Samsung Wallet is nothing like Apple’s Passbook, nope nothing at all

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Come on Samsung, can you at least try not to be a bunch of assholes.



  • tylernol

    why would they stop when flagrantly copying Apple has worked so well for them thus far?

  • http://macnaticopr.wordpress.com/ Macnatico_PR

    That’s the wonder of samesung.

    • Hardik Panjwani

      i thought it was meant to be shamesung?

      • Adriano Geletes

        I thought it was meant to be samscum?

      • http://macnaticopr.wordpress.com/ Macnatico_PR

        Could have been Xerox, Ricoh, Brother, Lexmark, Okidata, but they where all taken.

  • http://rounak.me/ Rounak Jain

    Apple’s Passbook UI wasn’t original either http://forums.iphonehacks.com/discussion/8620

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_AUPGBNTWS67NU2GTVQPWJDXU7I Jim

      What am I looking at here? What was it called? How did it work? Do you have a link to the original app?

      • http://rounak.me/ Rounak Jain

        The app is linked in that link. Was from the folks at lemon.com

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_AUPGBNTWS67NU2GTVQPWJDXU7I Jim

          Nope, don’t see a link to lemon on that horrendous site. Even when searching for “lemon” on the page. What a horrible web design. Anyway, after doing some searching, this is a pretty popular idea. One that one company “Ameranth Inc” is suing Apple over a patent for. It could be that “Lemon” is in violation of the patent as well. There are at least three others I found using this same idea too. I guess, like always it comes dow to how it is implemented, in detail.

          • http://rounak.me/ Rounak Jain

            I was talking about a link to the appstore

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_AUPGBNTWS67NU2GTVQPWJDXU7I Jim

            Ah, thanks.

    • http://twitter.com/fraydog Ryan Fraley

      Lemon has a similar UI design but there are a lot of different things that Lemon does. It also interconnects to Passbook. So to say it’s a copy, well I don’t know if it is.

      • http://rounak.me/ Rounak Jain

        Not even the UI?

        • JohnDoey

          In the first place, they are not the same. The way the cards look is copied from real life by both Lemon and Apple, and that is a UI feature that enables the user to know WTF they are doing with these apps. But the Apple presentation is distinct and unique from the Lemon one.

          The way the Lemon app looks (its texture and stitching) is copied from Apple (not from PassBook, but from other Apple-made apps.) The Lemon app is an iOS (Apple) app built with CocoaTouch (Apple) frameworks using Xcode (Apple) developer tools and styled to fit into the design language of iOS (by Apple.)

          You have to know a little bit about a subject before you throw accusations.

  • Techpm

    As usual they’ve just copied the looks but with a crappy implementation and a developer API with stuff like this: “If you want to change your ticket skin, email us at walletsupport@samsung.com.”

  • http://twitter.com/AlexDaUkrainian Alex Novosad

    I’m glad Samsung is finally bringing the kind of innovation it claims its company is built around.

  • kcp

    Seoul, start your photocopiers!

  • samdchuck

    At least they have support for the superior NFC right, right?

    • tylernol

      ah nope.

  • tylernol

    the most interesting part of this is not that Samsung once again ripped off Apple, but that they are rolling out an exclusive to Samsung feature. It is not a part of Android. Once again I’ll say it — Google has lost control of Android, and this is a shining example.

    • Les_S

      Which explains both the Motorola purchase and the recent forays into hardware. Is it possible that Google didn’t think this whole Android thing through?

      • tylernol

        Google though that they would end up with a bunch of weak phone OEM’s all starved for the latest Android release, but in reality they have ended up with one extremely strong vendor that can start dictating terms of what runs on their devices, and the rest on the cusp of bankruptcy. Google is indeed very worried:

        http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323699704578324220017879796-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwNTEyNDUyWj.html

        • Adriano Geletes

          Interesting! Let’s see what happens in the next two – three years. Everyone beside Samsung is not making any profits out of their android based smartphones, so where will this end? Phones for free, just to sell of their content and apps?

    • JohnDoey

      Samsung is building their own OS. Ultimately, these Samsung-only features will be ported to a proprietary Samsung OS. Probably running Java, not Android’s illegal clone of Java (Dalvik.) Samsung already has a Java license.

      Samsung warned their investors recently that their profits would fall because of even-cheaper Android phones that are coming out from Huwaii and ZTE and taking away Samsung customers. And they said the answer to that is to build their own OS so their devices are unique like Apple’s devices and therefore they can include a profit margin in the price and users will still buy.

      When people look at phone profits, Apple’s are always up, and Samsung’s are always up. But now it is basically just Apple and Samsung who are profitable. If Apple’s profits continue to go up and they will eat into Samsung’s share of the pie. Apple already takes 75% of the profits.

      So it is definitely an Apple-centric phone industry, not an Android-centric one. In a few years we will likely have a choice of Apple phone with Apple OS, Samsung phone with Samsung OS, Microsoft phone with Microsoft OS, BlackBerry phone with BlackBerry OS, or a sea of cheap, totally generic Android phones replacing what used to be a sea of cheap Nokia phones. But only the name-brand phones will make any money.

      • tylernol

        yes and the Android phones from Huwaii and ZTE already have Google’s services stripped out in favor of Baidu.. Google. winning.

  • Les_S

    Samsung success in the market place proves that things of a certain quality float to the top. On a completely unrelated note I can’t keep from thinking about brown colored play-doe.

  • eli
    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_AUPGBNTWS67NU2GTVQPWJDXU7I Jim

      Even in the article the author admits:

      “That’s especially true with Apple’s iOS 6, which will bring over 200 new features to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices. You’d think in all that, we’d be able to find more examples of copycattery, and our own Adam Z. Lein anticipated a few bits last week. But much of the new stuff is either original or extrapolated from third-party apps.”

      I don’t think this is anything new to anyone. I think it has to do with how blatant Samsung has been over the years more than anything else.

    • Herding_sheep

      Implementation/design is a different thing from ideas. USUALLY when Apple implements an Android feature into iOS, it’s implemented in a distinct Apple style with Apple design. Google Wallet and Passbook are similar features implemented in two completely different ways.

      You’d be lying if you said Samsungs Wallet implementation was ANY different from Passbook. And as you can clearly see, right down to the icon design and color theme.

      No one is saying Samsung shouldn’t have their own wallet or Passbook-ish feature for their phones. But they should come up with their own implementation and design for their feature, instead of slapping their name on someone else’s work and calling it “innovation.”

  • dr.no

    If Google Wallet was first then why didn’t Samsung copy them. Why did it take so long.

  • JohnDoey

    No, they can’t stop being assholes because that is their business model.