

The problem is with the (losing) teams that aren’t copying - shawndumas
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/09/03/samsung-assessing

======
simonh
I'm sure Samsung making their stuff look very iPhone like contributed to their
success, but they have plenty of other advantages. They make most of the
internals of their phones (flash, CPUs, screens) themselves which gives them
excellent margins compared to anyone buying those things from them. They have
a globally known brand that was already doing well in other categories (I
bought a Samsung TV 7 years ago). They are really good at the carrier
relationships game. They jumped into large sized phones very early on.

Palm were never a contender, sorry. Their UI framework was basically just a
tarted up web view, totally unsuited to developing rich native apps.
Animations? Rich media framework? Robust data persistence layer? Nothing close
to iOS.

Yes, we all know deep down that Google took one look at the iPhone and
immediately pivoted Android into as close to a clone as they could get without
it being too blatent. Samsung just didn't care about that and went the extra
mile, and screw the consequences.

Microsoft's problems are different. They're just way, way too late and still
catching up with a still rapidly moving target. It doesn't matter how similar
or different their platform is to the iPhone or Android. They just have no
mobile developer or consumer mindshare. Where are their premium mobile apps,
like Apple have Garage band, Pages, etc? Touch Office looks to be a kludgy
half way house hybrid mess. Maybe they can leverage their desktop strengths
with Windows 8 Phone 8 (delete one of the 8s, who knows which one?), but they
don't seem to be doing anything to actually make that happen.

~~~
stcredzero
_> They're just way, way too late and still catching up with a still rapidly
moving target_

What do you cite as this rapid motion? The move to retina? Siri? Tweet sheet
integration? Mindshare doesn't necessarily make for rapid motion of the
platform, but I am interested in how you see it.

~~~
simonh
Apple are devoting huge dev resources to iOS. Check out the last slide 'and
more' from their iOS 6 preview at the bottom of this article (1). Sure most of
the low-hanging fruit and signature features are in place, but they're still
making strong efforts to upgrade and expand capabilities such as accessability
features for disabled users, improved localisation for overseas markets such
as China, expanding iCloud's capabilities. A few years ago you could say that
a competitor could pick a few major feature areas such as social network
integration, navigation, cloud services, etc and beat Apple in those areas.
Now that's just not possible. They have all the feature areas covered and are
steadily deepening their feature sets in those areas. The only real way to
differentiate against them now is in hardware.

(1)[http://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-6-our-complete-
overvie...](http://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-6-our-complete-overview/)

------
Tichy
Utter nonsense. Nokia didn't provide a smartphone OS for years, and Palm OS,
while supposedly nicely designed, apparently didn't perform very well in
practice. Their problems were not not copying Apple.

~~~
aptwebapps
Your examples do not contradict the thesis.

------
prawks
This brings up some interesting thoughts. What if the layout of the keys on
touch-tone phones were copyrighted? What about keyboard layouts? What about
the notion of a folding computer (laptop)?

I never quite thought about it like that before, but copyrights like this
completely stifle future developments. Sorry, just showing up late to the
party.

------
cageface
So then Apple are now like the guys still in leather helmets that have been
running exactly the same pass play for five years while the rest of the league
has figured out you can actually run four or five different formations and
pass all over the field?

But sure, let's keep pretenting this is about Samsung in particular and not
Android in general.

~~~
batista
> _So then Apple are now like the guys still in leather helmets that have been
> running exactly the same pass play for five years_

No, they are the guys that created the whole game field as a massive market
niche, coming from completely outside that market, and then 2 years later they
jump started another market (tablets) that they pretty much own to this day.

Or, the guys that have another announcement on 9/12, with predictions for
their biggest selling device ever, outselling previous models (that each
outsold the previous anyway).

It's not like the fact that the other guys "run four or five different
formations and pass all over the field" worked well for them in the
smartphone/tablet market.

They used the same "four or five different formations and pass all over the
field" in the PC market and it's now commoditized to death with minimal
margins (ask Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc).

~~~
cageface
And the main distinguishing feature of that new 9/12 device? A form factor
very close to Samsung's last two flagship models. And that new iPad mini
everybody's so excited about? Copying a form factor that Samsung pioneered and
Amazon and Google validated. Maybe next Apple will copy the Note?

So who exactly is copying whom here? Surely the physical size of a device is
more defining and market-making than the bounce back behavior of a scroll
view? Where are the cries for protection of Samsung's innovations?

~~~
batista
>* And the main distinguishing feature of that new 9/12 device? A form factor
very close to Samsung's last two flagship models.*

You mean "a bigger screen"?

Well, it could have had even less distinguishing factors and it would have
been just fine in my books. They created that kind of design, it's not like
they have to differentiate for the sake of differentiation. Incremental
cpu/memory/storage/batter upgrades are OK too.

> _And that new iPad mini everybody's so excited about? Copying a form factor
> that Samsung pioneered and Amazon and Google validated. Maybe next Apple
> will copy the Note?_

They actually had prototypes in various sizes years before Samsung, Amazon or
Google ever thought of going into the tablet space, or even the original iPad
come out.

Plus, Apple created the mass market for tablets. Before the iPad it was a
wasteland with few inhabitants.

Samsung taking the iPad and offering something similar in a smaller form
factor is something original, really? And Apple making a smaller version of
THEIR OWN PRODUCT is copying Samsung? That's some twisted logic.

> _So who exactly is copying whom here?_

Samsung.

They copied the iPod in a smaller form factor, and now Apple will offer a
small form factor themselves. Should Apple preemptively put out all possible
form factors at once, to not be considered a copycat? That's some twisted
logic here.

It's not like Apple didn't already have a smaller form factor device that was
similar. Remember when they called the iPad (mockingly) "a large iPhone"?

------
stcredzero
The problem is that "The Inmates are Running the Asylum." Most techies
would've scoffed at the MacBook Air, if it were described to them with specs,
before it came out. Steve Jobs didn't have a reality distortion field. He
lacked the one most of us have.

~~~
enko
> Most techies would've scoffed at the MacBook Air, if it were described to
> them with specs

Those "techies" probably couldn't use an Air anyway - not like you're going to
be walking around your windowless server room too often, and you certainly
wouldn't want to take work home with you. And macs can't even run Exchange
Administrator!

Most programmers I know, however, were delighted. Raw specs have never been a
good measure of a machine's usefulness, but the size and weight you can take
straight to the bank. The air is a lifestyle computer at a time where a lot of
programmers are beginning to think more about their lifestyle and realise it's
cool to go outside and actually walk around and stuff. Maybe half the (web)
programmers I know have them now.

Specs! I guess you can't ignore them, but in my experience the more people go
on about "specs" the less productive use they turn out putting all those
gigahertz to. In normal use the computer will spend 99.99% of its time waiting
for the stupid slow user, and I never seem to need to compile Gentoo or
compress bluray movies in a big hurry all that often. What I do like to do is
put my air in my coat pocket and walk down to the café and do some work, and
if your overclocked oil-cooled 12-core neon-lit Extreme Edition alien-head-
logo-having AC-powered Gigantibox can't do that then it is basically a piece
of useless junk to me. Good for games though, gotta say.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Most programmers I know, however, were delighted._

I agree with most of what you say. However, the inmates are still running the
asylum.

------
pytrin
If the Apple persecution of Samsung succeeds, we should all be worried that
next NFL teams will start patenting their strategies and suing each other.

~~~
jbigelow76
I was surprised that Gruber completely ignored the possible penalty to
copying, the resulting lawsuits. His football analogy doesn't really stand up
because you can't patent the forward pass, or if you could the opposing team
runs the risk of having their win vacated if they implement it too.

The lawsuit and Sumsung's (pending appeal) loss is such a huge elephant in the
room that by not addressing it, and the similar fate that the other "losers"
maybe trying to avoid, I don't think Gruber really said anything of real
substance.

~~~
JackC
I think this article is interesting because of Gruber's role in the
conversation as an Apple fan[atic]. Samsung has been criticized from the Apple
side (and by Gruber in particular) for copying Apple's innovations -- the
implication being that he thinks it's good that Apple won. But Gruber is
acknowledging here that a healthy marketplace includes both innovation and
copying of the best innovations, and that it's at least possible that the
world is better with Samsung's copying than without it. So it's directly
addressing the lawsuit by acknowledging that there's a downside to Apple
winning. That's no big deal for me to admit, but kind of a big deal coming
from him.

------
sp332
How did you get a lowercase first letter in the title? I thought HN auto-
capitalized submission titles.

~~~
lmm
Don't worry, I'm sure a mod will be along to change it to match the article
any minute now anyways.

~~~
shawndumas
good point. I guess I'll just put the quote here then:

"What if Apple is like a sports team that introduced a groundbreaking
strategy. Something like introducing the forward pass to football. Is it wrong
for another team to copy that strategy? What if the only other team that can
win is the one team that most shamelessly copied that strategy? At some point
you have to start thinking that the problem is with the (losing) teams that
aren’t copying. "

