Samsung’s Galaxy Gear television advertisement bears a resemblance to the original iPhone advertisement.
This made me smile, though:
There is just no shame – or original ideas – in this company at all.
Yeah! Except for display technology. Oh, and except for microprocessor design. And, of course, they are a driving force in memory chip design. Well, yeah, except for all those things from which virtually every computer product today benefits – Apple or otherwise – Samsung has absolutely no innovative ideas at all. What have the Romans done for us, indeed.
I don’t care about Samsung any more than I care about other companies, but to shove the company’s contributions to technology aside just because you lack the capacity to grasp the kind of more bare metal innovation they do just makes you look like an idiot.
Yeah, like Apple has had any original ideas since their inception. They’ve ripped off more than their fair share of ideas and repackaged them as their own over the years. Pot calls kettle black.
Samsung tries to deliberately copy the physical design of apple products to confuse buyers. The latest charger, S4, looks exactly like an apple charger, white and all. And before you call me iSheep or some thing like that, the latest iPhone I used was an 3GS, and my current phone is a N4.
Edited 2013-10-08 00:07 UTC
True for people whose reading skills don’t allow to see any difference between words “Apple” and “Samsung”.
The motivation behind Samsung’s copying of Apple’s designs is obviously the popularity of Apple’s style, not the will of Samsung to fool buyers into thinking that Samsung-branded devices are iPhones.
That said, all the keyboardless touch phones look nearly the same (at best) these days, and only a handful of HTC devices ever deviated from the common look&feel of this group.
Yeah, right.
If nokia (lumia), and HTC (one), can do it, i’m sure samsung can.
I’m sorry, are you saying that Samsung has not developed it’s own style? Or that SGS 2/3/4 look like iPhone?
No, I’m saying that Samsung would try to copy the look and feel of a successful competitor whenever they feel like. It reminds me of when they had this phone with keybord, very similar to BlackBerry, which was called, Black Jack! Or when they developed this vacuum cleaner, and they copied the look and feel of dyson. So, no, S4 does not looks like and iPhone, but previous model more or less did.
Except in this particular case Apple stole the idea for the iPhone ad. Who’s to say that Samsung didn’t also get “inspired” by the original and not the iPhone ad?
Do you believe yourself in that theory?
Does it really matter? Apple stole the concept and Samsung in turn stole it (or got “inspired”) from either Apple or the original artist.
Edited 2013-10-08 08:25 UTC
It does seems to matter to you.
Apple stole nothing unless the concept was somehow copyrighted.
Apple got inspiration from an idea (not related to their business) as any company do.
Samsung did get inspiration too and they have the right to do it. The problem is that they obviously get inspiration from their direct competitor and that it is just another similar story from a company which seems to be unable to be a great artist.
Because I guess you know the “artists copy, great artists steal” mantra from Picasso quoted by Steve Jobs, but I would bet you don’t understand it as many.
Apple is a great artist and Samsung an artist. Whether or not you can see the difference is your problem.
Samsung has every right to be just a (bad) artist only able to get inspiration from their competitors (Apple today, Nokia in the past). It is just lame.
Edited 2013-10-08 08:48 UTC
Every work of art is automatically copyrighted.
Well, you obviously do not understand it.
Sorry, stealing an idea is stealing an idea. It doesn’t matter who you steal it from. Stealing..oh sorry, allow me to correct myself…”getting inspiration” from an artist does not make you a greater artist than someone who gets “inspired” by a competitor.
All right then, how about this slight variation (attributed to Lionel Trilling):
Which is basically saying, an artist can steal inspiration form all areas of life. Mature Artists know this, realise that there is a way to take a concept, refine it and make a different (sometimes better) product. Then you have the immature attitude that causes a whole sale “let’s make an identical product to that one.” No real skill in that, no flair. *That* is what Picasso meant by the quote. Whether you believe Jobs understood that is your business, but there’s a world of difference between *your* interpretation and reality.
But unless you are Picasso yours is also just an interpretation of what he said.
In this particular case I also don’t see how Apple really refined anything, it’s pretty much a wholesale ripoff. Clever to use it in your ad? Sure but it’s not being a great artist and you really can’t accuse Samsung of being less original (or less of an artist) than Apple when they went with the same idea.
Edited 2013-10-08 13:20 UTC
Let’s get back to the topic… Apple delivered no more flair than Samsung in the ads being compared. They weren’t the originator of the technique. Apple’s version was the most recent one that stuck in some people’s minds.
Let alone I’ll use a quite from TechCrunch:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/07/was-samsungs-galaxy-gear-spot-insp…
Why isn’t Samsung a great artist??? Without their Artistry, Apple wouldn’t have been able to develop the iPhone. No screens, no SoC, no memory…
Apple stole the Notification shade from Android… Apple’s iOS 7 is an almost complete rip off of Android.
Apple is a ripoff Artist, or in your case, a Great Ripoff Artist.
Let’s get this straight… Apple “got inspired” by an ad to produce an ad. That is not an original idea, even if the advertisement is for a different class of product(Oh… BTW, Galaxy Gear is a different class of product to iPhone). They took a technique verbatim and applied it verbatim. Samsung took the same technique and applied it.
link originally posted in a comment by ‘flimbus’ over at obamapacman.. funny.. love the reply by the OP as well 🙂
“Here’s the link to the ripped-off artist:
http://blogs.walkerart.org/centerpoints/2007/03/29/christian-marcla…
“OP Editor: Thanks flimbus,
It seems to me that Apple voluntarily tried to do the right thing and pay Marclay, and he refused. (His own lawyer told him that Apple doesn’t owe him anything).
So did Samsung approach Apple or Marclay to license the concept? I think not.”
I’m pretty sure that “ask for permission and when denied steal the concept anyway” isn’t the right thing.
Marclay’s lawyer was right. There is nothing wrong with what Apple did or with what Samsung did. There is really no reason to criticize Samsung for something that gets done all the time. Impersonation is the greatest form of flattery.
And, of course as it’s Samsung, getting convicted multiple times for memory chip price fixing.
ever noticed that these convictions allways happen when the memory-price is at a historic low?
Are you suggesting that Samsung and other commercial ventures break the law and risk getting caught in a desperate attempt to lower memory chip prices for us poor consumers?
As they were convicted, more than once, I guess the judge nor I believe this.
It’s funny when Apple for example doesn’t cheat mobile phone benchmarks people, like you, suggest they probably did despite any evidence suggesting they did and when for example Samsung not only breaks the law, but also gets convicted people, like you, suggest that they were wrongly convicted and we actually doing a good thing.
Well said
microprocessor design
SoC design. Samsung is not finished their own microprocessor yet. Apple already did 2 state-of-art ARM cores.
Both Apple and Samsung take off the shelf ARM designed cores and add in their own tweaks. Neither are doing anything revolutionary. It’s akin to building a prefab house, but one set of guys uses a slightly different kitchen module, and the other has a slightly different bedroom layout.
If Apple was taking the ARM instruction set and creating a chip from scratch – that would be something amazing. No idea what the A7 core is based on – maybe they did this time. But chances are low.
Apple A7 uses the 64 bit ARM v8 design, I think.
Samsung is on the same level when it comes to SOC design. HTC/Motorola/Nokia just get their SOC’s from the likes of Qualacom. Which is somewhat ironic for Moto, as they used to own Freescale which also does arm SOC’s ( albeit not for high performance consume mobile devices).
You are wrong on almost every count. The A6 features the custom, Apple-exclusive Swift cores. It is a new core design for ARM. The A7 features an even newer core design that AnandTech has dubbed Oscar based on some evidence. Unlike Apple and Qualcomm who are ARM ISA licensees producing new core designs, Samsung is not.
Sorry, simply not true.
Apple has an ARM architectural licence, meaning they can build CPU’s with the ARM instruction set. It is the first-one to have a 64bit ARM cpu in production. So yes they use the ARM instruction set, and probably a lot of IP of ARM and others (the most important being the GPU), but they do have their own CPU design. Not an ARM designed core.
Samsung on the other hand has an ARM core license, which means they can design and produce a chip built from ARM “building blocks”. Sure – some serious know-how is still needed for this, but this is nothing compared to what you need to design a CPU from ground up.
Considering what companies they acquired the time they had, their cores are tweaks of the ARM cores. Consider this – it takes Intel 2 years to build a new generation of cores(tick out of tick-tock) and Apple can’t even come close to the amount that Intel spends on R&D in that area…
Both Chipworks and AnadTech only commented that the cores are manually laid out and there is little evidence that the actual processing blocks were custom designed.
Edited 2013-10-09 10:01 UTC
No, that is not what Anand says. Anand is very clear in saying that Swift cores performed much better than any off the shelf ARM cores at similar or greater clock rates, and he has given Apple much kudos for their design. He has noted even greater performance from the A7 cores and has theorized that their design is likely largely responsible for the observed 2x performance in some case (rather than 64 bitness, or larger caches, or any other changes which may account for some improvement but not the full extent of improvements he’s seeing in benchmarks).
They did it with A6 and A7.
A6 was most power effecient ARMv7-compatible cpu to date with comparable to Silvermont performance (per cycle). A7 totally destroys it.
Also A7 is first mass produced 64bit ARM chip.
Samsung will show off-the-shelf 64bit ARM CortexA5x in 2014 as well as in-house designed cores (unknown timeline).
LOL. Funny to see fanboys moded my comment to negative value. Yes, Samsung is working on their own CPU core. And they’re not finished yet. So far they used off-the-shelf microprocessors for their SoCs. Is it too hard to understand?
And yes, both Apple cores are state-of-art. Even ARM doesn’t have a real possibility to design such cores, because ARM customers use different libraries and different manufacturers. Because of that ARM additionally offers POP (http://www.arm.com/products/physical-ip/processor-optimization-pack…)
AMCC X-Gene is interesting to compare A7 to, but so far it is made with obsolete process technology and not available for wide audience.
I just have to give Kudos for referencing Life of Brian. My favorite comedy of all time!
for as smart as you people are, how is this big blind spot developed over companies that make knock offs?
deliberately making a product that physically looks and is packaged like your more popular competitor is LAME.
stealing? cheating? that’s for the lawyers.
but it is LAME. Asian knockoffs are asian knockoffs, I don’t care if samsung makes the best knockoff.
their current products don’t look like apple’s, but they defintely grew their market share with people who wanted something that looked like an iphone.
there are literally millions of colors, hundreds of degrees of rounding angles, 10’s of physical areas to differentiate your phone from competitors.
samsung ordered their designers (in writing) to copy a successful, shipping product, made by a large customer of samsung. and they got their azz sued all over for it.
IF samsung really had better screen and chip hardware than apple, why isn’t it in their own phones? BECAUSE APPLE DRIVES THE INDUSTRY. Apple’s designs and (now huge) orders from suppliers push the whole thing forward.
The copying from Android to Apple is usually software hacks. Jailbroken iPhones can do that stuff too, Apple just stays conservative and tests new features for a slow rollout. It’s a simple software update away for Apple to give all sort of Android-software features, if they want to.
Its the hardware design copying and the ‘look and feel’ copying that really angers Apple and their users consider tacky. Samsung basically sells an auto shaped like a BMW, with nearly the same logo and outward appearance, but it says BMVV and performs completely differently. It’s false advertising and a knockoff and should not be applauded.
Edited 2013-10-08 14:21 UTC
Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s not stealing. Every company in every industry “steal” from the competition, it’s just funny how many Apple fans stubbornly insist that Apple doesn’t ever do it.
I personally have never said that. I know Apple is inspired by other products. I know they compete in the marketplace with certain features and all that. I know they probably “steal” in many senses of the word, on individual features or details within an overall design.
But I believe, as a user of many technology companies’ products, that Apple represents one of the best designers working in the consumer space today. From any country. At almost any price point.
In other market segments, luxury makers try to give their products Apple polish. Look into features like engineering tolerances, flex ratings, drop tests, airflow management, battery design and features, weight distribution, manufacturing consistency, etc etc etc and you will find Apple above other computer companies. They just care more because their primary value in the open marketplace is that they are built better.
Since it’s a computer we are talking about, it’s software AND hardware that is built. Apple first jumped ahead in hardware in the 70’s Apple 2 Woz era, then with the 80’s MacOS – their software was admired while their hardware was overpriced and non-standard. That’s pre-UNIX, pre-Intel Apple. Now with Unix, iOS, Intel inside, and their leadership in ARM designs, and Jon Ive, Apple has serious strength in all of the above.
Which is why they are now one of the richest companies in the world and just become the most popular brands in the world. And Android is still owned by an advertising company.
Google may be an advertising company but that is ok, as Apple is also mainly a marketing company.
They sell average products at premium prices to people that buy them mostly as status indicators. Apple having the best designed equipment is mostly an illusion and clever marketing.
Apple products are nowdays everywhere, so it will only be a matter of time before people start looking to other direction when they want to differentiate themself from the others. Everyone wants to feel they are somehow special and with the equipment they use they are sending that message to others. Switching to Intel they lost that “think different” factor and turned to just another IBM PC clone maker they ridiculed in the past. Just another Unix is also not enough to be different enough.
Apple is starting to feel the pressure, so they release software full of bugs before it is really completed or tested properly. It really is sad if people find lots of different bugs in couple minutes after software update and makes you wander if they even tested it at all.
I disagree 100%. Here’s why:
Nothing average about having the highest customer satisfaction rate year after year.
How can something be a status indicator and everywhere at the same time?
Most people I know with Apple’s rely on them to make a living, often directly relying on them for more than socializing with friends or punching the clock with someone else’s machine. SO many freelancers and mobile people use Apple because it fails the least. Go to a linux conference in the US and you see macbooks everywhere, friend.
How are they just another clone PC maker when they are the only one that runs OSX and iOS? and are so damn fashion forward too?
How are they just another unix if they make so much money off hardware and mobile?
Apple’s feeling the pressure all right, all the way to the bank, and if they were hardcore capitalists instead of hippy capitalists they would buy most of their computer competitors right now. Seriously, Jobs owned most of Pixar and a chunk of Disney too. But oh their profit margin is just too good to bother diversifying too far.
Keyword highlight:::: Profit Margins 😉
Apple will probably ride the iOS ecosystem out another 10 years with a stronger TV living room play, maybe a wearable more than the ipod mini already is wearable, and they are going into autos with the voice only interface. Android is loving being the free knockoff because this time it’s ad-supported, not Microsoft monopoly supported.
Dude. If you disagree with my main points above let’s just chalk this up to a difference in market perspective. i am i the heart of america and have been using various platforms since the 80’s. i’ve bought, sold, programmed, supported, and recycled computers. so i’m just one man with an opinion and can’t internet fight my day away.
I am writing this with my RISC OS box, so can not quote as no javascript etc.
My point is exactly that, nowdays you see Apple products everywhere and as they turn into commodity products they will inevitably lose their premium status in the process. If every other person and their dog has something it will be less desirable and too common for the others.
Apple has always been the good guys vs big bad Microsoft and that has also been beneficial for their success. People wanted choices and Apple gave them just that what they wanted. However tide is turning and Apple is with their recent actions appearing to be the biggest evil of them all. Nobody likes bullies and their succes will eventually turn against them. I can see similar fate waiting them as what happened to Nokia.
Problem with selling dreams is that eventually people will have to wake up into reality.
Those numbers are meaningless:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?574132
Apple polish? Since when does a high quality that we expect from any premium product is called “Apple polish”? Maybe we should say BMW or Mercedes polish? You know because those companies did it even before Job’s parents were conceived.
Geez… Love Apple, but don’t to rewrite history.
And please do explain what did Samsung rip-off from Apple in it’s SGS4? (Hardware only please; because software is just a hack, according to your own statements)
Which is relevant in what way?
Agreed that luxury car brands are part of Apple’s DNA. Those rich silicon valley types have been driving german sportscars since their first half-million. I’m not claiming Apple started good design, I’m saying Apple takes design aesthetic seriously, ranks the designer’s voice nearly on par with the engineer, unlike just about every other computer company in existence. There are any number of classic items, from lamps to cameras to cars that inform the design of modern Apple products. That’s the point, replicating and refining classic design, because great design never goes out of style.
And no I’m not going to explain how the Samsung oihj[j]-q39r is similar to my iPhone, because I don’t research every new android out. I’ve been happily running my current iphone for 3 years. that’s also my point, apple designed the modern smartphone and almost everything since 2007 wants to look like an iphone or an ipad. it doesn’t want to be something else, something new. almost no mainstream androids have more cool stuff, cost more, or look completely different than an iphone. that’s the only points i’m giving to the ms surface – it’s providing an alternative future (one from 1996 but oh well).
I write software, so I don’t know why you think I called it a hack. Wrong guy. My point was Apple is one of the few that does both well, and manages to compete in various markets in both software and hardware.
What I don’t get about the Apple hate that remains (now that they make so much money) is why won’t someone compete with Apple head up? Develop your own platforms that run on your own differentiated hardware, open your own chain of retail stores w/free tech support, and make it all profitable based solely on “fashion” and “greed”, as some of you write off apple fanboys. Even the term is ridiculous.
Samsungs innovation that is what makes this such a hot mess because for a company like Samsung to then turn around and shamelessly copy Apple, over and over again after being so innovative is embarrassing!
Or is it they just copied companies like Nokia and Blackberry in the past and no one called them out on it.
http://m.cnet.com/reviews/samsung-blackjack-sgh-i607-at&t/32143…
Ether way Samsung needs to give it up. They now make great smart phones that don’t copy Apple, keep it moving and totally leave it alone.