Apple's patent lawsuit against Samsung has been widely publicized ... as have the late Steve Jobs' personal animosity towards Android, and Apple's stated requirements for a tablet which does not infringe on its patents.
But whatever your take on the battle of Apple versus the world's largest Android device maker, tech pundits and Reddit commenters
alike have noticed some striking similarities between Samsung and Apple
... both in the products themselves, and in the ways they're presented
to people.
Product packaging
The crux of the Apple lawsuit is that Samsung's latest Android tablet,
the 10-inch Galaxy Tab, is alleged to be too similar to Apple's iPad. As
Reddit commenter MarsSpaceship humorously pointed out, however, the similarities didn't start there.
The old 7-inch Galaxy Tab may not have been easy to mistake for an iPad,
since it was half the size and had more buttons, but its packaging drew
some obvious inspiration from Apple's. And as the pictures show, not
only are many Samsung peripherals and accessories nearly identical to
Apple's, but the Samsung booth (at an unspecified trade show or retail location) actually used Apple's app icons in its display.
Product design
The similarities between Samsung and Apple's products are both internal
and external. As John Brownlee of the ironically-named "Cult of Mac"
noted, Samsung's new entry-level Galaxy Ace phone bears a striking resemblance
to Apple's four-year-old iPhone 3G. Many of Samsung's other smartphones
have a similar aesthetic, complete with a single home button like
Apple's.
Internally, Samsung apps (like the voice recorder shown in the picture
on Reddit) sometimes closely resemble their Apple counterparts. Its
TouchWiz interface bears a certain resemblance as well, as shown in the pictures
on Ina Fried's article for All Things D, although part of this is
because Android's home screens bear a strong resemblance to iOS'.
Advertising
A recent Samsung advertisement (which was aired in Korea) for the Galaxy Tab not only mimicked the style of Apple's ads, it used the same child actress who appeared in an iPhone 4S commercial, as Google+ user Cheryl Lindo Jones discovered.
Samsung has pulled the ad from its YouTube page, but has not given any reason why. It also hasn't pulled other ads
that it's run in North America, which mock iPhone owners by calling
their gadgets "old school." Other ads depict Apple fans waiting in line
to buy an iPhone, and show Samsung Galaxy S II owners making fun of
them.
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