Apple recently won the latest legal battle in its ongoing war with key competitor and key component supplier Samsung.
A German judge appears to have agreed with Apple’s assertion that Samsung has “slavishly” copied the iPad with its latest tablet the Galaxy Tab 10. The Galaxy Tab is consequently banned from going on sale in Germany.
Explaining her decision, judge Johanna Brückner-Hoffmann stated: “The court is of the opinion that Apple’s minimalistic design isn’t the only technical solution to make a tablet computer. Other designs are possible.”
She added: “For the informed customer there remains the predominant overall impression that the device looks [like the iPad].”
I have little sympathy with Apple’s assertions about Samsung and others imitating its hardware, particularly when it claims the iPad’s form has been imitated. Tablets existed before the iPad and in principle they all look similar.
Two of Apple’s design claims were “a rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded” and “the front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders”. You can see why Samsung might feel aggrieved.
In its defence, Samsung produced documents claiming film director Stanley Kubrick invented the tablet form when he had his astronauts watch news videos on iPad-like devices in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The filing summed up how daft that part of the case was.
I’ve held a dozen tablets and none of them looks exactly alike but they all look tablety. Every tablet looks more or less the same and Apple can hardly claim to have invented the form factor, any more than it can claim to have invented the form factor of touchscreen phones.
It’s what happens when you turn them on that makes the difference, and this is where I do have sympathy with Apple’s case. The physical form of the device is less important than the software that gives it life. Apple has understood that this key point is the only way of making tablets commercially successful – through its iOS software and its touch paradigms.
Windows tablets and touchscreen devices have been around for a while. They failed to capture either the imagination of consumers or the unit sales in the way the iPad has. Most relied on desktop versions of Windows and, heaven forbid, a stylus.
iOS is the main reasonthe iPhone and the iPad have been a success and it’s hard to argue that Android hasn’t taken more than a little inspiration from iOS. Likewise, QNX and webOS.
Two more Apple trade dress claims relate to a display of a “grid of colourful square icons with uniformly rounded corners” and “a bottom row of square icons – the springboard – set off from the other icons and that do not change as the other pages of the user interface are viewed”.
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10 is at the epicentre of Apple’s patent firestorm, designed to protect the iPad
Photo: Samsung
Looking at Android and other mobile operating systems that utilise trays of icons, it’s easy to see why Apple is arguing this point.
I remember Steve Jobs at the 2007 keynote introducing the iPhone. “We have invented a new technology called multitouch, which is phenomenal,” Jobs told delegates.
He listed some of its key features, such as its accuracy and the range and added: “And boy, have we patented it.” Turns out he wasn’t kidding.
Yes, Apple has clearly taken on elements of both the BlackBerry and Android recently in iOS 5. The notifications screen and iMessage are two examples. However, Android couldn’t exist without the iPhone, neither could the PlayBook or the webOS devices. These are embellishments on a theme and not a reinvention of the big idea.
There are three major challenges for iPad competitors.
The first is avoiding the patent firestorm taking place at the moment by flying too close to Apple’s look and feel. It’s hard to do another way, and takes R&D and money. It’s much easier to shake hands with an imitator than to start from scratch.
The second is in marketing. Consumers have to recognise a tablet as a tablet. The iPad is currently dominant and consumers think of the iPad as a tablet.
Some claim there is no tablet market: there’s an iPad market. But really the issue here is the mindset of consumers about what represents a tablet. If it doesn’t look like an iPad, it may not sell. If it looks too much like an iPad, then you get sued.
The longer Apple manages to keep its competitors at bay in certain territories through patent disputes, the longer its marketing messages can sell the iPad vision.
On the face of this, the challenge is either to reinvent the tablet or to reinvent the peripheral areas of the OS to make it sufficiently different to avoid litigation.
Which brings us to the third, more difficult challenge: to innovate and start afresh.
Customer choice would be greatly improved if competitors choose to innovate at the software level the way Microsoft is doing. And no, I can’t believe I just wrote that either.
Microsoft unveiled Windows 8 a short time after judge Brückner-Hoffmann issued her judgement against Samsung. “Other designs are possible,” she said, and here’s Microsoft right on cue.
Stung by years of copycat accusations from Apple and the rest of the industry, Microsoft went back to the drawing board and reimagined its Windows Phone software.
The Metro interface, shortly to be reinvented as Mango, is a refreshing change from the standard grid alignment of square icons waiting to be jabbed and swiped. Microsoft’s tiles offer a combination of launch icons and app previews, snippets of text and data.
It’s true that Windows 8 suffers from Microsoft’s ideological insistence that PCs will last forever – the tablet interface sits on top of the standard Windows interface. It also suffers because it’s not going to be released for another 12 months or so but it is a refreshing change of approach.
There are other advantages to innovating on software design, beyond not being sued senseless by Apple’s vast legal corps armed with its patent arsenal.
As the market matures, it will surely benefit from some of the innovation that Microsoft will deliver sometime in 2012 with Windows 8.
The iOS interface has been around since 2007 and has changed little in overall appearance or in how users interact with it.
A number of my friends who work in design and user experience are eyeing the Windows Phone interface with great interest. Dyed-in-the-wool Apple fans lusting after Microsoft products.
For the time being, the iPad’s paradigm of tablet computing defines the genre. Over time the attraction of something a little different might appeal to the iPad audience. Familiarity breeds contempt.
“Other designs are possible.” Amen to that.
Source:http://www.silicon.com/technology/hardware/2011/09/27/apple-talk-ipad-hardware-case-against-samsungs-galaxy-tab-is-patent-nonsense-39748003/
