Thanks to Apple’s feast-or-famine approach to product announcements, January can be a tedious month for the Macworld crew. The last batch of new products came out in the fall, and the next ones probably won’t be here until the spring; in between, we shiver and get bored. In their wintry desperation, keynote-starved Apple reporters have even been known to watch product unveilings by other companies.
I don’t know if I’ll go that far this week when Samsung holds its next Galaxy Unpacked event. Not because Samsung phones are intrinsically inferior to iPhones—although coincidentally they are—but because I feel like I’ve seen it all before.
Samsung, you see, is the original. Not, sadly, in the sense that it does things first, but in the sense that it was xeroxing iPhone designs before it was cool. I know this because the long-running patent dispute between Apple and Samsung was my first beat topic as a Macworld reporter. The first lawsuits were filed back in 2011, and the saga dragged on until 2018. I got a bunch of articles out of that dispute, and an appearance on British TV news. (I can only assume it was a slow news day.)
Samsung and Apple have a long history of borrowing features from each other year after year.
Foundry
The core of Apple’s original complaint–which later got muddied by additional claims and counterclaims–was that Samsung had violated a number of patents covering the iPhone’s shape and software interface. It was suggested, not unreasonably, that the 1st-gen Galaxy S took a degree of inspiration from the iPhone 3GS that pushed the bounds of legal propriety. My own view was and remains that, once a device finds its optimal approximate design, it hinders competition if the company that came up with that design is able to prevent rivals from following suit in a general sense. But at the same time, it’s worth acknowledging that Samsung really was pushing its luck.
Roughly 14 years on, I’m feeling a little nostalgic about those simpler days when people could get angry about something as minor as product design. (Oh, hold on.) Funnily enough, given the lightning speed at which the tech industry is supposed to move, both Apple and Samsung are still releasing products from the same lines discussed in the 2011 lawsuit: we’ll get a new iPhone in a couple of months, and at Galaxy Unpacked on January 22 we expect to see yet another Galaxy S phone. Which will presumably pay homage in its own way to the current range of Apple products.
This isn’t just a name or a general size and shape. Anything goes at Unpacked—perhaps Samsung will announce a new charging standard called SafeMag. Or a camera cutout interface feature called the Energetic Islet. I’m hoping to see a new button called the Controller For Cameras, with a Reaction Button on the opposite edge. Maybe Bixby Intelligence. And all of this of course will be announced by the new CEO, Tom Saute.
At this point, of course, I am only indulging in facetious speculation. I don’t know the details of Samsung’s announcements, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you anything about them. But rumors suggest the new Galaxy phones will get rounder corners, a faster chip, and more AI. And a possible preview of an ultra-thin phone coming later this year. Ahem.
Don’t believe it? You’ll just have to watch the event live and see for yourself. Then follow the ensuing seven-year legal battle right here on Macworld.
Just kidding! I hope.
