When a judge holds up a Samsung Galaxy Tab and iPad side-by-side and the company’s own lawyers can’t tell the difference, you know things aren’t going well. Fortunately, Apple was kind enough to offer up a few helpful hints for the design crew at Samsung to assist them in their quest to avoid future litigation.

Some of Apple’s suggestions are truly giggle-inducing. For starters, they put forward the option of using “profiles that aren’t slim.” That’s a polite way of telling Samsung to make thick, chunky tablets. Apple also proposes not building rectangular devices, this in an era when nearly every single laptop, smartphone, and tablet is made in that mold. Generously, however, Apple says that Samsung could always just not round the corners of its tablets. Crisp 90-degree angles aren’t something you find on many devices (certainly not on Apple products), but that could have a lot to do with the desire to make them slip easily into pockets, sleeves, and cases — and not put out an eye accidentally.

Apple also has some ideas for the bezel: make it wider, use a color other than black, and jazz it up with “substantial adornment.” Heck, why not combine all three and produce a blinged-out Galaxy Tab with a nice royal blue front bezel encrusted with Swarovski crystals? There’s also the snide suggestion of an overall “cluttered appearance” and a move to non-horizontal speaker slits.

After reading Apple’s list, it does make you take a good, long look at the state of devices today. With a few exceptions, just about everything — phone or tablet — has become a rounded-off rectangle with a black front bezel, made as thin as possible, with a thin, sideways slit for a speaker. Even if Samsung doesn’t try some Nokia-like designs, a good place to start would be actually printing its name on, say, a tablet bezel rather than simply Photoshopping it onto digital images that are plastered across the web. Thankfully, they’ve at least done that on the Galaxy Tab 10.1N — but Apple wants it banned in Germany, too.

via Android Police

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Lee Mathews

Computer tech, blogger, husband, father, and avid MSI U100 user.

13 replies on “Apple to Samsung: build non-rectangular tablets and Bedazzle them”

  1. Thanks. If they have such a dominance of the tablet pc, why such a lawsuit over a competing brand because it ‘resembles’ their own product? Why not just build better tablet pc’s?

  2. Now I have another reason not to buy Apple products. I guess they are taking a ‘Microsoft’ route but suing where they can not compete? Microsoft is using ‘patent infringement’ threats to make money off non-Win products. IMO; Apple is doing the same with their hardware.

    I am glad car companies don’t take the same stance on other cars that have similar shapes to their own. We would either have only one car or some really strange looking vehicles just so they won’t look similar.

    1. how is apple not competing? they own the tablet market, and android is still too fragmented to pose much of a threat. even the kindle fire won’t bother them too much.

      1. so why are they suing over tablets then?

        the reality is, apple knows the tablet market will go the same as the smartphone market. . . just a matter of time. And apple’s only way of competing in the smartphone market for the last three OS versions was to copy Android–now that’s funny!

      2. fragmented? buddy android owns over 59% of the smart-phone share? threat? they already beat apple in terms of phones. 
        So yes they are a threat, in terms of fragmentation what do you think the purpose of ice cream is?

  3. Was that lawyer comment at the beginning real? If so I would’ve fired the morons for not being able to spot the “square inside a circle” button as well as the extreme difference in appearance when you take in aspect ratios. Another kick in the rear if they were near by as the camera placement is another dead give away.(And finally, if the screens were turned on the lawyers deserved to be shot… repeatedly) Know the product of the company you’re representing!>.<

    Anyways I'm glad it is finally out in the open so people can stop saying "oh but Apple put a lot of time and money into researching so they deserve the patents". It is a bunch of BS patents that only the insane(and/or german judge) could believe. 

    They(apple) weren't anywhere near the first to use "flat rectangles with round corners". They should not be given the rights over "thin" as that is a by product of technology evolving. They can't even claim a "clean front" as they still have their trademark nipple button as opposed to honeycomb tablets with no buttons.

    Between this and the lawsuit against the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, I hope everybody with an ounce of sanity realizes this has nothing to do with designs/patents and everything to do with snagging a competitive edge via the courts.

  4. This only enraged furious hatred against Apple in me. This only enraged furious hatred against Apple in me. Apple are clearly odious patent trolls that should be abolished. The world would be all things considered better without then and without the whole computer hardware patent system. Productivity and research in harware is already so blazingly fast that patents only impede. Being first with the product is incentive enough. You’ll have to replace it with new models within a year anyway.
    x

  5. I don’t like that Apple is doing this.  Unfortunately the average consumer will never hear about this or care about it.  I’ve already stopped buying Apple and try to discourage everyone I know from buying their products. I think Apple has gotten too big and too greedy.  Previously they were the underdog, but when they are as big as they are now and still pull these kinds of stunts it makes me sick.

    I can’t believe Samsung lawyers couldn’t tell them apart.  Is that true?  If so I hope those lawyers were fired.  Were they standing 100 yards away or something?  For one thing the iPad has a button on the front and the Tab has nothing, their ratios are completely different and turn them around and they are obviously different.

  6. At least now apple fans have no room to hide–they can no longer say that apple isn’t trying to patent a rectangle with rounded corners. . .

    It seems apple’s ego as a whole knows no bounds.

    Thankfully MS also copied a lot they seen at Xerox PARC and from apple and whomever else they could just like apple did so we aren’t stuck with apple having a huge market share. . . and let’s not forget IBM’s stellar move to use parts off the shelf–if not for those two things we might be stuck in a very very different world.

    No worries though, once MS releases Win8 we will see these same styled tables with Win8 on them and apple won’t even dream of going after MS.

    Nonetheless, apple has completely exposed themselves as the patent troll they are.

  7. I would tell apple to 똥을 먹고 죽어.  apple like that dead guy is afraid of Samsung’s superior product.

    1. Amen, next thing Apple will be telling Samsung to stop making tablets out of Samsung parts.

      1. Funny thing is Samsung make approx. 50% of the parts that go in apples iCrap products.  I really wish Samsung would plu the plug and stop making anything for apple and give them 24 hours notice.

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