From the desk of Alasdair Monk

How to build an iPad from scratch

If the internet was a pub (and hopefully, some day it will be), Samsung and Apple would be two gentlemen standing at the bar, a bit drunk, bickering every night of the week until last orders.

The rest of us sit at our tables trying to mind our own business, but we are so painfully aware of the escalating unpleasentness at the bar. A few times an hour, an onlooker strolls up to the increasingly rowdy pair and tries to make sense of the situation, but this piques all our interests and so, by eleven o'clock, we are now all engaged in one big argument and Big Daisy has to kick us out before we've even finished our pints.

The "situation" is that Samsung really, really like Apple products. They like them so much that they want to copy them almost exactly and put a Samsung logo on them. I met a bloke in a café yesterday who was just wearing the same jumper as me, and that was weird enough, so I can empathise with Apple here because that is almost the exact same thing.

In the midst of a volley of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits, Apple recently decided they'd just tell Samsung how not to make an iPad. It seems pretty obvious to me how to not make an iPad. A toaster, for example, is not an iPad. Neither is a thermos. Alas, Apple insisted that this is the magic formula of what an iPad is not:

1. Front surface that isn't black.
2. Overall shape that isn't rectangular, or doesn't have rounded corners.
3. Front surfaces with substantial adornment.
4. Cluttered appearance.
5. Display screens that aren't centered on the front face and have substantial lateral borders.
6. Non-horizontal speaker slots.
7. No front bezel at all.
8. Thick frames rather than a thin rim around the front surface.
9. Profiles that aren't thin.

Thomas Baekdal, points out that Samsung "couldn't really design [a tablet] any other way", but I think Thomas is missing the point a little bit, and that is: why is Samsung even trying to make a tablet that looks exactly like an iPad in the first place.

We know that the iPad isn't the only form a tablet can take. Lenovo proved it by making horrible shit like this.

Samsung aren't trying to solve anything with their Galaxy tablet. They're just trying to cash in on the iPad.

If Samsung truly wanted to innovate or solve something here, then their resulting device probably wouldn't look anything like an iPad, or a tablet, or a laptop, because they'd be making something new. This is exactly what Apple did when they made the iPad, that's why they weren't accused of copying others or misleading consumers.

The tinsel in our dingy pub has gone up and we'd really like Apple and Samsung to shake hands, have a couple of hot toddies and maybe sing Auld Langs Syne together in a few weeks.

Now read Twenty four hours of Lumia