Comment by buster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by buster | Hacker News Reader

I'm soooo tired of this discussion. Could please the whole gadget industry sue itself to hell. It's stupid. The arrangement of some buttons is not "innovation". Development of new wireless technologies (like UMTS, etc.) is innovation!

One thing i am really sick of: Go to the next walmart or what have you... Look at ALL the electronic devices. ALL! Now what do you see when you compare televisions, dishwashers, washingmachines, DECT telephones, receivers, every fking device looks the same, and for decades no sh*t has been given.

Really, i hope that Apple, HTC, Samsung, all of them sue each other into non-operation, let them not sell a device at all. Because somehow all of them copy from eachother (look at iOS5 notifications, as a counter example). It's a rather trivial design decision, not some livechanging invention!

Why is it that with all those new gadgets everyones first reaction is "oh fuck, i've seen this on device X before, it's copied, that's bad!"?! For about every of those design decisions prior art has been found anyway, it's NOT like Apple reinvented the whole electronic world with some "perfectly" aligned buttons.

Have you ever seen and used phones prior 2007?

Sure, and since you may have done too, you may remember that there was no such fuss about a phone looking like another, which is the point of my comment.

I also don't see how the "slide to unlock" stuff can be patented and sued on, there are (not only from Apple of course) sooo much stupid trivial patents, it's just sickening.

Hopefully someday the sue each other into "check mate", make no money and the world/countries see that the whole patent system has to be reworked from the ground.

Phones were ugly, they were not other phones knock-offs. They were WAY different: Nokia phones were slide phones, Samsung phones were different (similar to Motorola but way thicker)

They were not lookalikes, maybe sometimes vaguely similar, nothing more.

Also, just see the thumbnail image to recall how phones were in 2007: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uW-E496FXg

uhm.. yes.. first you say "WAY different", but then "..similar to Motorola.." and "..sometimes vaguely similar.."..

So what now.. the samsung doesn't look exactly like the iphone either, only similar (woohoo it consists mainly of a touch screen!).. Same thing for pretty much every electronic device as i said in the other post..

Asi said, this whole discussion is just stupid. Someone who can't tell the difference between phones and tablets wouldn't be alte to tell the difference between televisions or cars or whatever.. Only that for all other products nobody cares.

You do remember that a Samsung lawyer could not tell the difference between a Tab and ad iPad in a court, right? (thankfully a second lawyer got it right)

I couldn't tell the difference between most LCD screens from a distance, too. But i'm not complaining about it, either.

There is only few ways to make a tablet, which is essentially just a large screen. How should a touchscreen seen from front, off and from several feet away look like? Pink vs. Green?

Again: Ridiculous discussion, nobody cares for the rest of the electronic world. Why the obsession with shiny gadgets?!

I would bet that same lawyer couldn't have told you the make of any LCD TV at Best Buy if you removed their names either. Should all the flat panel TV manufacturers sue each other for copying because they all do shiny black flat devices with the same aspect ratio operated by a remote control? Or perchance they all settled on what works best for a flat panel TV design.

I did have a smart phone before 97, an HTC Apache in 95. It was a flat rectangle with a large touchscreen in the middle. So goes the evolution of hardware towards a common structure that works best.

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