Samsung Wallet Samsung has unveiled a developer preview of its upcoming Wallet app, and to say that it was inspired by Apple's iOS Passbook app may be a gross understatement. Like Passbook, Samsung's Wallet stores retail coupons, airline boarding passes, membership cards, and event tickets, according to The Verge. Also like Apple's offering …
Well, first of all, neither icon looks at all like any wallet I've ever owned. I think you could ask 1000 people to draw a picture of a wallet and you wouldn't get anything like a simple leather pouch with some tickets stuffed into it, together, at jaunty angles. You'd probably get 1000 drawings that looked similar to Microsoft's icon. I think for that reason alone it's pretty clear Samsung copied Apple.
Second, saying that there's basically only one way for a clock to look shows a startling ignorance of IP/copyright/trademark law. Do you think the people who make fake Rolexes should be able to defend themselves by throwing their hands up in the air and saying, hey, that's just how watches look.
Making a fake Rolex is making a fake Rolex, but making a clock or a wristwatch is, whatever you think, a totally different operation. I have no idea how many watch makers there have ever been but the idea of a single one suing someone else for simply making a watch is daft. However, passing off your product as someone else's product is not allowed and the rights holder then has every right to sue. It is the product that earns the protection in this case.
"I think you could ask 1000 people to draw a picture of a wallet and you wouldn't get anything like a simple leather pouch with some tickets stuffed into it, together, at jaunty angles."
But this isn't just a wallet, a key part of the functionality is the tickets. So the test would be to ask people to draw a wallet with some tickets in it. Yes, you would get similar (and the only differences would be if their drawing skill wasn't as good as a professional graphic artist).
"Second, saying that there's basically only one way for a clock to look shows a startling ignorance of IP/copyright/trademark law. "
Well, I guess a 2007 iphone is in violation for looking like earlier phones, by that logic.
I agree. The evidence present by this article is so hilarious, I think it's either a parody, or just flamebait. Let's see:
"Guess what Passbook uses – yup, bar codes."
Bar codes? My god, did all the items at the local shop also copy Apple too, with their lavish use of *bar codes*?
Then we have the comparison of icons. Google only looks different because it looks nothing recognisable like a wallet. MS is only different because it's an overly simplified representation. Apple and Samsung look similar, because they're both more realistic images of a wallet and tickets. Many tickets have cutouts.
Guess what, if I take a photo of my wallet, it also looks like a wallet. Apple copied my wallet!
I wasn't aware that Apple now have a patent on the colours green, yellow and blue (though given the rounded-corners, who knows).
More likely Samsung see the value in the idea and therefore think it's a useful* thing to add to their handsets. Because all it does is reproduce the well-established historical look of tickets on a digital screen they don't see any IP hurdle to including it.
I don't like the copying debate because it sort of endorses the idea that there's necessarily always something wrong in copying — that if any feature of your product has any close antecedent then you've no right to claim creativity. In this case it's clear that the Apple feature has inspired the Samsung but I don't see that there's anything wrong with that, especially if Samsung end up doing it better. On a technical level, Apple's implementation is very lacking as every app that wants to put something into the passbook has to push it there, which in most apps means making your booking then digging through submenus to find the 'put into Passbook' option. If I've booked something in a compatible app, the pass should just be there in the Passbook; I shouldn't have to think about whether it's pushed or pulled and I definitely shouldn't have to do anything manually.
* Freudian typo: sueful.
But on the other foot, the idea isn't all that novel. I remember back in college when smartphones were in their early years, even pre iPhone we were talking about things like this. Admitadly the idea was to use a PDA rather tahn a mobile phone since at the time phoens were still dumb.
Smartphones were released, and I was talking about the same kind of thing with friends at uni.
Heck there's already a number of apps who do this stuff individually. All the passbook does is take those individual segments, and pops them all under a single roof, the same as the wallet does. Some may say samsung is copying. To a point they probably are. But the idea has been floating around for a long time.
Also I kinda wish I'd patented the idea back in college >.>
But you can clearly see Samsung designers have less talent than their nearest toilet cleaner... At least make the logo radically different if you're going to be inspired from an existing idea. I'm all for companies taking direction from another and making it better (take Blackberry using WebOS' methods for multi-touch control).
I know Samsung don't care about if their products look like anyone else's, but I refuse to buy any of their stuff on the principal that everything they sell in the mobile/tablet market is a sham.
"At least make the logo radically different if you're going to be inspired from an existing idea."
Who says they were inspired from Apple?
And why is it always everyone else who has to make things look radically different, when Apple don't have to?
Your use of "sham" makes no sense.
Who says they were inspired from Apple?
Look at the two icons. Both black. Both show tickets appearing out of a pocket (half shown). Both are similar in style. Please don't tell me you're that blind to notice that? At least Google's and Microsoft's logos follow their branding style and are uniquely different. Samsung have no style and again based their response on Apple's design. If you can find style techniques anywhere else that Apple play on (that are recent) which are almost the same, please let me know. Now go figure and have a beer on me.
"Both black. Both show tickets appearing out of a pocket (half shown)."
Wow, two pictures of tickets in a wallet both look like tickets in a wallet. And the colour black is patented now, is it?
"Now go figure and have a beer on me."
Your beer icon looks just like this other beer icon I saw! Yet I can find this third beer icon that looks completely different, just a simple line drawing, therefore your icon must be a copy, with no sense of style.
(Also, a 2007 iphone's grid of coloured icons looks like my 2005 feature phone, or a 1985 Amiga come to that.)
Pretty much what I expect to see from both Google and MS. The usual cryptic crap icon from Google I'd struggle to associate with it's function. A flat monochrome effort from MS (because that's this weeks 'design language') that eventually I'd learn to associate - but different more because that design language makes using images we might recognise bloody difficult.
Whether or not Samsung deliberately copied Apple, both efforts work so much better than the others Apple really shouldn't be allowed monopoly rights to pretty obvious imagery.
Doesn't really matter. If Apple's offering is anything to go by, it'll be utterly useless for anyone outside the US, and only increases to barely useful to anyone inside.
Related pet annoyance: Why can't you uninstall Apple's apps from iOS? You have to create a folder called "Apple crap", and dump them all in there. I'd rather just delete them, thanks.
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When the airline, etc systems don't support NFC but do support barcodes then whaddya gonna use?
If the interface/api/facility is there by airlines and others to do this then you're going to implement it, aren't you.
You may as well claim that everyone apart from the first company to implement it is a copycat for using PDQ terminals to take payments in shops, regardless of the fact that the facility is obviously provided to be used by more than one entity.
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