Samsung might just be overplaying its hand. If they're in the right why are they going to such lengths to win over the public? It's quite pathetic. It's not like Samsung is this tiny company and Apple is the big bully. If publicly releasing excluded evidence is illegal the judge shouldn't let Samsung get away with it.

 

These are common design exercises - "How would Sony do it?"  "How would Le Corbusier do it?" "How would Geiger do it?". The difference is Apple never released and never attempted to make money from this homage, whilst Samsung manufactured their Apple-copy and made money from it.

 

 

 

I don't expect a direct answer to this, only more weasel words from DaHarder.

Samsung takes excluded evidence to the media, gets reprimanded

 

Shocking?

 

Not really. Business as usual at Samsung. 

 

 

 

 

Part of that smack might be to let the jury be told what Samsung did and how it is contempt etc.which will leave a bad taste in the collective mouth and could hurt things for Samsung

If you have been hanging around that long then you might have noticed that it helps at least to indicate who you are responding to, if not actually quote the post.

I think it is more of a question: Do they really think they're above contempt of court?

Hey... I guess somebody hired Kim Jong Il's old speech writer
"lost in translation"

Pretty certain that the jury will vote in Apple's favor... Question is how much...

How old are you? That's not how it works. Disobeying a judge doesn't put the judge on the hot seat, it puts you in jail. It's more likely a desperate PR move because it is irrelevant to the case whether Apple copied Sony.

Well Christopher Stringer is famous now. I wonder which other designers will be called to testify? Having all these designers testify might benefit Apple more than Samsung, I read some of this stuff and think 'wow that would be a cool place to work'.

Meet the 16 ‘crazy’ designers of Apple’s iPhone

San Jose, California: Apple Inc’s celebrated industrial design team is a group of around 16 “maniacal” individuals from all over the world who spend a lot of time brainstorming around a kitchen table.

The world’s most valuable technology corporation on Tuesday allowed a rare glimpse into a zealously guarded internal hardware design process that has produced some of the world’s most celebrated consumer electronics.

In a high-profile US patent infringement trial against Samsung Electronics Co Ltdthat began this week, it called 17-year Apple design veteran Christopher Stringer as its first witness.

Stringer looked every inch the designer with his shoulder-length hair, salt-and-pepper beard, wearing an off-white suit with a narrow black tie.

“Our role is to imagine products that don’t exist and guide them to life,” he told the jury.

Apple’s products — particularly the seminal iPhone — are held in high regard throughout the industry. The gadget that revolutionised the smartphone industry is prominently displayed in the avant-garde San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The company, which is accusing its South Korean arch-foe of stealing iPhone and iPad design and features, owes a debt to creative guru Jonathan Ive and his cadre of designers a s sembled from Britain, Australia, the United States, Japan, Germany over more than a decade.

Stringer said Apple’s group of 15 to 16 industrial designers — headed by the British-born and recently knighted Ive — work on all of the company’s products and dedicate time every week to discuss them, mostly at the kitchen table.

That’s where the group is “most comfortable,” he said.

Ive’s team leads works out of a large, open studio on Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California, with music blaring through a giant sound system and access strictly limited to a small portion of employees, according to a 2006 profile of Ive in Business Week.

BRAINSTORMING

Most of the team have worked side-by-side for 15 to 20 years, said Stringer, who has “hundreds” of design patents to his name.

“We have been together for an awfully long time,” Stringer said. “We are a pretty maniacal group of people. We obsess over details.”

Over the years, the team earned a reputation for blending the aesthetically appealing with the functional. Stringer worked on the original iPhone — internally codenamed M-68 — and almost all of Apple’s mobile products.

Once a product design idea is solidified through a brainstorming session, the design team sketches those ideas and models it through a Computer Aided Design process.

The design team doesn’t follow a linear creative process from idea to sketch, model and then to engineered demo, Stringer said. Developed concepts will be scrapped if a better idea comes along, he said.

“We are always doubting. We are always questioning.”

Stringer listed some of the manufacturing problems for the original iPhone, from putting glass in close proximity to hardened steel to cutting holes in the glass.

“People thought we were crazy,” he said.


Stringer's the dude with long hair and beard on the left.
Edited by Rogifan - 7/31/12 at 8:35pm

 

Thanks for the tip. He put it to good use in another thread. 

One form of design process is to attempt and empathize what aspires you, either through trying to understand their spirit, thought process or in this case creative company culture to break out of your own process. Hopefully ending up seeing some "aha!" moments.

 

Saying that 26% of parts in the first iPhone is Samsung parts doesn't equate to innovation on their part at all, or to show that Apple was lacking in innovation.

As history have shown, it is possible to use existing parts and be creative enough to invent something new.

 

Edited by moustache - 7/31/12 at 8:25pm

 

Looks like Jony has been hitting the gym.

Looks like Apple did a good job of predicting Sony's future design.

One of Apple's prototypes:


Sony mobile phone from 2009:


Actually I think tht prototype is a sweet phone. If they could find a way to make that only thinner I'd be all over it. -

If Apple can take Samsung to court over this then other tech companies should start suing each other too. Xerox, please stand up. And Palm (what's left of it) and LG and Sony... I'd like Apple to win so that it'll open the floodgates to more lawsuits. On your mark. Get set. Litigate.

 

It's basically the 2nd gen and 6th gen iPod nano design, but sideways. On the iPod nano, the flat parts are the top and bottom. And with the 2nd gen nano having been released in September 2006, you can bet that there's even priorer (priorlier?) art than that in the form of its prototypes.

Can someone explain why Samsung didn't meet the discovery deadline? Presumably they had all these documents. Why didn't they turn them over in time? Whining about it now and trying to get the public to believe the judge is biased is pathetic.

 

I don't see it so much as a PR move, but the only card they can play.  We've all seen the evidence and exhibits, there might be a bit more we don't know about but mostly it's pretty clear that Samsung hasn't got a leg to stand on unless they can prove this one single point.  

 

I think they leaked it for the same reason that the lawyer literally begged it to be included.  It's the only really good card they have.  Without this, they are sunk. 

 

I wish we could get a clear answer to why the pictures of the prototype phones from Samsung that they claim predate the iPhone are being excluded.  I have a good idea why and there are several logical choices as to why, but every time it's reported it seems to be mixed up with the issue of the "Sony" iPhone prototype (mostly because Samsung joins the two together in any statements they make), when the two things shouldn't really be related at all.  

 

This just gives fuel to people like DaHarder (currently set on "ignore" for me, whew!), who rightly point out that the two issues have nothing to do with each other.  The lack of clarity from all sides is infuriating and the third hand reporting by lame tech blogs just muddies things up even more.  

 

The pictures may be excluded because they are predated by the "Purple" iPhone design in 2005, because they were never released as phones, because Samsung can't prove they were actually designed in 2006, or a whole bunch of other possibilities.  It would be nice to get a clear statement on it.  

http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-07-31-apple-trial-offers-glimpse-of-kitchen-table-product-design/

While Samsung said during the trial that it had more than 1,000 people working on the design of products, Stringer said Apple’s industrial design team is a small group of about 15 people from countries including the U.S., U.K., Australia and Japan.


So even with more than 1,000 people working on product design they still can't figure out how not to copy Apple.

I thought they were excluded because Samsung missed the submission deadline.

That will happen when you have to hire graphic designers in a hurry to conjure up "old" designs. (^_-)

No it's a stupid move. If a judge issues an order and you violate it, you are in contempt. That pisses off the judge and screws up your appeals attempts. Smart would have been to do nothing and if they lost to file an appeal over the evidence that was unfairly excluded and possible bias

If Samsung valued all evidence being used, maybe they shouldn't have destroyed thousands of emails eh?

 

Just being asked to design something the way one company would design something would not constitute copying a design. In fact, it could have been a defensive move to make sure that Apple wouldn't design something that Sony would claim to be copying.  Since the iPhone was something so new, they wanted to make sure that a device of that caliber would not be confused as a Sony product if they were to independently be developing one. (Since Sony is one of few tech companies other than Apple that has a design aesthetic of their own).

 

Remember, the best designs are not created by how many ideas you keep, but how many ideas you throw away. Design is a subtractive process which Jony Ive himself has stated.  So knowing what NOT to do is more important than knowing what to do.  This is something that 99% of people do not understand, and certainly not the "design is an afterthought" competitors.  By designing a "Sony-inspired" iPhone, they found what to remove from the final design.

 

Lastly, designing something as part of the design process does not constitute copying since the design process is an iterative critical process.

I agree with the overall assumption of cultural but not in this case. They are American lawyers being paid for council and representation. Any American lawyer should have (and may have), said "We don't do that here."

However your second paragraph quoted, it seems like a basic start. I'm only using a basic computer analogy here but when it doesn't start, check the plug. Then check something one the same circuit. Going a long way here but my point is start with the basics and graduate from there. The lawyers picked the jury so maybe none of them have owned an Apple or Samsung phone. Not unbelievable really, especially when I read about 'feature phones', and the new Android equivalent on this very site. So the lawyers would start with what a non-tech following individual would know, or rather wouldnt know. I mean, wouldn't you?

I'm only quoting and responding. I mean no disrespect.

If this is true I find it incredibly amazing. Did they specify which department they were in? Are those people designing washing machines, refrigerators and t.v.'s or do they have 1,000 literally working on phones? I'm seriously curious.

I love that!

Please say that will be the next iPod mini or even iPod! Awesome, useable and the size is befitting of even a woman's fingers vs. the new nano.

Wow! You're posting cool pics like you did before you had to adopt that rather nerdy signature...

...and it think you were getting at...

You can bet there is earlier art than even these pictures imply regarding prototypes.

Now I understand all the 'one liners' you keep pumping out.
Edited by Vadania - 7/31/12 at 10:16pm

I was about to say the same thing. He's looking seriously buff these days.
Healthy body, healthy mind, I suppose.

Let me guess...they design by committee.

That picture is from 2010.

It was a desperate move by Samsung., and just serves to make them look guilty. The case isn't about who came up with the idea first (though I can't remember anyone arranging apps into tiles before Apple. I could wrong though) ; it's about Samsung copying Apple's designs.

And don't think that deliberately disobeying the judge (twice!) is going to win them a sympathetic judge at any appeal.

To be honest, I didn't think Apple had much of a case until Samsung started shredding documents. Certainly looks like a company with something to hide.

 

Schiller is slightly thinner than he once was, too. I imagine they will all be somewhat paranoid about regular checkups from now on.

Really? Well I hope he's managed to stay in good shape. It's important not to let work run your whole life, I think.

 

 

Very sad, but probably true.

I work with Chinese and Korean factories every day.  They have no idea how to come up with their own designs.  Their only motivation is to steal ideas in hopes they can make money because they have no trademark laws.  When we have something made in China or Korea, we have to have the patent/trademark imbedded in the mold so they can't give our molds to another factor for profit.

I think you missed the point of my post.

I was saying I don't believe it. If there's truly 1,000 designers working on phones then their result is pretty pathetic. That's 40,000 man-hours per week (not sure why they're called MAN hours) and from what I've seen of their phones, it just doesn't make any sense.

O.k. I looked it up. So MAN hours is what a MAN can accomplish in an hours worth of work. (I know it sounded simple, so i assumed it meant something more than that.) That's rather denigrating... I do however agree if it's physical labor.
Edited by Vadania - 7/31/12 at 11:10pm

I've got to believe that number is across all of Samsung's businesses and includes more than just designers.
Edited by Rogifan - 7/31/12 at 11:09pm

Good read, but seriously a pretty crazy post size wise? I think a link or two would have done just fine.

Tallest, now that everyone's read it? Can you shorten it? It's bigger than the originating article.

 

You are right that it's not as simple as I made out.  I thought of some of the same objections to my argument after I made it.  But I think culture has to play a part at some level.  

 

Another thought is that the lawyer (who is likely American, I don't know), is grandstanding and throwing a lot of chaff in the air to distract.  We have to remember that stupid, stupid, OJ Simpson trial where the jury turned out to be easily led by theatrics and conspiracy theories.  This kind of smells similar.  

 

I don't know anyone who didn't just laugh out loud at the stupidity of that "If it don't fit, you must acquit" crapola from Johnny Cochran, and the next day everyone where I work was talking about the absolute ridiculousness of the claim in a factual sense.  Weeks later however, after the trial, when the jury was asked about what went through their minds, most of them thought that the glove thing was some kind of slam-dunk evidence-wise and didn't see it for the grandstanding that it was.  Several of them said that this piece of theatrics accompanied by what was (to anyone with a modicum of intelligence), a ridiculous convoluted conspiracy theory where the police were out to get blacks and framed OJ, was the main reason for their not-guilty votes.  

 

In other words, juries are dumb as bricks on average, and conspiracy theories are more popular than the facts.  The lawyer may be playing to emotions here.  

 

People of Asian descent, especially recent immigrants may have enough of a chip on their shoulder to buy into a conspiracy theory of that type although I don't know if there are any Asians on the jury.  I understand they are quite the minority in the USA.  

If he'd shortened it then we might not have got the part about the "Golfbag full of money" which is, in my opinion, priceless.

 

Golf bags stuffed with cash? Who does that?

 

And who put the rare earth elements there in the first place? God! God is the real innovator!