"If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride." - Nokia

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Originally Posted by Subway

What's really bothering me is not that Nokia makes a phone similar to the iPhone, what's really bothering me is their exact comment, it gives a bad sign to the industry IMHO. I can imagine the next meeting at compny X: "Hey, Nokia, Microsoft and almost all Chinese companies ... they all do it and make huge amounts of money, let's do the same, copy the next product that's successful!".

Fredi

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Like Microsoft and Sony saying: hey, Nintendo makes money from games, lets do the same.

Or Sony saying, hey, Nintendo has a nice controller, lets do the same (and I'm not talking about the wii controller).

Or a thousand chinese and us companies saying: wow, that walkman thing sony invented, lets copy it, looks like it's going to sell well.

Or Sony Music executives saying: 'ok, we need a new hit. What's trendy right now...hmm, we need a 18 year old girl that's hot, enlarge her breasts, hire a producer, and record a hit that sounds like every other "artist" we have. Nobody will notice'

Or Taco Bell saying: that mexican food is good. Lets copy it and we'll make money. Let's make it bad, and we'll sell even more.

Or Every Hamburger Restaurant copying Burger King.

Or Hollywood movies copying French, Latin, italian and japanese movies?

Or other sites starting to make deals with record companies to sell downloadable music, just like, just like, omg, iTunes?

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Originally Posted by Subway

What's really bothering me is not that Nokia makes a phone similar to the iPhone, what's really bothering me is their exact comment, it gives a bad sign to the industry IMHO. I can imagine the next meeting at compny X: "Hey, Nokia, Microsoft and almost all Chinese companies ... they all do it and make huge amounts of money, let's do the same, copy the next product that's successful!".

Fredi

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Let me quote again because I had another response for this:

YOU ARE SO RIGHT. Consumers are so stupid, that they WILL prefer a $100 Korean copy of an iFone (that's how it works right, they just change a letter of the name) than a real iPhone. Or worse, consumers are soooo stupid, that they'll go for the bad copy of Nokia, that (hypotetically, just to make my point), still costs less, has a gps, mms, flash, it's open for developers, lets you change its batteries, has expandable memory. I'm pretty sure you're mad because you bought Vista thinking it was Apple's new OS, and now you don't want this happening again.

The chinese companies are in another field though, but I'm pretty sure that if Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung, Motorola and others decide to copy the iPhone, they'll choose one of these 3 paths:

1. Copy Apples technology, infringement its patents. Shame on them, opposite to poor Apple that has never done that, to eventually make an economical arrangement.

2. Licence apple's technologies.

3. Apply their own technologies, which I'm sure these big companies can develope. Like, I'm pretty sure if Microsoft makes a multitouchscreen phone, they'll probably sue themselves from infringing on the patents of that surface multitouch table they have.



Talking about ripping off and copying....shame on Apple, they COPIED and infringed on Creative's patents for the UI. But it's ok, because it's Apple, and they later apologized and payed who knows how much for their 'mistake'

Designing a website and building a mobile device are two different things. Nokia isn't working on the same OS and has to spec everything out themselves based on research, they will inevitably have their own twist on things. It may be better in some ways, it may be worse than others. They also know what's patentable and what's not. Apple is used to being copied by now.

Let's just hope they make one in Bondi Blue.

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Originally Posted by Subway

copy the next product that's successful!

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So, if it was up to you, Jeans should be sold only by Levi's, cigars only by cubans, razorblades only by gillette, bikinis only to Louis Réard and Jacques Heim, powder by the chinese. Do you own a car? I'm sure it's american, and it's a Ford, right, right?

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Originally Posted by argonauta

Do you own a car? I'm sure it's american, and it's a Ford, right, right?

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Neither Ford nor another American invented the car. ;)

Oh and to answer the question: No, I don't own a car right now.

Fredi

*unsubscribe from thread*

I agree with Subway on this one: Anything that Apple or Sony makes is holy and should not be questioned or have its flaws pointed out.

That is what you want us to say, right?

No. I just hate this mentality so many big companies have these days: "Oooohhhh, that's a popular product that other company made, let's do the same exact thing, just a little bit different so we can't be sued."

And now I "hate" half of FK for not sharing that "hate". ;)

Fredi

I'm trying to work out where the idea came from that there was actually anything original created anymore??

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Originally Posted by Subway

No. I just hate this mentality so many big companies have these days: "Oooohhhh, that's a popular product that other company made, let's do the same exact thing, just a little bit different so we can't be sued."

And now I "hate" half of FK for not sharing that "hate". ;)

Fredi

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Stop hating people for disagreeing with you. If everyone agreed with you, then you could never be right ;)

BTW, whats your opinion on the SIXAXIS, which gained motion sensing abilities right after Nintendo first showed the Wii?

Who invented the car? :p

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Originally Posted by Subway

No. I just hate this mentality so many big companies have these days: "Oooohhhh, that's a popular product that other company made, let's do the same exact thing, just a little bit different so we can't be sued."

And now I "hate" half of FK for not sharing that "hate". ;)

Fredi

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In the first place, Apple didn't invent the phone. They came to play and try to steal the market that others were enjoying. Their reasons to create and sell the iPhone are not altruistic at all, are they? What Apple did, and how Nokia is responding is all about money, and gaining more.

The thing is, there are difference in how some companies "copy"
I'm sure you've seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_8wuVEYMZ8
That phone is designed to smell like an iPhone, but as you see, besides the logo and external appearance, there's no iPhone there. Still, what's its purpose? profit from iPhone's success. Even if it's has some improvements like an sd slot and removable battery, but still, you can't say that product can compare to the iPhone. Let me repeat myself: all they want is profit from somebody else's success.

In Nokia's video, I see the iPhone features there are what? flip screen and touchscreen, neither of them easy to 'copy', right? The interface looks different, and it looks sweet. I guess you could say it looks like an iPhone, but the iPhone also looks like a pda or a gps, just a screen, a button and nothing else, so the 'look' of the iPhone is not an issue, and it's not original. It's simplicity is, comparing to other phones, but I don't think you can say a phone is a rippoff because the maker decides he wants to make it simple and remove all buttons. You'd be left with exactly that. Back to my point, I don't think Nokia is just going to copy the good ideas of the iphone, it's going to work on them, make them their own and improve of them. Why? not because they want to profit from somebody else's success, but because they need to keep up so that they don't lose their place in the industry. Palm is the perfect example of this: i think they should be the ones enjoying this success. They already had it all: touchscreen experience and phone experience, but they never woke up, and they basically are dead. If Nokia keeps developing their phones, but other companies move towards these ideas, Nokia would die as well. So, it's a matter of competition, not just copying. iCopy, iMakeItBetterThanYours. Why hate? companies make money, yes, but who benefits as well? I'm pretty sure consumers will. Having an "iphone like" phone with symbian or maybe linux would rule for me as a developer. Having a phone with flash (lately, nokia is in love with flash lite), having all the features of a nokia phone, plus all the features of an iphone (which are few) would rule. It's not like Nokia is a beginner in this, they've made some of the best phones (N95, if it wasn't for the battery, is way better than any phone out there) and have also been very innovative, revolutionazing the cellphone industry already a couple of times. That's why they are where they are.

Even microsoft, if there wasn't linux or apple, they wouldn't make an effort to make a better OS (though yes, Vista isn't that).

As I see it, you 'hate' because other companies are making money. It's not your money. Yes, if it was my company, I'd be mad as hell, but I'm not the owner of Apple, nor a shareholder. I'm a consumer. And as I see it, the more companies copy each other, the more options I have, and the more chances I'll have to have the perfect device for less money. I don't care how much they copy this or that product, as long as the byproduct of this competition is better products for me.

What angers me, and that's to hate, is the ways some companies try to stay on top via shady strategies like legal strategies or not letting others play in the same field by restricting consumers to use propietary technologies, or making alliances to use what companies want and not what consumers want (see war between bluray and hddvd). And the three companies that come to my mind when I think of examples of that are, in order:

1. Sony
2. Microsoft
3. Apple

I'm glad Nokia is taking on this, and I'm sure they'll come up with a better phone. They're embracing wifi, and even free telephony (my n95 came with Gizmo preinstalled), they let you develop applications. Copying files to or from the phone is a piece of cake (via bluetooth, wifi, infrared, or taking the memory card out). They are playing with gps in the same device now. They're also embracing linux.

By the way, I'm wating for Sony Ericsson to come up with an iPhone-like device (meaning simple phone with no buttons and touchscreen interface)....That'll probably create a paradox that'll reboot your brain in an endless loop :D

Don't worry, Apple will always win over Sony. The only Sony line of products that I like are the PlayStation's. ;)

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Originally Posted by ihoss.com

BTW, whats your opinion on the SIXAXIS, which gained motion sensing abilities right after Nintendo first showed the Wii?

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Gyration has been making motion sensing devices for like 20 years now, other companies already used it for input devices and you could say that the good sales of the Eye-Toy made Nintendo risk the step of using such a control scheme exclusively for their console.

Fredi

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Originally Posted by argonauta

Who invented the car? :p

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Karl Friedrich Benz, Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Benz

Fredi

the eye toy came out after the gameboy eye camera. sony copied it and as such should be sent to hell.

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Originally Posted by Subway

Gyration has been making motion sensing devices for like 20 years now, other companies already used it for input devices and you could say that the good sales of the Eye-Toy made Nintendo risk the step of using such a control scheme exclusively for their console.

Fredi

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So now you agree with Argo, that everyone is copying each other? Are you at least acknowledging that Sony blatantly ripped off Nintendo when they realized pure graphics wouldn't be enough?

i thought sony invented the car?

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Originally Posted by ihoss.com

So now you agree with Argo, that everyone is copying each other?

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Oh, that was never the question, my point was always that I hate this practice, not that it was'nt common, sadly.

Fredi

how do you feel about sony ripping the spiderman font for the playstation 3

There will always be copying, the question is just ti what degree. If nobody copied each other, then only to products could ever be made, because they would have had to be completely different. If 3 products were made then you could find some common traits between them, and one would be marked as a copy. The more products you have, the more they have in common. All phones are generally the same, so are websites and cars. As long as they are not too similar, you can't claim that they are copying each other. But as more and more products are being made they will look more and more like each other, and that requires us to be able to recognize more details when differentiating them. Could you, for example, tell the difference between two swans? No, you probably couldn't. But an expert on swans could, and would be able to point out all the differences. And if you study them for a long enough time, then you too could be able to see the difference.

My point is that what you might see as copying is actually the natural progress of design. In any given era, most design will look very much the same.

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Originally Posted by Subway

Oh, that was never the question, my point was always that I hate this practice, not that it was'nt common, sadly.

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As developers and designers, I think we all see the problem in rip offs and copies. But we all have double morals, this is good if someone does it, it's bad if someone else does it.

So, for this specific cases , companies, big or small, copying each other. How does this affect you in a bad way? I trully don't see what your problem is. For the iphone case, do you lose any money if iphones sell less? are you mad because Apple is losing money? Are you mad because someone else is making money and not you?

The only issue I can see is that suddenly a company (say apple, which won't happen) goes bankrupt because another company copied its product, and is more popular than the original. This, however, never happens with simple ripoffs. Usually they take on a market that wouldn't buy the original product anyway. And ripoffs as such, are never better than the original. However, if a copy is better, or is exactly the same, but cheaper, then those by themself are good reasons for a product to be more popular than the original, and again, as a consumer, I don't see any problem with a company going bankrupt, because I only care about the products I buy, and if I buy this 'ripoff' that is way better, or at least the same as the original, but cheaper, then I'm happy with that.

How else could this copy between companies affect you?

This line of thought is very similar to what I've read from a lot of newbies here at fk: oh, i won't give my sourcecode, because it'll get copied. How can i encrypt my sourcecode so that nobody can copy me.

More experienced developers usually deal with: yes, newbies can copy me, but still, their final code won't be as good as mine, and no matter how hard they try, I'm still better, and clients will still prefer working with me, because I provide a better service.

I'm on the second group, but I indeed started on the first one. Now I think: I don't care if people copy my work, because I can always do better than them. If someone comes, and it's better than me, even if he learned from me, then I deserved to be replaced by him.