
Apple Pays Swiss Federal Railways $21 Million For Clock Icon - MichaelApproved
http://mashable.com/2012/11/11/apple-licenses-clock-icon/
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marvin
It this really true? I hope this doesn't count as a useless contribution, but
paying 21 million dollars for a clock design on your mobile OS seems to me
like complete insanity. For this price, you could literally hire multiple
competent workers to do whatever you wanted for the rest of their working
lives, and still have money left over.

It would be a lot more rational to just switch to a different clock design and
pocket the money. 21 million is almost just a rounding error in Apple's
accounting department, but it's still a ridiculous amount of money. I can't
possibly believe that giving your users this specific design and not losing
face due to backpedaling is worth this much.

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joering2
Agree. Still pretty upsetting news for an average stockholder. If those are
Apple decisions as to how spend money, no wonder 30% stock downslide. Truly no
better usage of this money?? Replacing icon with $99 design and give it out to
charity, especially for a company so deattached from such actions, would bring
new or sustain existing clientbase much better than this "cool" icon of a
clock staying on your device's dashboard.

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ceejayoz
Replacing it wouldn't protect them from infringement lawsuits, and a 30% stock
downslide because of a 0.021% outlay on their $100B cash hoard is a little too
insane even for a conspiracy theory.

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lhnn
>Replacing it wouldn't protect them from infringement lawsuits

Why not?

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adrianhoward
Because the infringement has already happened. You don't just get to say "oops
- I'll stop now" and get away free and clear. You still have to deal with the
fact that you did infringe, and compensate for the damages that infringement
did to the company and licencees involved.

So the choices are:

* Have a long and involved court case that you will almost certainly lose, where the press will continually poke you about the obvious and direct comparisons to the Samsung/Apple suits.

* Pay compensation/licencing fees, have the story become a non-story in a day or two, carry on using great piece of iconic design.

No brainer.

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tedmiston
Watching the motion of the real Swiss railway clocks [1] with its smoothness
is quite soothing.

"It requires only about 58.5 seconds to circle the face, then the hand pauses
briefly at the top of the clock. It starts a new rotation as soon as it
receives the next minute impulse from the master clock." [2]

1: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvIvKiDWDks> 2:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock>

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ekianjo
Interesting fact. I wonder why they could not make it go round in 60 seconds
exactly. Did you they have to play with some motor limitations for the seconds
hand, or was it purely by design ?

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tb
It's to keep all the railway clocks in sync. You could have one that's running
up to 1.5s slow and it will still be able to keep up with all the rest, and
they're all resynchronised with each other every minute. This is important
when it could be the difference between catching a train or not.

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jrockway
If it's really that important, why not just use digital clocks?

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dblock
This was designed in the 50s!

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hemancuso
When you are making $4 million in profit per hour[1], you might as well buy a
nice watch (face).

1.[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-
corr...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-correction)

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clarky07
While this is obviously a copy, I'm not sure why everyone loves this design.
The only thing that looks different from every other watch in the world is the
ball on the end of the second hand, and I find it disturbing.

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huhtenberg
It'll grow on you :)

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LVB
Can Swiss Federal Railways now turn around and offer a license to Samsung for
$9.99?

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tnuc
It is their property, they can do whatever they want with it.

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adrianhoward
Depends on the terms of the licence. It might be exclusive in certain domains.

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jere
When an app that lets you upload photos to the internet sells for 50 times
this, I think I'm OK with it.

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jessriedel
Apple has sold a quarter _billion_ iPhones. This fee works out to 10 cents per
phones for one of the most prominent images. Arguably worth it.

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dhbanes
This clock isn't used on the iPhone.

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nicholassmith
I imagine if they've just licensed it they'll be considering getting their
money worth so to speak.

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apetresc
An identical clock is used at most of the swimming pools I've competed/trained
in for lap times and synchronization. I remember it distinctly, since I spent
so much time looking at it. It even has the "smooth motion, with a pause at
the minute mark" feature that others in the thread are discussing. I suppose
that also has practical advantages for swim meets.

I sure hope my high school won't also have to pay $21,000,000; I don't think
they'll be able to afford it.

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DanBC
With a red (not orange) second hand? With that big counter-weight circle on
the end of the second hand? With square-cut parallel-sided hands?

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apetresc
Yes, yes, and yes. Especially those last two things, that's the most
distinctive thing about it.

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gillesv
Kinda puts the whole Samsung deal in perspective, doesn't it? $1 billion seems
like a bargain now.

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josephagoss
3-4 Hours of net profit. :)

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genuine
Will someone please stand up, gets some balls, and say that the world needs to
stick its litigiousness where the sun don't shine? I'm not defending Apple.
They screwed the pooch recently suing Samsung. This is karma. But, we need to
speak out against people just suing because they can. And, while we're at it,
enact laws that restrict the power of unions.

