Samsung wins appeal in Apple tablet battle

Samsung are copycats! No innovation what so ever.

EVERYONE copies Apple... that is indisputable. They just make the home button a different shape.

EVERYONE copies Apple... that is indisputable.

First to make an MP3 player? Nope, that was Rio. First to make a tablet PC? Nah, several were released 10 years ago. First GUI operating system? Er, that was Xerox.

But I guess Apple is the world's leading innovator for preventing you from using the device you bought the way you want unless you hack the crap out of it, so there is that.

Do you see how you can paint a completely different picture by omitting details from a statement.

The iPod, wasn't just an MP3 player.

If that's all it had been, it would have done nothing. It was the whole set up with iTunes. Making a legal way to download music. Doing what Napster promised to deliver, but never did.

And the iPod didn't sit still either, it developed into the iphone and the iPad.

Which brings me to the iPad. Let's put this in caps. THE IPAD IS NOT A TABLET PC.

Ice cream salesmen wear white coats and so do doctors, but they do very different jobs.

Tablets were a heap of crap. Designed by engineers and fiddlers for engineers and fiddlers. It was the PC experience on a computer that didn't have a screen. And a stylus that was easy to lose and if you lost it, you couldn't do a thing with the tablet. It was horrible, really difficult to read the tiny eight bit words on the screen and hugely unpopular.

And as for tablets, Apple had a working tablet in the early 80's - the Newton. The first ones weren't a lot of good, but the Newton 2001 was a very useful device. Way ahead of its time. Palm copied it and them everybody and his dog was making PDAs.

And as for Xerox's GUI. Take a look. See much resemblance? Not a lot. And in any case they weren't doing anything with it and for another thing, Apple paid for their right to use it.

On the other hand, take a look at Windows 95 and the Mac GUI and the NeXT GUI. This is rip off.

Look at the Android icons and UI and compare them with the iOS. Coincidence? I think not.

Macs use mice. A little later, all computers use mice.

Macs use color. All computers use color.

Macs use USB, everybody uses USB.

Macs throw out floppies, likewise.

Macs install software from the Internet, Windows copies it.

Track pad.

Ultra thin laptops.

The only thing they can't seem to copy is the absence of viruses.

There are NO viruses for the MacOS, not fewer. NONE.

Fanboy fanboy fanboy fanboy fanboy, that's all I am hearing here. Why are you making a pointless Mac vs Windows argument? Windows is crap. MacOS is also crap (maybe less so since it's Unix based, though it's like *nix for Dummies). iOS is truly crap. Android is nicely open source, can be adapted by anyone for any device, and is already far outstripping iOS development due to it's adoption on a wide variety of platforms. Heck, you can get apps from more than one source - how AMAZING! I don't have to shop at the same crappy, restrictive store all the time!

The iPod WAS just an MP3 player. It had a nifty little click wheel for sure. iTunes was, and still is, crap. Apple had to be shamed into releasing higher bitrates than 128, shamed into selling DRM-free music, way behind when other stores (ahem, Amazon) did.

It was horrible, really difficult to read the tiny eight bit words on the screen and hugely unpopular.

I think you never used one. They worked just fine, but were large and quite expensive.

Macs used FIREWIRE; everybody else uses USB. Macs throw out floppies - oh yeah, everybody was already using ZIP, CD burners or similar.

Macs use color. All computers use color.

Geez, Macs had many innovations but color was most definitely not one. The first Macs were B&W! My Commodore 64 in 1982 had a color output, thank you very much, and it was hardly the first (nor did it cost the thousands that a Mac did).

Look at the Android icons and UI and compare them with the iOS. Coincidence? I think not.

Look at the iOS icons and compare them with any icon on any other device. Coincidence? I think not.

Macs install software from the Internet, Windows copies it.

I installed software from the internet in 1994 on a Unix box.

Track pad.

Licensed by Apple from another company.

Ultra thin laptops.

That cost 2x as much as my nice, thin, cheap Acer.

There are NO viruses for the MacOS, not fewer. NONE.

Nor are there for *nix. NONE. And it's FREE (well, as Linux, it's free)

Samsung Galaxy phones are heaps better than those over priced Iphones.

I see how technologic quality is perceived thru the list of X-Mas the teenagers of my family wrote to us: four iPhone 4S, 2 iPads, 2 AirMacs. No Androids or Windows in the list. I asked my 16-year-old nephew if a Galaxy would do. He said no, he already owns an iPhone, and he wants a tablet to match it.

@ smithinjapan

What home button? There is no home button on the Samsung Galaxy tab, neither are there on most tablets.

The designs that Apple now uses have been used in other products before and are mere innovation of basic design ideas, not something that can be patented. Look at the HP TC1000, a Windows tablet from the early 2000s, the basic shape of the iPad is there, except that, because of technological limits, it was much thicker. Look also at the MSI Harmony, an Android tablet prototype shown during CES 2010 in december 2009, BEFORE the iPad was officially announced and before people knew what it would look like, the basic design is there too.

Look also at the LG Prada, a full touchscreen phone announced before the iPhone and released before it too. It looks startlingly similar to the recent iPhones.

As to the home button on the bottom, look at PDAs, notably the Palm line-up, which sported the large button at the bottom on often minimalist interfaces.

Apple didn't invent completely the design of their devices from scratch, they took basic design ideas that were common before their arrival in the market of smartphones and tablets and just polished them. Apple fans seem to believe that nothing ever existed before whatever Apple released, that is completely incorrect. It's not because you're not paying attention to a specific market because Apple doesn't make anything in it that it doesn't exist.

@johninnaha

You exemplify what I described, people who wear blinders and cannot see what others did before Apple did it. I mean, you're crediting Apple for inventing... COLOR. Wow, just wow.

And by the way, ultra thin laptops? Go search for images of the Sony VAIO x505, released in 2003, and weep. Your precious Macbook Air wasn't the first. It was the first one that really had an impact on the market, notably because of the Apple fans who bought them because Apple told them to, but it wasn't the first. See also the HP Sojourn Omnibook, released in 1998.

And Apple wasn't even in the consortium that came up with the USB. Apple wasn't the first to use it, it simply was the first to drop legacy ports so as to force people to use USB. But USB wasn't the technology that Apple was pushing for, remember Firewire? Yeah, that's what Apple believed in, where is it now?

He said no, he already owns an iPhone, and he wants a tablet to match it.

Of course. If you are an iOS user already you want a device that can sync with your other devices and has an interface you are familiar with.

Interestingly enough, my college-age nephew wants a tablet for Christmas and his mother told me he wants ONLY an Android tablet like the Galaxy, Iconia, or Transformer. This is largely due to him already being an Android user on his smartphone.

Samsung sucks, pure and simple, copy, copy and more copying, NO thanks, happy with what I got, thank you very much.

Apple sucks, pure and simple, copy copy and more copying. ;-)

And that's your opinion, but I love my ipad and iphone, Samsung can go bankrupt for all I care. lol Seriously, Samsung??

Come on, every company copies technology from others - that's how they stay competitive. I can understand Apple and Samsung legal departments having disagreements over this, but can't we as end-users just admit both Apple and Samsung (and god forbid even Sony) make decent products and play nice? I mean really, what is the big deal??

I neither know nor care which tablet is best, but I wish Apple would stop wasting their time and money on law suits and let consumers decide which product is best. I don't want Apple to decide what I can and cannot buy: that's up to me. Lots of competition will force Apple to raise their game and keep improving their products.

Love macs! Love the ¨openess¨ to my htc phone. Just click and drag from pc to phone. Unlike the iphone because of th shtty itunes. Otherwise the iphone rocks. Oh, love the browser on my htc when on net. Auto adjust text to fit my screeb (dont have to scroll left and right to read on the net) just awesome. Get rid of itunes and get the browser auto adjust and im back on the iphone. Mac, 5 years, never a problem. At school, they use pc, always have problems, freezing, updates, it just takes forever to do anything on pc.