Eli’s articles never quite come together properly—the examples often don’t hold water, the arguments are often obviously flawed—but they have an entertaining quality to them, and there are glimmers of truth that shine through the fog.

campaign monitor and google inbox is a stretch.

Horizon and Sunrise product names are both in context of the sun, so of course they are going to look similar.

It is true that every design stands on the shoulders of giants, but there are limits beyond which it can be agreed that a designer has not sufficiently differentiated their creations.

The article reads a little disingenuous to me. Mostly it's just examining trends, but then ends with this "certainly we all agree that some of these similarities are beyond the pale."

Certainly we can not all agree; I'd prefer if Eli explicitly took the stand that he seems to be suggesting here instead of just dancing around it.

What was most striking though was how each detail was meticulously repeated in the two companies' presentations: both were symmetrical down to the presenters' body language.

There's a difference between perceived similarities and true similarities. The similarity here is in the use of a fingerprint icon. Calling out anything else, including their body language, is not relevant and artificially reinforces the point.

Completely agree with @Daniel De Laney

The objects in most of these are justifiably related to the product itself. Fair enough if they straight up copied the stylistic attributes of the competitor's icon, or if the concept is abstract in association with the product (eg. the photos icon), but that is certainly not the case in the majority of the examples given.

Google has been using that logo long before the unveiling of the current Google photos. Comparing to the original G+ photos icon is not a proper comparison.

Apps are slowly becoming icons, and, like icons, they succeed through recognition. This inevitably means there will be sharing of forms/ideas to take advantage of this.

Perfectly enjoyable article, much like the hard-drive one, but there's not much to it. Also, I got through it in a couple of minutes, why not just present all of this this as one article? Don't really see the point of breaking it up bar the additional clicks.