Samsung Rips Off Apple Watch Ultra, Right Down to the Name

Quinn Nelson on X:

  • Watch Ultra is the most shameless copy of an Apple product in ages — and it’s hideous
  • Wait, it gets more shameless — Buds3 and Buds3 Pro are clones of AirPods

It’s sad to see Samsung — who once was a leader in design and innovation — start knocking off popular products like some third-rate OEM. Do better.

I agree that the new Buds are AirPod rip-offs, and the new Galaxy Watch Ultra is such a blatant rip-off — the name, the orange accents, the comically slavish copy of Apple’s Ocean Band — that it defies parody. It’s an outright disgrace. Theft, pure and simple. Whatever elements of this watch weren’t ripped off from Apple Watch Ultra were ripped off from Hermès’s H08 watch — and Hermès, of course, has a longstanding partnership with Apple. (Victoria Song at The Verge calls it “not exactly hiding where it got its inspiration from” and “That’s not necessarily a bad thing!”; I doubt she’d consider it “inspiration” and “not necessarily a bad thing” if someone were to rip off her articles to the degree Samsung rips off Apple’s designs. There is no reason to defend this. Call it what it is: theft.)

I disagree that Samsung was ever “a leader in design”. I don’t recall a time when their strategy was anything other than just outright stealing the designs of whoever the current market leader is and undercutting them on price just enough to take the Pepsi position (happy to be in second place, happy to have no shame). Before they started ripping off the iPhone, they ripped off BlackBerry, and called their rip-off lineup of phones “BlackJack”. Really. These new blatant, shameful rip-offs aren’t an aberration; they define the company that Samsung is.

★ Wednesday, 10 July 2024