Sony Walkman "inspired" iPhone mockup

Here's the Sony Walkman that an Apple designer was apparently inspired by when making a 2006 iPhone mockup. Samsung hopes the similarities will stymie legal claims that the Korean firm too-closely aped Apple's work when making competing products.

Look familiar to you?

• [CSMcDonald]

  Yeah, looks like an iPod with a bigger screen and extra buttons.

• [chaopoiesis]

  Dead ringer for Eric Raymond’s moustache.

• [Monopolize Ideas]

  Design should be ripped off, there should be no legal Savior for design. I can see only attribution as a method of being polite.

  I am not angry that Apple “ripped off” Sony. Nor am I angry that supposed Samsung rips off Apple. These are physical objects with physical limitations. What I am angry about is that somehow Sony, Apple, Samsung own some platonic idea of a design.

  Ripping off produces better products, banning “ripping off” just ensures monopoly, a lack of competition and a pat on the back to first to market and the lazy.

  • [glatt1]

     Steve Jobs has passed away. The dude who designed the iPod has left Apple and is making thermostats now.  Apple has no new products to offer.  It is simply tweaking its old products to make slight improvements to them.  It has no future as a company that invents things., so its business model has changed from inventing new technology to suing the competition out of existence.  It’s a sad time.

• [jerwin]

  Perhaps Apple wanted to understand how the iPad would look next to a hypothetical device using Sony’s then-current design language, which might explain the why the “proposed design” incorporated the SONY logo.

  The current Apple Remote looks like part of the NW-A1200. Stylish, though in my case it was quickly discarded for my universal remote.

• [otterhead]

  This looks like an iPod in the same way that a walrus looks like a hamburger.

  • [Its Mee]

    mmm… walrusburger

• [BurntHombre]

  And the Sony Walkman design was apparently inspired by the keyfob for my Ford Taurus.

• [iheijoushin]

  It looks more inspired by an iPod and far less like an iPhone.

• [emacsomancer0101]

  Rectangular devices with some number of buttons and a screen. Obviously everybody ripped off everybody.

• [Paul Chernoff]

  Documentation and testimony shows that this Sony devise was inspired by the iPod. So it was Sony copying Apple, not the other way. Samsung copied the Blackberry before the iPhone was released, and then started copying the iPhone. Not was inspired by it, but really just copied it.

• [hadlockk]

  Looks like a Rio PMP300 

• [Draque Thompson]

  All objects are either a ripoff of a sphere or a torus.

  • [timquinn]

    what about this thing with two holes, hm?

  • [Matthew Petty]

    Where does this teapot fit in?

• [seyo]

  I know we’re all supposed to say how much it looks like the iphone which came later, but to me it also looks a lot like the 2003 ipod with its touch wheel and concentric selection button inside, and with its depressed divot circular button. sony just moved them around a little so that they aren’t symmetrically arranged like on the ipod. product design never happens in a vacuum. it’s an evolutionary process, in which all products in the ecosystem are informed by those that came before them, and will inform those that come after. so in short, sony, apple, samsung, and everyone else are all learning from and evolving with, repeating and rehashing each other’s work. they always have and always will.

  • [timquinn]

    The purpose of the law, one would assume, is to parse the subtle distinction between influence and rip off. Sure, a lot of design is borrowed, but occasionally someone invents something that merits protection. We ask the judge or jury to help us with this. This is how we build a society that functions despite people who would like to jump to conclusions and stand their ground despite evidence to the contrary.

    • [seyo]

      “occasionally someone invents something that merits protection”

      yes, agreed. however, claiming to have invented rounded corners on a rectangular object is fucking ridiculous.

      • [zieroh]

        Sadly, you appear to have bought the meme that Samsung has planted in the popular press. This case is about much more than a rectangle with rounded corners. To diminish the subject to such a ridiculous degree is to concede that you don’t actually know what the case is about.

        Which is exactly what Samsung wants.

• [star35]

  I had one of these and I loved it. IRL it doesn’t resemble an ipod in any way. It was very small!

  • [garyg2]

     Me too. Excellent player for it’s time though the screen was pretty much unreadable in any kind of daylight (reflective silver cover, looked cool but maybe not a great choice for legibility purposes).

    • [Matthew Daly]

      I had a purple 20GB one, and it was brilliant. Way better sound quality than my current iPod, and it had a feature similar to Genius years before Apple implemented that. The only issue with it was that the software that came with it was crap

• [Peter Recore]

  This is not nearly as damaging to Apple’s case as some of Samsung’s own phones, IMHO, which were actually on the market before the IPhone.  In at least one of its lawsuits, Apple’s position basically switched from “Look at this phone Samsung made, it is a clear copy of the IPhone” to “uh, never mind, we’re removing it from the lawsuit, it looks nothing like our phone” when Samsung pointed out that their phone had come out first.

  • [Cowicide]

    How is this damaging to Apple’s case at all?  You should probably read the article to the end.

• [yunostfu]

  Everyone rips off Apple! Apple is #1! They will always be!

  - Sent from my new iPad with a Smart Case tethered to my iPhone that’s near my iMac which is also next to my MacBook Pro that’s sitting next to my MacBook Air that’s hooked up to my Apple TV via AirPort Express using my Apple Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard.

• [scatterfingers]

  If you’re going to cover the trial, cover the trial. Don’t cherry-pick your evidence. This is a court case and they’re throwing everything at the wall to make it stick.