THE TRUTH ABOUT THE APPLE/SAMSUNG LAWSUIT RESULTS AND WHY GOOGLE WILL SUFFER
So Apple won the ridiculous lawsuit against Samsung, claiming they copied all of their products and operating system. This seems to be a big huge deal. Or is it? Who is the real winner here? Apple, Samsung, or the consumer?
On the face, it looks like the whiny Cupertino tech giant slammed the mighty bully who kept stealing their stuff. They get a billion dollars in damages, plus they now own the rights to rectangular electronic devices that have icons.
The result will be that Samsung might have to jack up their prices and pay a royalty fee to Apple, IF they let them continue using the designs that they now apparently own. But one thing I don't understand is why Google sat back on their fat cans and didn't say a word throughout this process.
Samsung is the biggest distributer of smartphones in the world of Android. Google could potentially be hurt if their number one customer, Samsung, cannot continue selling their phones at neck-breaking speeds. I would have thought that Google would be on top of this with their endless cadre of lawyers to help out their Korean brothers, but they did not.... as far as I know.
What does this mean to the consumer? You might be paying $10 more (or so) for your Samsung device so they can pay off the mob boss Apple. You might also see an operating system that doesn't look like iOS. But will the $1,000,000,000 fine really hurt Samsung? Probably not.
I was reading in PC Magazine where they were reminiscing about Microsoft buying Skype for $8,000,000,000. It sure didn't vault them to the top of the gadget pile with their smartphones. They also talked about the huge amount of cash that Google was paying to buy out Motorola.
So putting that into perspetive, $1,000,000,000 isn't really such a bad deal for getting to rip off the design and operating system of the iPhone and land yourself at the top of the pile in cell phone gadgets.
To be honest, the rotten Apple folks have a point. Yes, Android looks exactly like iOS. Rows of icons that you scroll around, on a nice rectangular screen, running apps that are basically identical. This shouldn't come as a surprise, however, because tons of design folks defected from Apple to work for Google.
What I don't get is what difference it will make for Apple. If they shut down Samsung (if their wildest dream came true), people like me still wouldn't buy their products. Why? Because I don't want a heavy, clunky, super fragile device that can't survive a drop 2' above the pavement.
Nor do I want a device that has sticking home buttons, jammed up power buttons, gummed up silent switches, and jacked-up volume buttons. Who needs all of that? I don't. I'm not going to buy an Apple brick phone if I don't have to. But I will eventually, because of my app development company CoMo Coding LLC, and our iOS apps that we are developing.
What do you think is going to happen to the lesser Android handset manufacturers that can't afford these battles? HTC, Haweieee (or however you spell it), Pantech, and LG all have iPhone look-alikes too. If Apple comes up against them now that they own the rights to rectangular touch screen gadgets, they could be toast.
I'm okay with paying an extra ten bucks to keep my Sammy smartphone fresh and new each year. But I would be the first to say that Samsung needs to get away from the fake-iOS-clone-looking Android operating system and do something different. It is possible.
Just look at the Microsoft Windows Phone Mango platform, for example... it looks nothing like iOS. Plus, it's FAR more intuitive and less maddening than the jam-200-icons-on-a-screen concept of iOS and Android.
Step it up, Samsung. You seriously won big by getting to the top of the heap riding the iOS copy bandwagon. Now put your heads together and get away from Apple before they lawsuit you to oblivion.
Just my rambling thoughts.
Carlton Flowers
Crabby Android Fan
Okay folks, the topic of today's SoundCloud podcast is the following question: "Which is easier to use? Android or iOS?"