I honestly don’t know if Apple is just drunk with power and money at this point, are they are trying to troll the Android manufacturers, especially Samsung. Their design suggestions for Samsung’s tablets are beyond ridiculous, it’s difficult to abstain from laughing from reading them, because they are so ridiculously anti-competitive and have absolutely nothing to do with how business works in the real world. So here are their “friendly suggestions”:
On the smartphone side of things, the following is a list of some of the alternative design options Apple felt Samsung should have looked into further:
- Front surface that isn’t black.
- Overall shape that isn’t rectangular, or doesn’t have rounded corners.
- Display screens that aren’t centered on the front face and have substantial lateral borders.
- Non-horizontal speaker slots.
- Front surfaces with substantial adornment.
- No front bezel at all.
As for tablets, Apple identified a similar list of alternative designs available to Samsung:
- Overall shape that isn’t rectangular, or doesn’t have rounded corners.
- Thick frames rather than a thin rim around the front surface.
- Front surface that isn’t entirely flat.
- Profiles that aren’t thin.
- Cluttered appearance.
Shape that isn’t rectangular? For a tablet? Did they invent the rectangular shape for the tablet? And actually their iPad is even *less* rectangular than the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and most Android tablets, because it uses a 4:3 ratio like the old TV’s, rather than the 16:10 ratio. and no rounded corners? That’s like saying a car manufacturer shouldn’t use round wheels because Ford (or whoever) used them first. And in both cases it wouldn’t be accurate anyway, because neither Apple not Ford were the first to use rounded corners or rounded wheels.
Thick frames? Technology becomes ever slimmer and in a smaller package. It’s part of Moore’s Law because you can fit more stuff in the same amount of space as 2 years ago. This is evolution. Was Apple the first one to ever make a slim tablet? And what is a slim tablet anyway? 9 mm thick? So what happens if someone like Toshiba makes it 7.7mm thick? Does that mean Apple can’t make it that thick now? How ridiculous.
Front surface that isn’t flat? What if most consumers want flat surfaces like normal LCD panels are? What gives them monopoly over flat surfaces? Cluttered appearance? Now we know Apple is just trolling. How can someone even suggest that they own the whole idea of the “simple interface”. And how simple is simple anyway? Is iOS the maximum of simplicity that could ever be achieved?
So yeah, I don’t know how anyone can even take Apple seriously anymore with these lawsuits, when it’s become obvious their claims are insane. For their own sake, I hope they won’t say the same things in a Court, because I doubt the judges will find it as funny as we do, to their detriment.