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Comment by mikl | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, OnePlus Buds appear to be counterfeit AirPods in everything but the name. Same shape, same white plastic, same metal endcaps, same black dots, even the same case design.

In other words, a straight-up rip-off of Apple’s design with a few minor changes.

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This is how a lot of "design" works, be it product design, fashion or software. A standard is set by a market leader and consumers want as close to that as they can get. So other companies offer similar versions, often sharing some of the same supply chain. It has happened throughout history and will continue as long as consumers have choice.

Sure, but there’s different degrees, from a little inspiration to an outright copy.

In this case, I think it’s far towards the copy-end. If you presented a case of OnePlus Buds to the average consumer as Apple AirPods, would they know the difference? I doubt it.

There are degrees but the average consumer is blind to many differences which are only obvious if you're looking for them, or an expert. Debadge one of the many homogeneously designed cars and an average consumer wouldn't have any idea who manufactured it. Line up a dozen laptops from different brands and to many people they look the same.

They look totally different from the side that is conveniently not visible in the picture on twitter.

The phone your holding has the same screen in the front, camera on the back, a home button, and the keyboard shows up on the bottom when you're typing. Maybe even the same front camera design.

All of that is just straight-up rip-off of.. everyone's phone?

The smart-phone form factor is largely determined by the rectangular screen, and for the cameras to be useful, they have to be on the back and/or front.

The keyboards are very different in design between Google and Apple, and many phones don’t have home buttons. Some even have more buttons.

Conversely, there’s nothing about ear-buds that force you to use white plastic with black grills for the holes, EarPod-style stems, or metal tips on said stems, nor a white round-rect pill box to store the things in.

The lazy OnePlus people chose to copy those features, making their product look like Apple’s.

well tbf the earbud form factor is largely determined by the shape of your ear.

Also the product in question come in several colors, white being just one of them. It's kind of ridiculous to rule that the earbuds they make cannot come in white colors because some other brand already does?

Also judge for yourself on physical similarities: https://twitter.com/OnePlus_USA/status/1305537918891589640

The stems come from the antennae required for a solid connection, IIRC approximately 30mm long. The OnePlus buds are available in a number of colors. Metal tips on said stems is also a design decision to allow charging by slotting them into the container. The form factor of the container follows from the design of the stems.

Apple did file a billion dollar lawsuit against Samsung on this exact claim.

Also it is far easier to produce counterfeit packaging than electronics in the US. If I was going to smuggle something in, I'd put it in other packages and then repack it here.

The best way to hide something is to mislabel it.

If you are doing that just send them over in the plastic case, no need for all the cardboard packaging which adds to shipping weight and volume.

But if the naive Verge reporter had been working at CBP then the boxes would have worked to do their job of getting the copycat items past customs.

It is, however, odd that they didn't say something like "Counterfeit Airpods disguised in OnePlus Buds packaging" or similar. It's a bit too early to tell which is right, I think. Photos of OnePlus Buds from TFA show that they are a different shape on the back, distinguishable from Airpods. The CBP photos don't show this part so it's hard to tell whether they are counterfeits or just a different product.

I don't think that's what happened, though—the OnePlus charging cases have a much more rounded one than Apple's.

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