Apple antagonist Proview unveils its own iPad Chinese shell-of-a-company Proview Shenzhen, embroiled in a trademark dispute with Apple over the name "iPad", held a press conference in Beijing to plead their case and to show the assembled journos an assortment of marketing materials for their own iPAD. The Proview iPAD has no resemblance whatsover to Apple's fondleslab, …
It's hard not to. Upon searching for reviews for a new Android phone recently, I was faced with nearly all of them comparing straight to the iPhone. Apple propaganda is inevitable everywhere it seems, even more so that they're trying to sue the crap out of everyone.
"Apple propaganda is inevitable everywhere it seems,..."
Thanks in no small part to dedicated and vocal Apple-bashers who hate on any device that looks, works, or performs similar tasks to any Apple product.
'Tis a bit tiring--on both sides--but inevitable. It's the way human beings work. I am old enough to remember exactly the same things--often nearly word for word--from the TRS-80, Commodore 64, and Apple II camps.
The iPhone is usually the top selling single handset in any given portion of the year, because the Android market is more diverse and no single handset accounts for a sufficiently disproportionate share. The iPad is also currently the top selling tablet.
So while Apple doesn't hold anything even close to a majority of the phone market, its handset is still prominent enough to be worth citing in other handset reviews. The iPad just barely still holds a majority of the tablet market so is obviously relevant to tablet reviews.
I don't see any problem with reviewers comparing new products to the best selling products in the same category.
As for always mentioning legal disputes while talking about Apple? You'd have to talk to Apple's legal department to find out why that's currently almost unavoidable.
McDonalds is the most common "restaurant" in the world, but you don't see reviews of classy 5 star establishments comparing the experience or quality to them, do you?
In most cases, there's no need to compare any phone to another phone. Only the size and weight can really be used for reference, and even then that's relying on the reader having access to the same product (where a ruler is even more common than an iPhone).
Oh it's more than tiring. It's bloody tedious. When will you people STOP f king banging on about it?
It’s a poxy tablet, an idea that was borne YEARS before Slackle created theirs. If it wasn't for the success of the ipod, the iphone and pad would not have been as successful.
Remember, human beings are SHEEP. Enough people bang on about a product and eventually everyone jumps on-board. So much so, that now it's NOT COOL to be seen with one, because the world, their dog and its fleas have one, each "person" thinking "look how cool I am". Everyone else thinking “W O W, you’re as thick and three short planks, and as deep as a puddle”
JUST STOP THE CR_P!
The sheer audacity of their approach is admirable. David (or Chinese Dell Boy) v Goliath.
It also shows how culturally different the market is to ours - and why it's so hard for Western companies to get to grips with.
Running Linux or Citrix ! - brilliant - plus the device was manufactured for over a decade.
I'm not sure how much it changed over that time - you'd assume the specs would be increased?
As far as looking like the old iMac, yeah, sure, in that it looks like an elongated small CRT TV.
That design ethic, which was (apparently) cool back in 1998, looks so dated now it's scary.
I recall the Bondi blue imac, a few appeared in our studio at the time, but were never taken seriously. It was style over substance - the designers hated working on them, slow, with tiny screens. They also got very tacky very quickly - apple had patented the scratch attracting surface way before the chrome backed iPhones and iPods (those devices just perfected it)
Also, the iMacs of 1998 ran on Mac OS 9 ... I'll leave it that one there, like an embarrassed elephant in the room that can't *cough* multi-task very well to the point where printing a document = dead mac. Ok, I didn't leave it there, Mac OS 9 wasn't ... stunted.
I reckon I'd of preferred and iPad way back in 1998, if I'd even knew they existed.
I'd have to add, where I was working back in 1998 (south africa), the idea of running an Apple Mac at home was virtually unheard of, so the iMacs tended to end up in wanky design agencies - initially given to designers, who soon shunned them and eventually ending up in the reception area, after that the spare office under some boxes and finally, at the recycling centre.
<< mod me down on this, they were CRAP.
I'm no apple fanboi but I have to side with them on this one. If you go out and deliberately pay for the name of a product from a company then 10 years later, after your product has generated millions in profit, they try to claim that you didn't pay for it in THIS country then you would be within your rights to be angry. Not only that but you would be going through the original documentation to see exactly what was sold and then sue the pants off them.
On top of that you find that the product they had which carried the name you bought bore a more than passing resemblance to your iconic product, you'd be even more miffed.
I think Apple, for once, have every right to raise a legal case to both defend their IP and also their reputation since they did try to do things right.
@ThomH, I assume you were joking when you said "The iPad just barely still holds a majority of the tablet market so is obviously relevant to tablet reviews." JUST BARELY????? Really? That's like saying Yussain Bolt just barely won that 100m final when he jogged to the finishing line. You were just being sarcy though right?
@Neil, yes, Apple did pretty much appropriate the iEverything to the point where when other companies bring out anything iCopy then you assume it must be an Apple product or something to DO with an Apple product. That's the very definition of branding. And they created the tablet market as it is today. I remember the product launch and thinking "That's just a big iPod Touch, didn't take much design there. Why would you want that?" and I thought it would be a complete failure. Now everyone and their dog has a tablet, anyone who can afford one has an iPad and everyone else goes for a cheaper copy or a just as expensive but more capable copy.
When I last checked with my 5 year old son there are still 26 letters in the alphabet.
Apple has used the letter "i" in front of their gadgets for donkeys years..
Therefore, anyone else using this must surely have the aim of trying to impersonate this well known brand. There should be a law against Proview using this. It should by law be irrelevant who registered the name first - what is important is the reason why they registered and used the letter "i"?
International law does not allow you to register website domains that are purely created to earn revenue off the big brands eg you cannot register the domain "Walmart" for no reason and then hold the real company to ransom to pay you millions to get it registered in their name unless your name is "Walmart". So the motive to register the letter "i" must have been to get revenue from Apple since there were another 25 letters to choose from.
I think international law should be similarly applied.
Read the advertising material posted with the article... It stood for "Internet Personal Access Device" - which in China in 1998 would have been something not many people had.
Apple may have released the "iMac" in 1998, but they didn't release the "iPad" until a long time later... And simply releasing one product with the letter "I" in it's name does not give you exclusive rights to that letter... Especially since Apple's reason for using that letter was the same as Proviews - "INTERNET" was a big new thing in 1998.
"Rik said:As near as The Reg and Google Translate can tell"
LOL given the translation is rather key to understanding in this, you could have at least nipped down your local chippy and asked the Chinese manager to have his dad/granddad to properly translate this text for you.
"With the disclosure of the Proview iFamily and the iMac knockoff"
LO it's not like there never been any so called imac clones both knock-off and officially sanctioned with apple supplied official ROMS ( to get them out of a financial black hole and save apple from Bankruptcy too OC) that were actually faster and cheaper than the real things back in the day when design look wasn't so high on the agenda as there was not so much profit to be made by suing for that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing to name but one PPC imac clone provider
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