Steve Wozniak on Samsung patent verdict: ‘I hate it and I don’t agree with it’

I am also noticing the shift to Android in my circles. This could be a good thing.

It feels like a painter suing another artist not for copying his painting but for using patented brush strokes to create it.

Doesn't really follow.

"Are they trying to discredit Samsung as copycats?"

Absolutely.

"it's a positive business move" sort of thing?"

I think they would rather sign deals guaranteeing more product differentiation than get money directly from lawsuits so not really.

...

Whether they are right or not I think Apple feels genuinely aggrieved by Android in general and Samsung's close copying in particular. Again whether they are right or not I think they are serious when they say they don't want to be both R&D and Design for the whole industry.

The litigation has the following aims imho:

(1) dilute the brands of copycats

(2) scare copycats into differentiating their products more

(3) force utility sapping differentiation via judgements

1. The iPhone 5 is an incremental update to the iPhone 4 template. It doesn't mean it's a bad product, it actually looks like it's a very very nice device. But it isn't the leapfrog over the competition that people have come to expect and Apple has built its smartphone business around.

I think Apple tends to produce their iDevices at pretty much the absolute state of the art. I think previous smartphones and recent competitors did not because it let them yield better profits given an inefficient supply chain. Now the competition has caught up and is also operating at the state of the art.

Now they just produce a very very nice device with specs more or less in-line with the competition. The differentiation is harder to demonstrate.

At some point during the development cycle for the iPhone 5 they had to have compared it to the competition in the marketplace and come to the conclusion that it simply isn't going to cut it the way previous phones have. They'll still sell it as an upgrade to most current users, but the rate of new user growth is slowing down and the rate of defectors to the competition is increasing. They must have decided the 5 simply isn't going to do enough on its own as a product to change that.

2. In the past year the competition has started to outsell them. Despite having the iPhone available across the major carriers, and having arguably a nicer device at a similar price, it just seems to be an increasingly hard sell. The iPhone 5 may not be enough of a difference from the 4S (in line with consumer expectations) to sway consumers back over into Appleland. Long new product development pipelines have prevented them from pushing out a product that really stands out in a meaningful way in the market anymore.

So Apple is hedging, they've calculated that the new iPhone 5 won't swing the pendulum back in their favor, and the only choice is to try and frustrate the ability of the competion in bringing even newer products to market. Apple isn't hoping to make money via the awards, but in swinging the pendulum a few percent back in their favor. It could mean tens of billions on top of the award.

Who do we want to have higher status, Jony Ive or Noreen Krall?

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/10/apples_chief_couns...