the word 'Internet' opened the internet, but she understood that stretching something made it bigger.
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to argue that they aren't competing. Apple innovates in their sphere of innovation, their competitors copy them and produce cheap knock-offs attempting to cash in Apple's R&D. It's not competition when one company does ALL the innovation and other companies just copy them and try to win on price. It would be competition if Google tried to out-do Apple, but they don't. Samsung doesn't compete with Apple eith…
> Samsung doesn't compete with Apple either. They are more similar to counterfeiters who sell black-market Oakley, Nike, and Prada stuff in alleyways. My goodness. Samsung designs may imitate Apple's to some debatable extent, but they're not labeling their products with an Apple logo. The way I see it, TV makers imitate each others' designs and features all the time, and so do car makers and fridge makers. > It's not…
> > It's not competition when one company does ALL the innovation and other companies just copy them and try to win on price.
Zipcar. I just paid $137.39 for an Audi Q5. Audi can't do that. Price is usually the result of innovation, the tip of the iceberg. Otherwise we'd wouldn't be driving cars or, hopefully soon, flying into space. If anyone offers an iPhone 5 cheaper than Apple I'm sold! Better yet, make a phone better than the iPhone AND sell it cheaper!
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#346Earlier 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.
He's wondering why Gruber, who supported the "losing" side in Apple vs Microsoft (as measured over any timeframe besides the last 12 months or so) had such a damascene conversion. I doubt he'd have any issue with a weirdo that consistently supported the most profitable corporation in any market. It woukd still be weird, but at least consistently weird.
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what I don't get: people applaud Apple for their massive profit margins when in reality it just shows how they're screwing the consumer. Does nobody care about the betterment of the general public -us!?- around here? By buying products with huge profit margins you're spending money on features that you're not getting. And THAT is why I refuse to buy Apple products.
So I guess you must hate Samsung product now, since they have started to make a good profit as well? That is one of the more ridiculous reasons for not buying Apple.
Samsung doesn't have 70% profit margins on their mobile devices: that's highway robbery.
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what I don't get: people applaud Apple for their massive profit margins when in reality it just shows how they're screwing the consumer. Does nobody care about the betterment of the general public -us!?- around here? By buying products with huge profit margins you're spending money on features that you're not getting. And THAT is why I refuse to buy Apple products.
Trade is generally a positive-sum game. The fact that the producer makes a profit means there is a producer surplus but the fact that consumers buy it means there is a consumer surplus too. The general public thinks iPhones are worth more than what Apple is charging, so they buy it. By buying products with large profit margins you're sending a message that you want the company to stay in business and grow and keep do…
The standard free market theory is that profit attracts competitors that enter the market and drive down those profits. They would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky patents.
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 whats…
You're talking about John Gruber. I'm just talking about profit. Obviously, companies routinely defer profitability. Is that what you think Samsung, or any other Android vendor for that matter, is doing? I don't. Comparing the iPhone business with Amazon is an apples/oranges comparison. Comparing Samsung's Android business with the iPhone isn't. Like Gruber, don't like Gruber, I don't care. But let's not introduce th…
Apache and Linux and Wikipedia are completely valueless according to your only metric.
Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what I don't get: people applaud Apple for their massive profit margins when in reality it just shows how they're screwing the consumer. Does nobody care about the betterment of the general public -us!?- around here? By buying products with huge profit margins you're spending money on features that you're not getting. And THAT is why I refuse to buy Apple products.
How many owners of iPhones and iPads feel "screwed"?
That's just it: Apple has managed to market its products, and especially its mobile devices, as better-no-matter-what. They're consistently behind the punch and offer a pretty feature-dilute experience.
It's also been mentioned that you pay for the "peace of mind," but can anybody here actually quantify what that means on a mobile device? I also find this really ironic because this comes after antenna-gate which most people seem to have forgot. We're consistently told by the media and Apple's marketing that buying from them is a safe bet, has this ever actually meant anything?