HI all,
I saw the vid from TTL and was gobsmacked by the whole thing but not entirely surprised. What has surprised me has been some people's reactions and strawman-ing of the actual problem. There have been cries of "bandwagon" and blindly following the "thermalgate/thermalfake". in some cases i think this is true but i have lost all respect for people like Logan from TekSyndicate for their obtuse and disingenuous comments around the issue but i digress.
I am a product designer and visualiser by trade, i have nearly 20 years of experience with this kind of crap both from the PoV of having products i created copied and from the PoV of being asked by clients to make "different enough" copies of existing products. As a person who likes to sleep at night I have turned down jobs and in one case severed all ties with a client who wanted me to outright copy a competitor. The nonsense (and strawman) argument against the backlash i have heard (and here Logan quoted this on twitter) is that the insides of the case are different. This kind of deliberate obtuse counter argument as they see it as being against the mob mentality they see in the backlash is a special kind of B(*&sh*t. If the reverse has been the case (i.e. the insides were identical but housed in a very different looking outer this would not even be a thing. I also saw a tweet from Logan replying to Jayztwocents where Logan actually mentioned that people who didn't know who caselabs were will now know who they are because of this, as if caselabs should be happy about the publicity! Are you kidding me? The point and crux of the argument is that the OUTSIDE looks the SAME. Before anyone thinks this isn't a problem with people in the know (enthusiast, etc) is IRRELEVANT. MOST people are not in the know, MOST people will never see a caselabs case up close unless they buy one as they are not stocked in retail outlets. What TT has done is a shameless attempt to shortcut their insertion into that class of case, plain and simple. Rather than create a product in the same class with similar or the same level of function and options they CHOSE to make the outside as similar as they did.
This kind of practice is a cynical attempt to muddy the waters is what bother me the most. I have a client who produces what are arguably the best made safes in the world. They contains INCHES of steel and the top rated one can take a .50 cal hit and all it does is chip the paint. They have a competitor who regularly steals designs, website content and even f*(ing model names! The competitor takes potential clients away from them as they try to muddy the waters with bullshit ratings and terminology, which to anyone "in the know" can see through. Unfortunately , as mentioned before, most people DON'T know and look at the price which on face value is lower. It's incredibly hard to bring any kind of meaningful legal action against them and hurts their business.
If a manufacturer wants to have a try at making more cases in the same class as caselabs and can do it cheaper, more power to you. More competition, better for consumers, yes please. there is no justification for making a "new" product look exactly the same as an existing (competitor's) product, none, end of.
