“Samsung Electronics said on Sunday it has changed the graphic designs used in its latest handset model ‘Skin,’ after it was found to have copied Apple and Microsoft artwork,”Cho Jin-seo reports for The Korea Times. “The electronics giant admitted plagiarizing designs of the handset’s graphic user interface. Many graphic designers and other Internet users on various Web communities such as http://www.appleforum.com over the last two weeks have accused the firm of stealing the designs.”
“‘There were a few mistakes while we were developing the new product,’ Chung Kook-hyun, chief of Samsung’s corporate design center, told The Korea Times by phone. ‘We have already fixed the designs and I believe that the old models are not being sold in the market anymore.’ Chung said he did not identify how or by whom the copied icons were put into the new cell phone. Samsung said that it recalled the Skin phones from retailers nationally, and users who already purchased the phone can update the graphic menu by downloading software via the company homepage,” Cho Jin-seo reports.
Full article with side-by-side comparisons of the icons here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Yuli” for the heads up.]
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No such thing as original thought anymore.
Easy to overlook a small provincial company like Apple and accidentally copy their designs I suppose.
why would anyone want to steal UI creative from Microsoft? If you’re gonna steal, steal from someone who does it right.
(this by no means condone the act of stealing intellectual property)
4th post!
what do they say plagiarism is the highest form of flattery?
If you can’t beat them. . . copy them.
People copy the best.
7th Post!
‘There were a few mistakes while we were developing the new product,’
Translation from Samsungese:
“We were a little too obvious in our theft while we were stealing ideas for our latest product.”
Samsung are so amazingly bereft of any ideas short of “Make a copy, cheaper, and sell a lot of them” it is sickening.
I generally feel that these things are a bit silly, and the furor over “stealing” Sherlock’s “magnifying glass” IS Just Silly! The design of the background? the document? the stickies? the chat? It isn’t silly to complain about these being ‘stolen’ … they were quite precisely copied, detail for detail – OK, they changed the color of the background, BFD. They could easily have “been inspired by” the originals and come up with ” something like …” without actually copying them. A couple hours with a graphics design program and all would have been “deniable”.
If Richard Nixon and the Watergate affair taught me anything it was the value of “plausible denyability”. You might still get ‘caught’ and forced to ‘remedy’ the situation but you are likely to avoid penalties and the like.
That’s the difference between “criminal” and “stupidly criminal”.
Man, the Koreans and Chinese have problems in coming up anything original.
I’ve seen fake iPod nanos and earphones here.
That top icon ‘rearry rooks rike’ Text Edit.
Busted!
This sucks though. Now my Samsung phone will never get supported by Apple….:(
“Samsung also copied other icons from Microsoft, such as a pile of three yellow sticky notes, and blue and green, round-shaped men that represent MSN Messenger.”
The sticky notes are not from Microsoft, I stole them from Apple.
They can’t even get that right.
Apple sue Samsung!
Also boycot all Korean products especially Samsung products
That top icon ‘rearry rooks rike’ Text Edit.
Billy Bob, such comments are offensive and ignorant. Kindly be a bigot in private or save it for the klan meeting.
DLMeyer,
Sorry, I’ll be more PC next time. BTW, I’m half Korean. So, EAT IT jerk. And then go get a sense of humor.
You won´t see Apple suing Samsung…..because Samsung is making the next chips for the iPod!!!
Being part Irish/Scots/English I tell jokes on that side of my family on occasion, but I keep the more offensive ones out of the public eye. This has little to do with being “PC”, “PC” mostly being a cover for overly sensitive types. I have friends who are Japanese – the kind born over there – who would be mortally offended by your comment (which could also offend my Chinese-American friends, but mostly not) and you should realize that. OK, what do you care about some elderly folks in Japan? Nothing, maybe. I do.
You do realize that you could have replied with the same information without the insult included … yes? A major escalation in hostility, there. Sounds defensive … which means …? At the least, it means you’ve lost your vaunted Sense Of Humor.
stealing from Apple?
Look through Vista and count the aqua orbs and bars that have shading and light coming through them ripped exactly from OS X. Not pixel-for-pixel, but ripping off glassy shaded designs that they did NOT come up with on their own.
Given how many bloody engineers work for Samsung, you’d think they’d be able to do a little icon design work.
DLMeyer,
Yeah, the insult was a bit much. It was a last second tought I added in. I’ve seen worse on this board.
Just don’t be so uptight about things. Sheesh!
This isn’t really news in that it sounds like just lazy graphics designers. Unfortunately, ripping off graphics happens all the time in the industry. Just take a look at Panic’s tongue-in-cheek page of all the websites that have lifted off Panic’s icons (Panic is the maker of the Transmit ftp app).
http://www.panic.com/extras/ripoff
All the rip-offs are pretty hilarious, definitely worth a look.
And for those of you who think, big deal, it’s just a magnifying glass, the point is that Apple (and even Microsoft) designers spent a lot of time designing a unique, 3D photorealistic magnifying glass. It is still “art” per se, and as such, is copyrighted.
In Samsung’s defense, at least they immediately owned up that they made a mistake, which is more than most companies would do. That seems to indicate that the copying was done by clueless, unimaginative, and/or lazy designers.
Okay okay enough about the copying… can we see a pic of the phone? Sounds like a cool model that will never see the light of day here in the US.
23rd Post!