blog Multiple media outlets are reporting this afternoon that the Federal Court of Australia has overturned Apple’s preliminary injunction against the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet in Australia. You can read the story on Reuters, iTNews, Gizmodo and other sites, but we like the version on ZDNet.com.au the best, because it details Apple’s next move:

“In a surprise move, however, Apple legal counsel Stephen Burley SC then sought a stay of the orders handed down by Justice Foster so that an appeal against the overturning of the injunction could be heard before the High Court of Australia.”

The High Court, eh? Is Samsung’s mediocre tablet really important enough to Cupertino that the company with more cash in the bank than the US Government is willing to tie up the highest court in Australia about the issue? It’s not like the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is in hot demand, after all — especially now that Motorola’s rival Xoom tablet is half price and the Kindle Fire costs just US$200. I think it’s time Apple took a chill pill.

Image credit: Samsung

Related posts:

1. Galaxy Tab banned for another week
2. APPLE LAWSUIT:
   Cupertino blocks Australian Galaxy Tab launch
3. Apple wins Samsung Galaxy Tab injunction
4. Optus releases Galaxy Tab 10.1 pricing
5. Victorious Samsung to launch tablet for Christmas

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1. Level380
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 2:12 pm | Permalink | Reply

   “really important enough to Cupertino that the company with more cash in the bank than the US Government is willing to tie up the highest court in Australia about the issue”

   Of course it is…. Apple shit doesn’t stink! So they don’t care what resources they waste, as long as they tie up the courts and samsung from selling the tablet till after xmas.

2. Dean
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 2:33 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Well, Jobs did say “I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

   It’s funny, because until his biography came out, I had always assumed the litigiousness of Apple was mostly just lawyers being lawyers. But these quotes make it clear the directive came directly from Steve.

   [ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2051793/Steve-Jobs-vowed-destroy-iPhone-rival-Android-thermonuclear-war.html#ixzz1f9iWv66T ]

   • Level380
     Posted 30/11/2011 at 2:41 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Oh its come from the top alright…. now that Steve has passed on, apple will seems more determined than ever to ‘do right be steve’ by going after android and samsung cause they ‘stole’ from apple.

     Apple has gone so far as to cutting samsung out of the newer products. Not a lot of people know, but samsung is the major supplier of chips in the iphone/ipad devices, including the screens, ram and they even make apples A4/A5 CPU.

     Its also unknown to a lot of people that Apple (aka Steve) was very good and reusing other peoples ideas. The iPod wasn’t his idea, Creative made the first portable MP3 player on the market. Apple ‘improved’ on it. The GUI interface was made by Xerox, apple ‘improved’ on it, the list of apples ‘improvements’ is long!

3. Chris
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 2:34 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I feel like Apple are shooting themselves in the foot here by giving Samsung so much publicity. I wonder how many people in Australia have had their awareness of tablet alternatives increased thanks to this lawsuit?

4. Dean
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 2:45 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Whoa, from the linked ZDnet article:
   

   DMavo, Kogan Technologies and Mobicity were originally importing the devices before Apple served a cease and desist order on all three. DMavo was the only tablet importer to refuse Apple’s order to stop importing the devices, labelling Apple’s demands as outrageous. According to DMavo, Apple’s demands also included a requirement that the company hand over all data on customers who had purchased one of the tablets from the importer.

   That last part is especially pretty shocking…

   • Level380
     Posted 30/11/2011 at 2:50 pm | Permalink | Reply

     That last part is especially pretty shocking……. but I’m not shocked, this is apple. They are the biggest control freaks out there. Its all great as long as you stay within the apple walled garden! Once you look over the fence, your cut off!

     Steve was very hot or cold type of person…. your in the circle or out of the circle.

5. R
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 2:56 pm | Permalink | Reply

   It’s not just about the Galaxy Tab – this is about taking down Android, and to a greater extent, the mess of patents encumbering the mobile phone & tablet industries. For anyone who isn’t familiar with it, the only way to make a mobile phone these days is by cross licensing patents from all the big companies. Apple is a newcomer to this, and all of their patents are software or design patents, which aren’t valid in all jurisdictions (esp. the software patents). Add to this the granting of patents by the USTPO that should never have been granted due to obviousness and prior art (which Aus has to respect due to trade agreements), and you have a patent war just waiting to break out.
   Tablets are affected because they share a large amount of tech with phones – touch screen interfaces, OSs, 3G communications, etc.

6. Adam
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 3:01 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Common sense prevails.

7. Simon Reidy
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 6:27 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Its good to see Apple get shafted on this, and I say that as an owner of an iPhone 4 and iPad 2. I’m so sick of reading about ridiclous legal disputes over form factor, aesthetics or lines of code. Having said that I actually think there are some pretty obvious areas where Touchwiz resembles basic elements of iOS. But there’s also plenty of ideas that Apple have borrowed from Android and WebOS.

   Apple also blatantly stole ideas from the jailbreak app development scene to introduce in iOS5 (to the point where they even hired a jailbreak notification centre app developer to work for them). Then there’s the fact that there there may not have even be an App Store as we know it today without Jailbreaking, as “Installer” was the first way to install 3rd party apps on the iPhone (at the time Jobs was pushing web apps as the way forward!).

   With a top-end profuct refresh cycle of roughly 6 months for Android and about a year for iOS, it’s hardly surprising that all OS developers borrow many of the best and most successful ideas to implement in a different way themselves in their OS.

   Apple are often intuitive and unique, and at other times they’ll simoly use existing technology and implement it in a new user friendly way, then market the hell ou of it. It’s a strategy that seems to work very well for them!

   Anyway even though its good to see a positive outcome for Samsung and Aussie consumers, is the Galaxy tab 10.1 even relevant any more? It was the hottest Android around at the time of the injunction, but some pretty awesome Terra 3 ICS tablets are starting to be leaked with CES only a couple of weeks away.

   The main thing is this is a win for Samsung for future Galaxy tabs (providing of course that Apple’s case is thrown out of the high court) but as mentioned in the article, there’s quite a few early Honeycomb tablets in the bargain bin as it is, so I’m looking forward o seeing what’s next from Samsung.

   • Level380
     Posted 30/11/2011 at 7:31 pm | Permalink | Reply

     *Cough* the notifications system looks a hell of a lot like the one android has had since 1.0…….. But thats ok for apple to steal, I mean its all ‘free for all’, but to hell for you if you dare steal or copy from apple!

     • Simon Reidy
       Posted 01/12/2011 at 8:12 pm | Permalink | Reply

       Apple are just as guilty of stealing ideas from competitors as Samsung or Google. No doubt about it. But let’s not forget there would have been no touchscreen smartphone and tablet revolution (at least not at the dramatic exponential rate we’ve seen since 2007) if the iPhone\iPad and subseqeuent App Store hadn’t been released. Google and Microsoft have been playing catch-up ever since.

       As far as notifications go, its well known that Apple copied jailbreak notification app developers far more so than they did Android’s notification bar. Just google “Notified Pro” or “LockInfo” and lastly, the most similar of all is an app called “MobileNotifier” (shortly after it’s release, the developer, Peter Hajas, announced he had been hired by Apple and would be shutting down the project). Personally I’ve been using LockInfo since iOS 3 and with it’s frequent updates and multiple plugins its still a superior experience to Apple’s notification system.

       Were jailbreak developers copying Android when implementing the pull-down notification bar? Probably! But if you look at WebOS notifications they also copied some ideas from Palm. The point is that the art of creation often involves copying bits and pieces of ideas from other people, and releasing them as something new of your own. A good analogy is to look at many of the great artists from the last few hundred years who are known to have emulated styles of painters they learnt from or were inspired by.

       However there’s no denying Apple’s real attempt with these law suits against Samsung is to go after Android itself in a big way. It’s great they’ve lost for now, because a successful block of the Galaxy 10.1 probably would have opened the doors to sue other Android manufacturers elsewhere in the world for stealing Apple’s precious ideas.

       I personally don’t understand why Apple are so strict, even paranoid, about protecting their patents, when they are already the clear market leader of smartphones and tablets by a massive margin. It makes them look petty and insecure. Not a good look.

       On a final note, I feel I have to rant about stupid generalised iFanboy and Fandroid comments here (and to be fair, on pretty much every other tech site on the net). It’s such a black and white perspective of technology. It’s obvious both OS’s have many awesome features and if people can’t acknowledge that, I generally assume they are 13 or younger, or someone that can’t read between the lines. A blind hatred for Apple, or the notion that all Apple fans are “iSheep” that don’t research their purchase is quite frankly a stupid myth. While Apple obviously has its its fair share of crazy fans that will buy anything with an Apple badge, they make up a very small fraction of users, and you can bet that Google has a similar percentage of extreme fanatics wearing their green robot t-shirts with pride. The majority of tech-heads I know with Apple products are well aware of Android and Windows Phone 7 and the pros and cons of them all. Most of them chose iOS because it has a better selection of apps (particularly games) and delivers a simple, but fast and polished experience, which is now synced across all their devices with iCloud.

       • james
         Posted 01/12/2011 at 8:15 pm | Permalink | Reply

         AGREE!

8. G Thompson
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 7:41 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Thankfully you didn’t say they need to take an iChill pill since they have most likely copyrighted, trademarked and panted the process already. and you wouldn’t want to go to be sent to iCourt(tm) now would you?

   ;)

9. Matthew
   Posted 30/11/2011 at 9:16 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Mediocre? I’d hardly call the Galaxy Tab 10.1 a ‘mediocre’ device, given the technology that’s gone into it (not to mention rave reviews). I’d also be hard-pressed to say that it’s not in demand, because the UK retailers that I deal with for these sorts of things are selling out of them on a fairly regular basis. In fact, I’m presently waiting on one of them to get a 64GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 in stock for me.

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 30/11/2011 at 9:31 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Interesting. What makes you say that Matthew? The Xoom also got pretty good reviews, but I’ve played with both it and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and I didn’t see a lot of difference between the two. The Xoom has been selling so well that retailers have cut its price by half to get rid of the stock …

     • Matthew
       Posted 30/11/2011 at 9:40 pm | Permalink | Reply

       I remember tossing up between the Xoom and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 a few weeks ago, when I was trying to decide what tablet I’d like to buy. The primary reason I went for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is because of a comparison between the screens. The screen on the Xoom isn’t as clear as the screen on the Tab in some lighting conditions. For me, that’s a fairly important point considering that the whole idea of a tablet is the readability and quality of its screen.

       Also, while I realise that it’s a marginal difference between the two, the Tab does have a larger capacity battery and therefore probably a better battery life. A HUGE plus in my view, because there’s nothing I hate more than running out of juice when I want to do something with an electronic device.

       As for the sales of both devices, didn’t the Xoom have a fairly protracted period of lacklustre sales when it was first released? My understanding is that the reason why the Xoom is so cheap now is because it wasn’t selling as well as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is, so Motorola had to make it more price-competitive.

       I’m not saying the Xoom isn’t a great tablet, because it absolutely is. But so is the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and it’s a bit unfair to label it as ‘mediocre’ based on superficial observations of price.

       • Level380
         Posted 30/11/2011 at 9:48 pm | Permalink | Reply

         Xoom is cheap and stock has been reduced as the Xoom 2 is about to be released. Its standard practice, drop the price to clear out the old stock. Nothing to do with who is selling more etc.

         http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/29/motorola-xoom-2-unboxing-and-first-impressions-video/

     • Level380
       Posted 30/11/2011 at 9:47 pm | Permalink | Reply

       Stock has been reduced as the Xoom 2 is about to be released. Its standard practice, drop the price to clear out the old stock.

       http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/29/motorola-xoom-2-unboxing-and-first-impressions-video/

10. James
    Posted 01/12/2011 at 9:03 am | Permalink | Reply

    I doubt that Apple never copied anyone.
    Apple created the first monitor in 1980 and that looks, a lot ,like a TV!
    What about the voice recognition? They are trying to make the people to believe it is from their invention.
    It is not!, they have improved the system for voice recognition, in other words they have copied the voice recognition and modified it. aren’t they?

    cheers
    Jc

    • Level380
      Posted 01/12/2011 at 9:10 am | Permalink | Reply

      Apple doesn’t copy, it steals and ‘improves’, passing it off as brand new feature, that the iSheep lap up!

      Do you know how many iPhone users don’t know that the iOS5 notifications system is a direct copy of the 3 year old android notification system? Not many!

11. Marlon
    Posted 01/12/2011 at 5:01 pm | Permalink | Reply

    Well, Kogan have wasted no time getting the tablet up on their website
    http://www.kogan.com.au/shop/category/android-tablets/

    • james
      Posted 01/12/2011 at 7:07 pm | Permalink | Reply

      I told them about the ban lift to see if I could get a price from them.
      Next thing I know is an email from them with a link to their new updated media table page featuring the galaxy.