Samsung tablets not ‘cool’ enough to infringe Apple design, says UK judge
Samsung tablets do not infringe on a registered Apple design because "they are not as cool" and the Galaxy Tablets "do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design," a U.K. judge said in a ruling on Monday.
Samsung sought a declaration that three of its tablet computers, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 7.7 do not infringe on Apple's registered design that describes the shape of the iPad. The Samsung tablets and the iPad had to be seen as members of the same family, rather then the same devices, Judge Colin Birss said in his ruling.
"Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back. They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool. The overall impression produced is different," and therefore Samsung tablets do not infringe on the Apple design patent, he concluded. Read more...
Galaxy and iPhone to top smartphone holiday sales
Apple's long-awaited iPhone 4S and Samsung Electronics' fresh, broad offering are likely to stand out in this holiday season's smartphone sales which will otherwise be clouded by global economic uncertainty.
Apple, which lost its position as the world's largest smartphone maker to Samsung last quarter, could regain top spot as consumers rush to buy the latest iPhone after waiting 16 months since the previous model went on sale.
Like millions elsewhere, 36-year-old Vanessa Pigeon last week took up an offer from her telecom operator and replaced her aging Blackberry with the latest iPhone.
"I liked the design and I wanted to change for a long time," said Pigeon, a recruitment official in Paris. Read more...
Apple and Samsung: What’s behind the patent fight
Samsung took a step toward finding a kind of "pax tabletica" with arch-foe Apple in an Australian court last week, offering to remove features from its Galaxy Tab to avoid a court ban on sales of the device in that country. But what's really interesting about the case isn't the technical litigation, but the underlying attempt to define how much of a product's design is actually protected under existing, fragmented international laws.
The fight began in April, when Apple sued Samsung for allegedly copying Apple's tablet and smartphone designs. Shortly thereafter, Samsung countersued, and the battle was on.
In some ways, the various legal cases now pending between the two companies -- just this week Samsung went after planned sales the iPhone 4S in Italy and France -- seem likely to force courts worldwide to make decisive judgments on just how far a person can patent a design. Read more...
How cloud computing is changing data center design and cost
If you've read this blog for a while, it's no secret that I believe that one aspect of cloud computing is a dramatic drop in the cost of computing. While many discuss cloud computing's cost advantage in terms of better utilization via resource pooling and rapid elasticity, we believe that there is a more fundamental shift going on as data centers are redesigned to focus on scale, efficiency, and a shift to commodity components.
Put another way, the former cost advantage (utilization, etc.) relies on more efficient use of existing data center design patterns, while the latter relies on transforming the cost basis of data centers by creating new design patterns.
I wrote about this topic a few months ago in a post entitled "Are you making your data centers cloud-friendly?" In it I discussed trends evinced at the San Francisco DatacenterDynamics conference: energy efficiency, raised operating temperatures, and "chicken coop" data center building designs. Read more...
Microsoft ‘ribbonizes’ Windows 8 file manager
Microsoft today said it will "ribbonize" the file manager in next year's Windows 8, adding Explorer to the short list of integrated applications that already sport the interface in Windows 7.
In another post in a series the company has been using to disclose some Windows 8 details, Microsoft's Alex Simons, director of program management, showed screenshots of the new ribbon interface planned for Explorer.
"We evaluated several different UI [user interface] command affordances including expanded versions of the Vista/Windows 7 command bar, Windows 95/Windows XP style toolbars and menus, several entirely new UI approaches, and the Office style ribbon," explained Simons. "Of these, the ribbon approach offered benefits in line with our goals." Read more...
Facebook tweaks site to clarify who can see what
Facebook is making a series of design changes to the site to make it clearer to users who can see the content that they post, an issue Google has been criticizing Facebook about since it launched its own social network, Google+, in June.
"You have told us that 'who can see this?' could be clearer across Facebook, so we have made changes to make this more visual and straightforward," Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday.
The main change is that Facebook will now display the intended audience for a photo, a text post, a tag or any other piece of content right next to it, or "inline" as stated in the blog post. Until now, those controls have been on a separate Settings section of the profile.
"Your profile should feel like your home on the Web -- you should never feel like stuff appears there that you don't want, and you should never wonder who sees what's there," the post reads. Read more...
Kotlin project adds another language option to JVM
Just when it seemed like developers already had a plethora of language options on the Java Virtual Machine, JetBrains with Project Kotlin is readying a general-purpose statically typed language for the JVM that is geared to performance-critical applications. Kotlin was revealed last month at the JVM Language Summit in Silicon Valley, and JetBrains is seeking feedback on it, with documentation accessible at the Kotlin website.
InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill recently interviewed Dmitry Jemerov, JetBrains development lead, to discuss Kotlin and why the company is working on it. Although he is not personally involved in design of the language, Jemerov is involved in discussions on the language. Read more...