back to article Samsung Wallet slavishly copies inspired by Apple Passbook

Samsung has unveiled a developer preview of its upcoming Wallet app, and to say that it was inspired by Apple's iOS Passbook app may be a gross understatement. Like Passbook, Samsung's Wallet stores retail coupons, airline boarding passes, membership cards, and event tickets, according to The Verge. Also like Apple's offering …

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  1. Cubical Drone

    This maybe caused by the fact that Apple likes to "slavishly" copy prior art.

    1. Oninoshiko
      WTF?

      indeed

      It looks like a plane/train/cruise ticket. That's like complaining that the both have a clock icon that looks like a analogue clock. It looks like that because that is what a clock looks like.

      1. User McUser
        Unhappy

        Re: indeed

        "It looks like that because that is what a clock looks like."

        Unless it looks *too much* like another clock of course...

        ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/12/apple_payout_swiss_railways/ )

        1. P. Lee
          Unhappy

          Re: indeed

          El Reg Fodder - apart from a black background, the designs are nothing alike.

          Nothing even close to the swiss clock issue.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: indeed

        Well, first of all, neither icon looks at all like any wallet I've ever owned. I think you could ask 1000 people to draw a picture of a wallet and you wouldn't get anything like a simple leather pouch with some tickets stuffed into it, together, at jaunty angles. You'd probably get 1000 drawings that looked similar to Microsoft's icon. I think for that reason alone it's pretty clear Samsung copied Apple.

        Second, saying that there's basically only one way for a clock to look shows a startling ignorance of IP/copyright/trademark law. Do you think the people who make fake Rolexes should be able to defend themselves by throwing their hands up in the air and saying, hey, that's just how watches look.

        1. Richard Jones 1
          Happy

          Re: indeed

          Making a fake Rolex is making a fake Rolex, but making a clock or a wristwatch is, whatever you think, a totally different operation. I have no idea how many watch makers there have ever been but the idea of a single one suing someone else for simply making a watch is daft. However, passing off your product as someone else's product is not allowed and the rights holder then has every right to sue. It is the product that earns the protection in this case.

        2. Mark .

          Re: indeed

          "I think you could ask 1000 people to draw a picture of a wallet and you wouldn't get anything like a simple leather pouch with some tickets stuffed into it, together, at jaunty angles."

          But this isn't just a wallet, a key part of the functionality is the tickets. So the test would be to ask people to draw a wallet with some tickets in it. Yes, you would get similar (and the only differences would be if their drawing skill wasn't as good as a professional graphic artist).

          "Second, saying that there's basically only one way for a clock to look shows a startling ignorance of IP/copyright/trademark law. "

          Well, I guess a 2007 iphone is in violation for looking like earlier phones, by that logic.

      3. Mark .

        Re: indeed

        I agree. The evidence present by this article is so hilarious, I think it's either a parody, or just flamebait. Let's see:

        "Guess what Passbook uses – yup, bar codes."

        Bar codes? My god, did all the items at the local shop also copy Apple too, with their lavish use of *bar codes*?

        Then we have the comparison of icons. Google only looks different because it looks nothing recognisable like a wallet. MS is only different because it's an overly simplified representation. Apple and Samsung look similar, because they're both more realistic images of a wallet and tickets. Many tickets have cutouts.

        Guess what, if I take a photo of my wallet, it also looks like a wallet. Apple copied my wallet!

        I wasn't aware that Apple now have a patent on the colours green, yellow and blue (though given the rounded-corners, who knows).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Samsung are staffed either by idiots, lunacy fodder, or belligerents.

      I reckon it is belligerents and love the fact they have the balls to say 'f**k you Apple come after us if you dare.

      1. ThomH

        @AC

        More likely Samsung see the value in the idea and therefore think it's a useful* thing to add to their handsets. Because all it does is reproduce the well-established historical look of tickets on a digital screen they don't see any IP hurdle to including it.

        I don't like the copying debate because it sort of endorses the idea that there's necessarily always something wrong in copying — that if any feature of your product has any close antecedent then you've no right to claim creativity. In this case it's clear that the Apple feature has inspired the Samsung but I don't see that there's anything wrong with that, especially if Samsung end up doing it better. On a technical level, Apple's implementation is very lacking as every app that wants to put something into the passbook has to push it there, which in most apps means making your booking then digging through submenus to find the 'put into Passbook' option. If I've booked something in a compatible app, the pass should just be there in the Passbook; I shouldn't have to think about whether it's pushed or pulled and I definitely shouldn't have to do anything manually.

        * Freudian typo: sueful.

      2. Andrew Moore
        Headmaster

        >I reckon it is belligerents and love the fact they have the balls to say 'f**k you Apple come after us if you dare.

        "Then they are stupid and they will die."

        Conspiracy time: It's collusion between Apple and Samsung's legal departments, designed to keep them in lucrative business.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They do it on purpose, I think.

    1. Frank Bough

      Indeed they do

      And that purpose is to profit from making a second rate parody of an iPhone.

      1. ShadowedOne
        Trollface

        Re: Indeed they do

        I thought the iPhone was a parody in and of itself?

    2. Martin
      Unhappy

      I agree...

      I am hardly one of Apple's greatest fans, but it's difficult to defend Samsung when they do things like this....

      1. wowfood

        Re: I agree...

        But on the other foot, the idea isn't all that novel. I remember back in college when smartphones were in their early years, even pre iPhone we were talking about things like this. Admitadly the idea was to use a PDA rather tahn a mobile phone since at the time phoens were still dumb.

        Smartphones were released, and I was talking about the same kind of thing with friends at uni.

        Heck there's already a number of apps who do this stuff individually. All the passbook does is take those individual segments, and pops them all under a single roof, the same as the wallet does. Some may say samsung is copying. To a point they probably are. But the idea has been floating around for a long time.

        Also I kinda wish I'd patented the idea back in college >.>

        1. the-it-slayer
          Megaphone

          Re: I agree...

          But you can clearly see Samsung designers have less talent than their nearest toilet cleaner... At least make the logo radically different if you're going to be inspired from an existing idea. I'm all for companies taking direction from another and making it better (take Blackberry using WebOS' methods for multi-touch control).

          I know Samsung don't care about if their products look like anyone else's, but I refuse to buy any of their stuff on the principal that everything they sell in the mobile/tablet market is a sham.

          1. Mark .

            Re: I agree...

            "At least make the logo radically different if you're going to be inspired from an existing idea."

            Who says they were inspired from Apple?

            And why is it always everyone else who has to make things look radically different, when Apple don't have to?

            Your use of "sham" makes no sense.

            1. the-it-slayer
              Pint

              Re: I agree...

              Who says they were inspired from Apple?

              Look at the two icons. Both black. Both show tickets appearing out of a pocket (half shown). Both are similar in style. Please don't tell me you're that blind to notice that? At least Google's and Microsoft's logos follow their branding style and are uniquely different. Samsung have no style and again based their response on Apple's design. If you can find style techniques anywhere else that Apple play on (that are recent) which are almost the same, please let me know. Now go figure and have a beer on me.

              1. Mark .

                Re: I agree...

                "Both black. Both show tickets appearing out of a pocket (half shown)."

                Wow, two pictures of tickets in a wallet both look like tickets in a wallet. And the colour black is patented now, is it?

                "Now go figure and have a beer on me."

                Your beer icon looks just like this other beer icon I saw! Yet I can find this third beer icon that looks completely different, just a simple line drawing, therefore your icon must be a copy, with no sense of style.

                (Also, a 2007 iphone's grid of coloured icons looks like my 2005 feature phone, or a 1985 Amiga come to that.)

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I agree...

          "..............mobile phone since at the time phones were still dumb"

          Now it's the end user!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I agree...

        "I am hardly one of Apple's greatest fans, but it's difficult to defend Samsung when they do things like this...."

        Steve Jobs, 1994:

        “Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we [Apple] have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

    3. Philip Lewis
      Holmes

      No shit Sherlock!

  3. Sarev
    Holmes

    I can only assume

    that some of the Samsung execs are non-execs on the board for some legal firms so they'd love nothing more than a good old multi-million dollar Copyright/patent smack-down.

  4. Bob Vistakin
    WTF?

    "Copy" legacy phones?

    Apples quaint miniature toys have been frozen in time since 2007 - what kind of ass-backwards reasoning is this?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Copy" legacy phones?

      So you think it's only possible to copy things from the future? Interesting.

  5. cs94njw
    WTF?

    Well, what else was Apple going to do with $130bn in cash? Pay for lawyers of course.

    1. Martin
      Happy

      Well, that'll be spent in six months, then....

  6. 6 inches long, handle.
    Trollface

    "Good Artists Borrow/Copy*, Great Artists Steal"

    * Google could not decide what exact word was used: Copy or Borrow.

  7. Paul Shirley

    2 of them obviously more suitable

    Pretty much what I expect to see from both Google and MS. The usual cryptic crap icon from Google I'd struggle to associate with it's function. A flat monochrome effort from MS (because that's this weeks 'design language') that eventually I'd learn to associate - but different more because that design language makes using images we might recognise bloody difficult.

    Whether or not Samsung deliberately copied Apple, both efforts work so much better than the others Apple really shouldn't be allowed monopoly rights to pretty obvious imagery.

    1. Silverburn
      Thumb Down

      Re: 2 of them obviously more suitable

      Doesn't really matter. If Apple's offering is anything to go by, it'll be utterly useless for anyone outside the US, and only increases to barely useful to anyone inside.

      Related pet annoyance: Why can't you uninstall Apple's apps from iOS? You have to create a folder called "Apple crap", and dump them all in there. I'd rather just delete them, thanks.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's not only mega corps that Samsung rips off....

    ....according to this Indy article, plenty of Korean SMEs have had their ideas nicked as well...

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tax-evasion-bribery-and-pricefixing-how-samsung-became-the-giant-that-ate-korea-8510588.html

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's not only mega corps that Samsung rips off....

      Looks like they've made that friendly judge part of the family...

      http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/02/uk-judge-who-issued-extreme-ruling-for.html

  9. Wang N Staines
    Happy

    I went into a bike shop the other day, 99% of them look 99% identical.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    Apple's graphics suck anyway. Rounded corners, glossy overlays, skeuomorphic design. A repugnant reminder of life circa 1992-1995. YTF would any discerning company or individual want to ape that?

    1. Silverburn
      Happy

      Microsoft did ape it with Metro.

      And by "Ape" I mean it was transparently designed by one.

      Edit: Have I become Eadon, posting anti-MS stuff in unrelated forums? Time for the mind bleach.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Edit: Have I become Eadon"

        Thankfully, no. One Eadon is more than enough thank you :)

      3. Oninoshiko

        MS aping

        Actually, Metro has sharp corners, and is not black.

        As much as I hate AAPL's design sense, it's better the MSFT's.

  11. g e
    Facepalm

    Copying, really?

    When the airline, etc systems don't support NFC but do support barcodes then whaddya gonna use?

    If the interface/api/facility is there by airlines and others to do this then you're going to implement it, aren't you.

    You may as well claim that everyone apart from the first company to implement it is a copycat for using PDQ terminals to take payments in shops, regardless of the fact that the facility is obviously provided to be used by more than one entity.

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  14. greensun
    Linux

    Not just Samsung

    Oh noes, EVERYONE is copying Apple's ticket idea ! :

    https://www.google.com/search?q=tickets+icon&hl=en&safe=off&tbm=isch

    Seriuosly, does Apple pay people to write this stuff ?

    A Linux penguin, cos Apple stole BSD.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rik The Clone talks bollox again.

    I think its time to investigate other options when it comes to tech news.

    The reg is just getting a bit "shitty" now.

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