Winter for webOS, winter for Droid, but springtime for iPad! IDC has upped fondleslab shipment forecasts as the mature PC market looks set to plateau. The beancounter reckons 62.5 million tablets will be flogged into channels worldwide this year, up nearly 17 per cent on the previous estimates, while the mature PC market is forecast to edge up just 3 per cent. The increase comes on the …
Has Apple got a problem with the Xoom, only does it only go after serious competitors? The Galaxy tab looks a lot like it - more like it than it's like the ipad.
If you look at the atricle you linked to with an unbiased mind and a history of the tablet pc, you'll see where the manipulation is. Start with the pictures of landscape-based tablets which have been rotated into portrait in an attempt to make them look like the ipad, then go to the comments from some informed people (the blog owner removed the comment I posted last month but some reality remains amongst the views of manipulated itards there). You'll learn that design is evolutionary and that it is often led by technology. You'll also see some of the windows tablets which the blog author does not want you to know about - because they predate the ipad and are very similar to it in concept if you allow for the technological restrictions if the day.
That link has a clear motive to try and make the point that everyone is ripping off Apple so they have obviously chosen a bunch of images that back up there point.
For a contrary example here is another image:
HP Slate (Announced pre iPad): http://www.lorenheiny.com/2010/01/06/steve-ballmer-shows-off-hp-slate-prototype/
Hmm... might need to give those HP lawyers a heads-up...
The other posts beat me to the 3 minute Google search on per-existing tablet designs
The main point however is that as a typical Apple Sheep you believe everything they feed you. Do some of your own research first instead of taking a pro Apple site as evidence/fact..
While you're correct that there is a similarity (rectangles with rounded corners), how much of this similarity is by design, and how much is that it is just the most efficient way to do it with the current technology? The older slabs shown were running an outdated OS that wasn't design for touch input, and thus *REQUIRED* buttons in order to function. Modern portable OSs, like both iOS and Droid, were designed from the outset for operation like this, and thus designed out the need. Droids use 3 or 4 buttons as a rule, iOS only uses one. Beneath the screen is the sensible place to put them, hence...
And you've already admitted that Apple didn't invent the form factor - all they've done is improve upon it at a time when the public was ready for it, being prompted by touchscreen smartphones for a few years.
Additionally, there is more the many of the Apple cases than "It simply looks like our product". Against Samsung, Apple do somewhat have a point in that while the resemblance is only passing, the device with one large prominent button in the middle beneath the screen does look very similar to the Galaxy S line. Now they *DO* have additional buttons to either side, but these are touch sensitive and only visible when they are available, meaning for the most part they can't be seen.
Also, the photos I've seen from the case have been very carefully chosen, and in some cases actually *DOCTORED* by Apple. The key one to my mind is the one showing the SGS2 with the app drawer open as compared to an iPhone4 on the home screen. Whatever your feelings and preferences, noone can really deny that there is more than a passing similarity - significantly aided by Apple blatantly Photoshopping the images to make the devices the same size in the submission to the courts, an act for which, by the way, they *SHOULD* have been nailed to the wall.
Personally, I think Apple took the wrong track. I think i'd've accepted it as a homage, and then gone to great lengths to point out that our OS and interface is *SO* brilliant and *SO* advanced that even our competitors are copying it. Plus, it's not like anyone with even a hint of brainpower is going to mistake the SGS2 / Tab 10 for an iPhone / iPad.
The fact that 'Samsung' is plastered liberally across the thing is likely to make even the stupidest of idiots think twice surely...
<commence downvoting>
Please do, but only if they predate the ipad of course. I'm not aware of any that had those looks beforehand so would be interested to see. I'm not a troll, I was responding to the initial post which was clearly from someone with an irrational hatred of Apple - probably because they can't afford the toys.
5 minutes on google
http://sondreb.com/blog/post/showdown-of-slate-tablet-pcs.aspx
O course, given the entire complaint by apple is about *design*, there are also plenty of design examples about that predate the ipad. Apple did not invent this look, they followed an existing trend, so take your smug attitude and get off your high horse.
The design of the JooJoo is totally rational: the technology of the day allowed for the front to be a single flat piece of glass, and the rounded corners are a sensible and attractive way to make it comfortable to hold. Check the release date. If JooJoo and apple can be demonstrated to have come up with the same design with reference to nothing more than common sense, modern technology and focus groups, then why should anyone else be banned from doing the same? Such a ban is not rational.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo
There are many earlier examples which are on the evolutionary path to the ipad's design, but technology allowed the ipad to be sufficiently different from many of them that you'll probably complain about missing links and go running to Steve. I'll leave you with just the 1 example, which is enough to prove the point.
It's so sad that there are people with an irrational love of Apple who talk rubbish and troll forums. Maybe they're annoyed at being tricked into spending too much money on sub-standard knock-offs instead of going with innovative designs and top-of-the-range OSs.
Apologies for feeding the troll. Hopefully he'll leave with his tail between his leg to go eat that can of whoop-ass.
There is a BIG difference between "shipping" numbers and "sold" numbers.
Apple sells every iPad & iPad 2 it makes/ships. Demand has always outstripped supply. So every one of the 9.3 million iPads globally last quarter were actually sold to end users.
Manufacturers of competing tablets only give the numbers they "shipped" not "sold".
For example, Samsung told the media that it had shipped 500,000 Galaxy Tabs. They stuck to this number for the longest time, until recently when they admitted that only 20,000 Galaxy Tabs were actually "sold" to end users.
Knowing this, Apple's "68 per cent of the market" is most probably much higher than that in reality.
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