

Apple and Samsung, frenemies for life - evo_9
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/10/net-us-apple-samsung-idUSBRE91901Q20130210

======
bouncing
Link to primary source, not AppleInsider's regurgitation:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/10/net-us-apple-
samsu...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/10/net-us-apple-samsung-
idUSBRE91901Q20130210)

~~~
nikcub
It took me a while to find the original link, it was burried in the fourth
paragraph and linked from a single word.

So you can't accuse them of not linking, they just do the bare minimum to
credit the original reporting.

I'd suggest the mods update the link to the Reuters story, please.

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panacea
"Tim Cook, Jobs' successor as Apple chief executive, was opposed to suing
Samsung in the first place, according to _people_ with knowledge of the
matter"

people = Apple's PR department? /cynic

~~~
zaidf
Knowing Cook's general "Be Nice" attitude, it isn't hard to believe him as the
Good Cop. Of course, you can argue _this is why Apple PR would run with this
story_...to which I'd say Apple PR would't risk the possibility of a leak
showing the opposite: that Cook agreed with Jobs. They ran with this angle
probably because it is true.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually _encouraged_ such a
disagreement to hedge their bets. If shit got real bad for Apple, Cook could
always walk over to Samsung and try to rescue the relationship.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I'm not sure if it's even necessarily a be nice thing.

Tim Cook strikes me as generally less emotional than Jobs. It may well just be
that being dispassionate he felt that when you took the heat out of it the
pain to reward ratio just didn't make it a good move (which is pretty much
spot on).

------
nicholassmith
"It was the late Steve Jobs' worst nightmare." Seriously? Did they find a
medium and communicate past the veil? I've never once heard that applied to
Jobs', he seemed to view the competition as crap and well, not competition.

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stcredzero
Good to know that Tim Cook was both disagreeing and making the right choice.

~~~
ihsw
I find it so comforting that _AppleInsider_ is able to sway your opinion, lest
your opinion be based on facts rather than conjecture.

~~~
stcredzero
Exactly how has my opinion been swayed, here? Seems like you're making up
_your_ facts.

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OGinparadise
Generally speaking I hate such lawsuits. However, we know who re-invented the
phone and Samsung has a history of essentially cloning products. If someone
copied my/your code or website look we'd be pissed, especially if they sold it
too as templates.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I've often wondered if Samsung was offended that Apple passed off the "A4"
chip that they designed and built as their own work. I mean Samsung knew that
Apple was asking them to put an Apple logo on this, and other, Samsung chips,
so I assume they knew what was going on. Still, there must have been someone
going "thermonuclear" inside Samsung, to see his credit stolen so brazenly.

~~~
simonh
This is the first time I've ever seen it suggested that the A4 was actually
designed by Samsung.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
You should get out of the Apple bubble more often, though to be fair, when
Steve Jobs stands on stage and claims he designed/invented/built something,
the media seem to give him a pass in general, despite his reputation as a
master salesman/liar.

Even if they had designed their own chip, basic tests (as well as iFixit style
tear-downs) revealed that "There's not much revolutionary here. In fact, the
A4 is quite similar to the Samsung processor Apple uses in the iPhone."

or

"To be clear, we are not talking about full custom circuit design, yet. This
is about choosing from essentially the same catalog of individual IP building
blocks but selecting fewer of them."

"[Compared with the Samsung chip used for the 3GS] The simplest and most
striking observation is just how little discernible change there is to the
number or type of circuit block. Both devices have a relatively high
percentage of the die consumed by an ARM CPU core containing a large L2 SRAM
cache memory along with 10 additional blocks of digital logic. The A4 die is
smaller, 51.8 mm2 versus 72.2 mm2, but this says little about the design since
A4 is manufactured with 45-nm technology."

"From a circuit design perspective, the changes in the subdivisions of chip
real estate are relatively minor. A lot can be attributed to transitioning
manufacturing to 45-nm. To summarize the block level comparison with the two
"reference" designs, there were no wholesale changes to the floorplan. Yes,
the A4 is different, but not by more than one or two blocks. ... It is also
reasonable to describe it as evolutionary compared to the references."

from: [http://eetimes.com/electronics-news/4200451/Apple-
s-A4-disse...](http://eetimes.com/electronics-news/4200451/Apple-
s-A4-dissected-discussed--and-tantalizing)

~~~
huxley
The reason for the similarity in their chips was that Intrinsity did most of
the custom design for Samsung's chip, Apple also worked with Intrisity and
subsequently acquired them.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
No. Intrinsity worked with Samsung to develop a low-power variant of the
Cortex-A8, that part of the two chips are identical, not similar. And the rest
of the chip is similar because it's built from a Samsung reference design with
a few bits left out that Apple didn't want. It's like saying "hold the
mustard" makes you a master hot-dog crafstman.

