The iPad’s a confirmed success. Apple can’t make the things fast enough, and they’re vanishing from shelves worldwide. Another thing that’s vanished is the ‘pad’ jokes, comparing Apple’s device to sanitary products. This sort of thing tends to be the case when a device is successful—the same thing happened to the Wii.
What’s more interesting is how ‘pad’ now might become a generic term over ‘tablet’ for similar devices. Engadget reports that HP’s filed for the PalmPad trademark and Pocket-lint notes that RIM’s grabbed Blackpad.com.
These might be defensive moves, but perhaps these companies are bright enough to take advantage of Apple’s branding success, using names that would immediately get consumers thinking of the iPad, but selling devices that are more ‘open’ or more geared towards enterprise. That said, don’t expect Microsoft to reveal the Windows PhonePad 7 any time soon.
BBC News reports that a UK judgement has ruled what it calls ‘game copiers’ for the Nintendo DS illegal. This means under British law the import of the likes of the R4 is now no longer legal. The court noted: “The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence”, adding that “game copiers first circumvent Nintendo’s security systems before any non-infringing application can be played on Nintendo’s handheld products”.
This is a pretty interesting judgement, and one that will go a long way to giving the fair-use brigade a solid kick in the teeth. Got an R4 and use it to carry multiple games with you that you own a copy of, because you don’t want to cart around £200 of DS games and leave them on a bus by mistake? Tough. Use your R4 for emulation and homebrew? Tough.
And how long before this judgement creeps into other areas of digital media? If R4s are now dubbed ‘game copiers’, are CD-Rs ‘music copiers’, and DVD-Rs ‘movie copiers’? Perhaps it’s time to ban paper (‘magazine copiers’) too, along with hard drives (‘everything copiers’). And good luck, iOS device jailbreakers and ‘hackers’ of other consoles—if the R4′s now illegal because it circumvents a system’s security, it’s only a matter of time before other media giants clamp down on anyone who has the audacity to want to fiddle about with a piece of tech kit they’ve paid out money from their own pockets for. The bastards.
Sometimes I read about the US legal system and despair. Quite often, in fact. Ars Technica reports that three iPad users are now suing Apple over the iPad, and have filed a class-action lawsuit to “redress and end [Apple's] pattern of unlawful conduct” regarding promises Apple made.
The problem, apparently, is that the iPad, like all electronic goods, has the sheer audacity to shut down when a critical operating temperature is reached—typically around 35°C. This is common among similar products—Kindle does the same, although you might get another couple of degrees out of it.
The idiot claimants argue that because Apple said “reading on the iPad is just like reading a book,” the company is a big, fat liar, because a real book can be used in “the sunlight or other normal environmental conditions” without shutting off.
I wonder if there’s the possibility in law for Apple to sue these people for being cretins? As Ars asks, do Apple’s claims really make the company “guilty of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive advertising, unfair business practices, breach of express or implied warranty, intentional misrepresentation, or unjust enrichment?”
Maybe these opportunistic dimwits should have gone the whole hog:
- “I made a note in biro in the margin of a book on my iPad, and when I turned the page, it was still there! APPLE LIED TO ME!”
- “I tried folding the page to keep my place in a book on my iPad, but the page wouldn’t fold. In the end, I had to put the iPad in a vice and bend it, but then the entire thing shattered! THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN WITH REAL BOOKS!”
- “When I decided I’d had enough of reading, I opened Safari and surfed the internet and also downloaded my email, while listening to my favourite album, and then it dawned on me: this isn’t like a book at all! I DEMAND APPLE GIVES ME MONEY!”
My advice to Apple: make a ‘special’ iPad for these ‘special’ people—nip into the local stationary shop, scrawl ‘iPad’ on a couple of paper pads and mail them to the claimants. It won’t be quite as magical as the real thing, but at least these idiots won’t be able to complain about it being unusable in the hot sun; nor will they be able to say it doesn’t work exactly like a paper-based object.
