All that was missing was Steve Jobs. That’s how close Acer’s promotion of its new AcerCloud service was to Apple’s iCloud. Although imitation is flattering, some observers charged Acer of a ‘blatant ripoff’ of iCloud – down to even the promotion images used by netbook kingpin.
To illustrate its “PicStream” service, which sounds very much like Apple’s Photo Stream, Acer uses the image of a cloud radiating data to three mobile devices. Text above the cloud reads “30 Days.” A tech blog today found the Acer image very similar to one Apple used months ago to introduce iCloud.
Acer continues using the image in its online press announcement, even though outed Sunday. It’s well understood the company blames Apple for the demise of the netbook business.
Of course, such free borrowing of Apple concepts is not new to the Cupertino, Calif. company. Apple has sued several companies, charging technology was lifted from its popular devices. Most recently, Apple is in court claiming Samsung devices “blatantly imitate” the iPhone and iPad.
Acer could have at least changed the image’s font, right?
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
10 responses to “Acer iCloud Alternative Promotion Blatantly Borrows Apple Images [CES 2012]”
It’s sad they couldn’t be even remotely inventive in their advertisement.
I do see that they ripped it off but I must be missing something because it looks to me like they DID change the font.
Apple used a sans-serif font where as Acer’s font has serifs.
Please explain me how to draw a cloud and computer hardware different? I was drawing this before iCloud so Steve ripped me off…
It’s not the same but definitely similar. Why do they even have to illustrate it that way? There are a million other ways to explain how a cloud works but no, they just had to do what Apple did.
They did a shitty job copying it. Should have done it right atleast
Yet the same morons who use the Acer products will vehemently tell everyone how much Mac products suck. Amirite?
The idea, the layout, the spacing, even the colours of the background (and the fade)…all stolen. Truly shameless, but typical of acer given their current product catalouge. The font choice looks unproffesional though.
No no. Acer was quite “innovative and thought for themselves”. As you can see they moved the order of the device icons around and also they also moved the “30 day” text to above the cloud instead of below like in Apple’s presentation. See, it is original thinking!
Awesome they used a serif’ed font just to make their version look even cheaper. :D
What’s up with that upside down wifi symbol