If you take a load of ideas that already exist and package them into a usable device then that is innovation. Everyone does that and there is nothing wrong with doing that.

If you just copy what someone else did, that isn't innovation, it is stealing.

Now, you might argue that samsung didn't steal, but they have admitted that, the court case is just to determine the impact (and therefore fine).

If a device existed that you think apple stole from then I'm surprised the owners of that device haven't decided to sue. I'm not aware of any such device.

Ive never understood the monopoly thing with MS - in particular the Internet Explorer bundling. MS bundled IE with Windows but allowed other options. This was bad and MS were forced to unbundle IE and make it just an option. With iOS you are pretty much tied to itunes. why isnt that as frowned on ? Is it simply down to market share and volume of users ? otherwise the MS original approach seemed much more open than the current iOS approach ?

genuine question after a genuine answer please ....

It would be good if you did your homework before writing this. While I agree that Apple is going the wrong way, we can't say that Apple has never really innovated anything. When IBM PC used DOS and command line interface (CLI), Mac OS had graphical user interface * (GUI) and it used the mouse. Microsoft later copied Mac OS X GUI in Windows 3.11. I know many of you remember Apple e-Mac, an all in one system. Apple was the first company to launch all in one systems at the time. I think it was back in 1999. Do you remember mp3 players before Apple invented the iPod? I do. Mp3 player back in the old days was an ugly box with a rudimental display with very few features. If it wasn't for Apple to come up with the iPhone and iOS, maybe we would still be using Symbian. Both LG and Samsung copied iPhone. All smart phones that we have today are based on the iPhone idea. Everyone copied iPhone, it's just that Samsung copied it well, and in the end was able to add some extra features.

It's easy now for Samsung and others to be creative when Apple had made the first step with the iPhone long before other companies even considered making a smartphone device. Same goes for the iPad. When Apple released the first iPad, other companies followed trying to copy it. Today we have myriad of tablets, but it was Steve Jobs and Apple who had a vision of how to make a tablet computer and sell it to the world.


* PARC was the first computer that had GUI, but Mac OS was the first operating system to have menu bar and window controls.

I know about the Lisa, but I think their serious troubles started around the time of the Newton. I'm well aware of the history of the company.

Obviously it was in Microsoft's interests to save Apple, but whether it was in their "best" interests, is debatable. I'm pretty sure Microsoft could have done with out Apple mocking them during their Vista fiasco. Microsoft did not have to save Apple, in fact they used them to promote their own services, forcing Internet Explorer to become the default browser on Apple computers. It wasn't necessarily charity, but I do think it was benevolent of Microsoft to save Apple.

A fair question and not one i'm sure I can properly answer but after reading a little bit about it at a guess i would say it was because Microsoft Windows is an operating system designed to be used on a huge variety of different computers where as
iOS isn't. iOS is designed to be used on Apple hardware only.
iTunes can be used on all platforms perhaps if it had been kept as an Apple only application (like Jobs originally wanted it) they may have faced the same Monopoly allegations.

I also think MS were treated very unfairly in some respects in this regard, now monopoly seems commonly accepted. I personally think it was a general fear that the PC industry would be MS to the exclusion of everyone else. taking into account how computers were seen at this time also.

You should consider reading up on history first more like. There were smart phones long before Apple came along!

Even Microsoft were making smart phone operating systems before Apple.

I totally understand what they mean.
Apple is indeed the template for absolutely everything in the tablet/Smart phone the market, and the feel they deserve to be compensated for it. Personally i think it's a lost battle, you can nitpick to the eternity who owns this or that patent, but Apple genius is in creating the trend and assembling the desirable product, and i do not think that's something that you can get compensation from.

The reality is competition is cheaper and effective, they may not be as refined as any Apple products, but a huge section of the consumer market does not care about refinement, as long as it's a good product, sometimes even better in specs than the Apple premium, and resembles what people expect an tablet or Smart phone to be, they will buy it.
Apple can scream and shout that they created the template and everyone is cashing in, but that's i guess it will happen to any market leader.

Absolutely correct.

Apple's innovation is in their marketing - leading ignorant people to believe they did something special, like make the first smartphone, when they actually did not.

Isn't amazing on here people are alway considered ignorant, stupid, etc if they don't agree with someone else's views.

In the instance we are talking about here, not only did the court find samsung guilty of copying, even samsung admitted it.

Isn't it amazing on here how people can't read and then go on some tangential rant based on some irrelevant imagined meaning that has nothing to do with what they're actually responding to?

Where did I ever mention anything about Samsung, copying, or admissions of guilt?

Did Samsung ever claim they made the first smartphone before Apple? No? Then how do they have anything to do with the statement at hand?

"the instance we are talking about here", if you had read it properly, had nothing to do with Samsung whatsoever. Samsung's phone division didn't even exist outside of Korea at the time.

What a strange rant if it makes you happy ignore my second sentence.

Samsung's is already out and about to buy HERE average £600-£700.
Apple are a bit late on that score

I didn't ignore your second sentence, specifically pointed out your second sentence is entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand. You've seem to ignored that - or to be ignorant of the fact, which brings us back to the first point.

Again, if you had read properly, or learnt to think outside your own imaginary world you may have realized other people were talking. About something different to what you imagined them to be talking about.

You also cant have a thread like this one without the usual attempts to ruffle feathers such as this one

.... unless the poster genuinely believes the above

I'm actually asking you to ignore my second sentence.

I find it amazing that some are happy to call people they do not know ignorant, on the basis that they do not agree with you.

I could reverse your statement, if you think apples innovation is only in its marketing, I would suggest they would not be the success and size they are now.

We hear a lot about all these wonderful smartphones that existed before the iPhone, but from all the examples I've ever seen, they were boarding on unusable as both a device and as an OS.

When apple released the iPhone, it rocked the whole market for a very good reason, everything around it was dross.

Amiga was first, which people seem to forget.

Xerox Parc developed it first - just didn't do anything with it.

Mac showed what could be done with it.

Windows took the whole market.

To be fair they did do something special. They don't claim to have invented these products but theres no denying their innovation with these products created world wide markets and made them immensely popular.

Not sure about that.

When Apple released the iPhone lots of people who'd never heard of a smartphone before thought it was amazing while, at the same time, all the people who'd already been using smartphones simply shrugged their shoulders and wondered what all the fuss was about.

Which kinda brings us back to the whole thing about marketing.

No it didn't Amiga didn't release their work bench GUI until 1985. Apple had released theirs on the Macintosh the previous year and had been developing it since the late 70s. (Their infamous visits to PARC were in 79.

So what smartphones were around before the iPhone would you say were comparable to the iPhone?

The trouble here is that when it comes to Apple people seem to confuse "invention" with innovation. And also innovation usually has to mean looking different.

The Windows Mobile powered Ipaq I had was pretty similar, to all intents and purposes, and it certainly couldn't be dismissed as "dross".

If anything, I'd say that people are trying to dress up evolution as innovation.

Apple certainly made a step by pitching the iPhone as a mass-market product but it's an exaggeration to suggest there was anything particularly innovative about it.
It was simply a more polished version of stuff that was already around.

I don't think the Sony Ericsson P800 could be dismissed as "dross" either. That device was seriously ahead of its time.

We could all go round and round discussing who innovated and who didn't. The interesting point is that Samsung's lawyers have admitted that the company stole ideas from Apple. All they are doing now is a damages limitation exercise.