Apple Licenses Swiss Railway Clock Design for iPad's iOS 6 Clock App

Last month, we noted that the Swiss Federal Railways service was objecting to Apple's use of its iconic clock design for the new iPad clock app in iOS 6.

The Verge now points to a press release [Google translation] from the railway service announcing that a licensing agreement has been reached.

For the use of the SBB station clock on devices like iPad and iPhone, the Swiss Federal Railways SBB and Apple have agreed and signed a license agreement.

swissrailwayclock
Apple's iPad clock app (left) and Swiss Federal Railways clock (right)

Terms of the licensing agreement, including payment and term length details, were not disclosed.

Top Rated Comments

justperry Avatar
151 months ago
That's what Apple should have done first place.
Score: 55 Votes (Like | Disagree)
D.T. Avatar
151 months ago
SBB: "We want $20 million for licensing"

Apple: "How about a 20 free iPhone 5s?"

SBB: "20 iPhones?!? Absolutely not!"

Apple: "What if we can guarantee none of them are scratched?"

SBB: "Deal."
Score: 51 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jabingla2810 Avatar
151 months ago
Good to see. It's such a cool clock design.
Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)
QCassidy352 Avatar
151 months ago
Thank God. I can finally stop losing sleep over this.
Score: 32 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Zunjine Avatar
151 months ago
This is a clock-face that I could have designed. It's so basic and derivative. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's designer came up with it on his/her own coincidentally. But yeah, it would look like a total ripoff if it weren't so generic. I would have rejected this design.

People say this all the time and, well, they're pretty much always wrong.

I'm not saying this to have a go at you so please don't take this personally, but great, iconic designs, the simple ones that last for generations, they are the hardest to create - if they weren't then we'd all be doing it!

You see it as generic now, but that's only a measure of how successful it has become. Just how so many say that swipe to unlock is generic, or pinch to zoom... accept people were blown away by the simplicity of them, the implementation was so perfect and so natural that they left everyone scratching their heads and asking "why didn't I think of that?!"

This clock design is iconic and, no, you probably couldn't have designed it. Nor could I. If I could design stuff like this, I'd be a richer man than I am today.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ArdBuijsen Avatar
151 months ago
[fandroid mode on] I really don'r see what the problem is. It is quit clear that there is no other way you can design a clock [/fandroid mode off]

;)
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...