The Nexus 7 has magnets similar to the iPad

Google’s seven-inch tablet Nexus 7 is starting to crop up at resellers ahead of a mid-July release (yes Iwant one, too), but the search giant might run into trouble with Apple’s lawyers over its embedded magnetic display shut-off feature. A developer posted a video yesterday that doesn’t bode well for Asus, the maker of the Google-branded device. As vividly shown in the video included below, the magnetic sensor sits down near the tablet’s lower left-hand side. Wanna hear the funny bit?

Firstly, the clip.

The funny thing is, neither Asus nor Google nor anyone else in the Nexus 7 food chain never mentioned anything about the magnets.

This could mean two things:

1. there’s not only a Smart Cover style accessory in the works, but a range of accessories taking advantage of the magnetic sensor

2. Google is well-aware its implementation of the magnets will provoke sue-happy Apple so it reckoned it should keep it a secret for as long as possible

If you ask me, Apple will not hesitate to sue once this thing is everywhere.

Plus, Cupertino has already patented its coded magnet technology for the Smart Cover and won other patents related to the Smart Cover’s design (here and here), even if a guy from Colorado begs to differ.

According to Apple’s recruiting video embedded below, designing such a seemingly obvious thing as a Smart Cover was “a tremendous amount of work by a large number of people who through the course of this product have become genuine experts in new areas because they had to to figure out how to make this product”.

Case in point:

The difference between a good product and a great product is that attention to detail. Our implementation of magnets was a really challenging engineering task. One of the engineers on the team actually became an expert in doing computer simulations on magnetic field.

If Apple sued a bunch of Android vendors over the slide to unlock and rubber-band scrolling in iOS, why would they let Google copy its Smart Cover tech? Of course, we’re speculating here as it ins’t known (yet) if the magnets inside the Nexus 7 infringe upon Apple’s tech.

Source

Is it patented?

yes

You wonder when people call other brands the best when the other brands are copying Apple...

Let's not get into the who-copied-who argument because we've already been there multiple times.

All past copying stuff aside, this is a complete copy

Lmao typical samsung....I bet it was supposed to be a feature when released, but after Apple got the Nexus and 10.1 tab banned they got scared.

In this instance, yes. But then you get people like the guy above me who just say that Apple gets ripped off all the time and never steal ideas from anyone else.

I did not say that

Huh? It's made by ASUS, not Samsung.