Is it possible to steal an idea or copy a thought? About trying to cross an Xbox with a PC, the fashion for dual cameras, a way to turn iPhone into a YotaPhone and more …
Once upon a time, one smart, but very lazy monkey got tired of climbing for the bananas growing on the upper branches. Instead, she stuck a stick in her hands and knocked down the most ripe and delicious bunch in one movement. I don't know whether people descended from this monkey or not, but the fact that invention is in our blood is an indisputable fact.
People are constantly inventing, assembling, inventing and improving something. And they constantly share their experience with others, in turn adopting something from them in return. And this is absolutely normal and completely natural. Otherwise, you and I would still live in trees and jump on thin branches day after day, trying in vain to reach the coveted fruit.
Many wonderful artists belong to the same school of painting, many talented musicians play in the same genre, many designers follow the traditions of their native design bureau. And this does not prevent their works from being interesting and original at all. Maybe once it was possible to be considered a genius without having any baggage of knowledge at all, but now no talent saves from the need to learn from other people's mistakes and study the experience accumulated by predecessors for a long time. And never did this situation raise any special questions from those around him. Never until today.
Suddenly, a mass of people decided that taking into account the experience of their contemporaries, and not trying to reinvent the wheel from scratch, was the height of indecency and the wildest infringement of other people's rights and freedoms. Thank God, public opinion has not yet prohibited writing books or inventing music in an already existing genre, but with the design of mobile technology, everything is not so rosy. For some reason, a bunch of people are absolutely sure that every engineer and every designer should live in an absolute information vacuum, fundamentally not paying attention to the activities of their colleagues. Either you personally step on all the available rakes and reinvent the wheel for the thousandth time in a row, or you are a complete mediocrity, only capable of parasitizing on other people's discoveries and clinging to the glory of competitors.
People are prone to disinterested feelings and selfless struggle for the rights of individuals absolutely alien to them much less than it is now fashionable to think. Which is also completely normal – if you and I went crazy with grief just because a stranger on the other side of the globe stumbled and twisted his leg, humanity would have died out long ago. Fortunately, the instinct of self-preservation is a strong thing and does not allow trying to commit suicide for any more or less sad occasion.
Another thing is that he is not limited to the thought of 'his shirt is closer to the body'. The world is a cruel thing, and it is difficult to survive in it alone. And so sometimes you have to neglect personal comfort and even safety, protecting the existence of the whole pack – this is also an instinct. So the reaction of people to the cry of 'They are beating ours!' usually it is quick and predictable – first, slap the offenders in the face, and only then figure out who exactly beat whom there and for what.
It is for this reason that in recent years so many Samsung rights fighters have appeared, Microsoft or Apple, subtle connoisseurs of spherical innovations and experienced forum fighters, who know exactly who stole what from whom. They often worry about the success of their beloved company even more than its employees or owners. Simply because in such a straightforward way, they primarily defend their own choice. And those same cries of 'They are beating ours!' they sound loud here, often for any reason. Word for word – and the idea of patents for a black rectangle already seems completely natural … if, of course, it was 'own' company that managed to patent it.
One example is the 'dual' cameras on modern smartphones, which are slowly gaining popularity. Some particularly ardent fans HTC have already signed companies like Huawei or LG into the camp of dastardly plagiarists. From their point of view, models such as the LG G5 are a brazen and blatant theft of the idea of HTC Dual Camera used in the HTC One M8.
Meanwhile, an idea cannot be stolen at all – at most, you can copy a specific way of its implementation. Anyone can say 'I came up with the idea of creating the perfect smartphone', but this is not nearly a reason to sue the creators of any good devices. So in the case of double cameras, there is no question of plagiarism – the idea to do something similar came to minds of many manufacturers a very, very long time ago. From time to time they try to revisit this idea, approach it from a slightly different angle and check if it has become more attractive since then. So at the beginning of summer, the most impatient bathers come to the shore of the lake and carefully try the water with their feet – can you already plunge or should you return to it in a couple of days?
The main 'feature' of the dual camera in HTC One M8 is the 'depth' of the image. In an ordinary, at first glance, photograph, you can change the focus point or turn it into a kind of hologram.
Sense Hints: Camera at HTC One. About UFocus and more
The LG G5 has a slightly different approach to a dual camera – it consists of a standard and a wide-angle module, which act as a kind of mobile analogue of interchangeable lenses.
MWC 2016. LG G5
Now on the way Huawei P9, which (judging by the photos leaked into the network) also has a dual camera. But the details are still unknown, and what exactly such a camera will be is a mystery.
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The idea of dual screens is in many ways similar to the idea of dual cameras – it sounds very tempting, but how and why customers will need them in practice is not entirely clear. One option is to use energy efficient displays such as electronic paper. Perhaps the most sensational device of this kind is the YotaPhone, but business is not limited to it. For example, popSlate 2 has similar functionality. However, it is a technological case for iPhone, not a smartphone.
And again, someone has already managed to drag out a song about sneaky copying and dirty play, although it is completely unclear how a cover can be a copy of a phone. Moreover, the idea itself is by no means new, but no one has yet succeeded in implementing it with dignity. And if popSlate 2 succeeds what YotaPhone failed, I personally will only be glad. After all, the more interesting devices there are, the better.
Another thing is that the quality of the first version of popSlate was lame on both legs, both in terms of design and in terms of software. But this is again a problem of implementation, not copying ideas.
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Trying to take into account someone else's experience and improve some existing thing is not bad. It is bad to try to mindlessly copy a concept one to one, when flaws and shortcomings are transferred with the same care as the pros. But usually you don't even have to worry about the legal side of the issue, buyers will punish such a company much more efficiently than any lawyers.
A classic example is the rejection of memory cards in the previous generation SGS. Most likely, the logic was as simple as possible – since there are none in iPhone, then we will not have them either. But buyers did not appreciate this approach, in their eyes this strange decision was a very big disadvantage of SGS6.
In the new generation of the flagship microSD, the slot was returned back, and Kyle Brown (one of the top managers responsible for technology, content and product launches) had to publish an official statement explaining such a strange inconsistency. According to him, the memory card slot disappeared for a reason, this decision was made solely for the benefit of users. After all, SGS6 was the first to use UFS 2.0 fast memory and the engineers were afraid that it would not work very well when paired with cheap memory cards. Over the past year, Samsung engineers have been working hard to solve this difficult problem, and here's the result – the SGS7 has a memory card slot again!
In recent years, managers of large companies have mastered an interesting trick. It is necessary to take away some familiar and necessary function from users, and in a couple of years solemnly return it. It is believed that in this case, their gratitude will simply not be the limit and the sales of the novelty will skyrocket. And the most offensive thing is that it really somehow works.
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Microsoft are also very fond of blindly copying working ideas. For example, take Windows for PC and try to stuff it into your phone. And if it doesn't work out, then on the contrary, transfer the telephone interface to the 'desktop' OS. Did it fail again? It doesn't matter, because there is also the Xbox console, from which you can also make a PC and start everything in the second round.
Phil Spencer (head of the Xbox division) recently announced that it will soon be possible to 'upgrade' hardware in this console in the same way as on a home computer. And from the point of view of the Xbox software platform every day it will more and more resemble a full-fledged PC. True, this goes against the very idea of consoles and they need a fifth leg like a dog, but nothing – on the PC, this approach worked.
All this is done to the old song about a unified ecosystem, applications for any device and the benefits for users and developers.
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