Ignore The Copycats

Look at any well-respected Apple news¹ site, and you'll probably be able to find a post reporting that Samsung (or some other company, but mostly Samsung) has ripped off Apple's design in one of its new products.

Instead of ranting and raving about this all the time, I propose a new way to react when each new ripoff is spotted: ignore it.

What difference does it make to you if the Samsung Galaxy Nexus S Note II 4G Plus has an app called Messages that (badly) simulates the Messages app on the iPhone? No one is making you use it, or making you buy the phone, so absoultely none.

OK, yes, it's bad practise for a company to copy another's design in their products, but Apple will deal with copycats, if Apple thinks they needs to be dealt with. There's no use writing blog post after blog post complaning that the new HTC Wonder has a silent toggle switch just like the iPhone's – that will achieve absolutely nothing. The copycat company isn't going to read your post and think to themselves, "Hey, this guy's got a point! I'd better rework the entire design of my new product!".

Let's face it, the only way a ripoff product could possibly affect you is if someone was standing next to you permanently, and kept saying, "Look at what my new phone does! Look!" whilst shoving the screen in front of your face. And the issue there isn't the copycat features you're being forced to say are 'cool' even though your phone had them a month ago; it's that person not recognising that you don't want their phone in your face. It doesn't matter what phone that person had, they'd probably be doing the same thing.

So next time a post appears on one of those sites about a copycat product, sure, read it, but you don't need to make a big deal about it. What would actually be better is if those sites stopped reporting it just for the sake of it.