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Apple Gets Testy About GUI
ShogZilla writes "Apple threatened Skinz.org (a windows "skins" site) & Stardock (makers of the win32 app "windowblinds") with legal action if a certain skin
The problem? The skin (winaqua) alters WinOS window frames to mimic the Mac OS Aqua appearance - kinda. It's very altered, the graphics are custom, & the layout is different - but that doesn't appear to matter.
After the threat, both sites initially complied, but have reconsidered & have reposted the skin; it does not use any graphics from aqua, it does not contain any mac logos etc; it's an original work - just inspired by the aqua GUI.
" I'm still waiting for an Aqua theme for E - Aqua just looks so darn /purty/.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
go to : http://sawmill.themes.org/ themes.phtml?themeid=947266463 .. ... to make thing really pretty use :
I'm using it quite for a while
And
http://gtk.themes.org/themes.p html?themeid=947543904 the matching GTK theme ! YEAH !
Don't you think Apple deserves to be able to protect Aqua's GUI? Apple has spent thousands of man-hours creating this look for the future OS, and these themes authors have simply lifted it. Unfortunately, the courts don't seem to agree that Apple deserves any protection. It's funny how Apple can sue over the look of their computers, but not their OS? Perhaps Apple can look closely at the themes on these sites, and see if there are any instances where the authors lifted elements from the QuickTime movies on Apple's MacOS X site.
Luckily for Apple, Aqua is a lot more then just a theme. It adds transparency to the entire interface and other refinements that a theme simply cannot duplicate. No one can claim that adding a Window's theme to a Mac or Mac theme to a Windows machine, in anyway duplicates the GUI of the other platform. The GUI is a lot more than a simple theme.
Sig goes here
Life sucks, kill a friend today.
Be careful how you respond,
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What completely freaked me out about the whole Look and Feel case was that Apple was so clearly in the wrong - it had licensed it's technology to Microsoft - and that it had *did not plan* for the possibility that it wouldn't win the case. I love and use Apple products, but there's no excuse for arrogance and NIH. It also looks like Stardock saw the Aqua interface before it was announced at Macworld - the press release announcing and debuting the new skin was released only a few hours after the keynote. Either someone was working *really* fast or they had prior knowedge. At this stage it's difficult to tell because the details are not clear. Another thing; Stardock originally called the skin Object desktop. Check the Stardock press release. Oh, and check out As The Apple Turns for a lighter view of the situations. If you don't get it the first time, trawl through their tape library. If you still don't get it, i give up. ;) Ben ***** 'If it ain't got an animal or a piece of fruit on it, it's worthless."
Golf; a good walk spoiled. -Mark Twain
Having some one copying the style of your gui for an other os
should be considerd a compliment, it means a job well done.
Second of all having your gui look and feel on an other os is a sort of free publicity.
And I am realy disipointed in Mac for playing the big bully game.
"THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT"-Death
42
The theme E-X is available for both E and GTK. Head on over the e.themes.org and gtk.themes.org. They look great but still have some functionality problems.
A computer graphics professional should be able to protect his work, like any artist, against someone who creates a cheap rip-off. The Aqua interface (IMO) is beautiful, and the result of many hours of hard work, trial-and-error processes, refinements, etc.. That kind of investment doesn't deserve to be stolen by some mediocre photoshop kiddie who watched the MWSF keynote address and said "Hey, good idea, I think I'll swipe it."
Gross.
I seem to recall that Apple sued Microsoft a while back, claiming that the "Look and Feel" of Windows was too close to their copyrighted MacOS. It's been obvious for a while that they still don't get it. Maybe one of (IBM, RedHat, VA Linux) could acquire Apple, depose CEO For Life Steven Jobs, open up the specs to some of their proprietary "standards," welcome the cloners back with open arms, and use the LinuxPPC as a base to sell hardware. Hmm.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They might want to be careful, I don't know US law, but could their initial removal of the material (offending or not) be seen as implicit acknowledgement of wrongdoing? (A la the reason why most discussion boards are fully censored or not at all - you censor one and effectively take responsibility for the rest)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Pleas note the use ot the ":)" smiley at the end of the original post. Also consider the rather light, almost humorous tone of the entire post, including the reference to Linux programmers as "Longhairs" and the reference to Windows as having a user interface.
These are two strong signs that the author may be using some form of irony. Irony, for those not familiar with the concept, can be described as "when the actual opinion is the opposite of that stated". Ironys are in other words obvious lies, and are used as a way of stating the obvious in a humorous manner. (Do you understand the concept humour?)
In other words: Your post is redundant. One can then use induction, combined with the first law of moderation conclude that this post is also redundant.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Plug and Play?
The taskbar?
DirectX?
Um, Office?
Much as I hate Microsoft as much as the next corporation, some of the features in Office (particularly Excell) are gobsmacking. (Win32, on the other hand, is bollocks, but credit is due for Office). This is why they have a monopoly.
Microsoft have even been spotted posting RFC's and drafts for open standards recently. They've finally started behaving themselves (thank God).
Apple have no right to tell us what we can and cannot put on our desktop. If they can't sell products on merit of being better products then they clearly can't keep up with technology. Why doesn't MacOS have themes yet?
I actually see Apple being a great deal more of a threat to open-standards than M$ (remember the Indeo codec?).
Yes, Apple deserves to be able to protect their GUI. _If_ you define the GUI as the total of theme+window manager. In Apples case this means, theme+window manager+kernel.
Does Apple have the right to protect a 'theme'?
No, it does not. There are countless references to this, unless the copycat _duplicates_ an art _exactly_, this is when copyrights kick in, "design" an sich, is not protected.
Relevant court material can probably be found in the Apple vs Microsoft "look and feel" case.
Is it funny that Apple can protect their hardware looks, but not their software looks?
Not really, just on the surface perhaps, but the fact is, Hardware lookalikes will directly impact Apple sales, this can be prooven.
Software lookalikes will have NO IMPACT whatsoever on Apple sales, UNLESS the COMPLETE OS will be copied. I cannot imagine an Apple Artist buying a windowz workstation, JUST because theres an aqua theme. Its therefore utterly stupid to fight themes.
It also contradicts the recent Apple "willingness and flirtations" with Open Source. It therefore is not even from a marketing viewpoint sensible. What? Open Sourcing the (parts of) OS but sueing on a theme?? Get a grip.
(This should get through the ThickBoned Head of Marketing guru Jobs.)
Greetz SlashDread
I find this scary just because they were threatening to sue because their OS's look has been mimicked.
Those of you who are running themeable window managers such as enlightenment windowmaker etc. are probably aware of the existence of themes that mimic various OSes' appearance.
Please check out www.themes.org to get an idea of what I am talking about.
Do the theme authors risk a similar lawsuit threat? Is themes.org heading for trouble?
I hope some kind soul on slashdot can enlighten us about these questions.
OLE springs to mind. Linking a spreadsheet object to a word object and having both display in one application window was, I think, a true innovation at the time.
Possibly some professor had done the same in a lab 5 years earlier, but that hardly counts, any more than saying the internal combustion engine is just a copy of the steam engine because they both use the compressed-gas-cylinder-camshaft technology.
Anywa, here are some more, these are all just IMHO, so please correct me if I'm wrong:
docking toolbars and menus
DHCP (and very good it is too)
realtime spell checking (wiggly red lines in word)
ODBC
A comprehensive approach to disabled users
Comprehensive (if occasionally random) support for non-roman charactersets and languages
And finally, MS get big bonus points for ditching ASCII and shifting to unicode everywhere WAY before anyone else.
Flames to me personally if you must, please...
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Compared to the quantity of mp3's, funny movies, half-uninstalled software (got I hate RPMS - time to switch to debian), quake maps, KDE bloat, etc..etc.., I'm not *that* worried about 128x128 icons. In fact, if they're going to be scaled I'd rather they were bigger than that. They've also FINALLY got anti-aliased fonts right (RISC-OS users, shush :-)) which means it may be the first resolution-independant desktop :)
Start-button
Now you name one from apple (not any of the Xerox stuff please)
Apple's been down this road before. I remember an old lawsuit by which they said MS was intruding on their look and feel for desktop GUIs. Now, anyone who's ever used both PCs and Macs knows that they look and act nothing alike. However, the fight went on, back and forth, until Xerox (the real inventors) brought out a demo of an Altos box. Here's where it gets interesting. See, the Macintosh team (at least one of them) had seen one of Xerox's systems at PARC back in the late 70s/early 80s. And had _blatantly_ ripped off the UI. In fact, if you look at the 2-color System 1-6 GUI, it's the same (and I mean _identical_) as what Xerox had put together. I take that back. There was one difference, instead of the apple logo on the apple menu, there was the Xerox stylized "X". And that was the ONLY difference. Xerox started making rumblings that if MS and Apple didn't stop this silly shit (it was inciting lots of other lawsuits), they were going to start playing the part of the 9000-pound gorilla (with evidence to boot!) that invented the GUI, and bitch-slap both companies into receivership with legal fees and licensing fees and other back fines, etc.
Apple and MS backed off, and there (to my knowledge) hasn't been a similar lawsuit in ages. Until now. You'd think that Jobs'd learn from his mistakes. You just can't sue over look and feel.
I'm patiently waiting for the folks at Universal Church of Sidus Julium (a bunch of people worshiping Julius Caesar as a deity) to launch a lawsuit against Apple, claiming a look-and-feel violation from Apple's use of Roman numerals in the name of OS X. After all, years of research and development that went into inventing the Roman-numeral system, and Apple is clearly a latecomer hoping to cash in on the numeral X's sexiness and consumer appeal.
I normally tend to support Apple, but this one is rediculous.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
By all means look at the URL in the above post, but please bear in mind that everything at www.mackido.com is biased in a way that makes the worst Linux zealot flamer on slashdot look like blind justice herself.
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Let me add a few too...
The taskbar - Hewlett Packard developed this neat little taskbar program called Dashboard later bought by Starfish Software.
These other "inventions" I have seen the likes waaaay before Microsoft implimented them. I used the VMS desktop and seen office apps years before "Microsoft Office" came out.
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E2 IN2 IE?
The only difference is that with a small icon, most of the block is wasted, while with a larger icon, less of the block is wasted.
Try it yourself, check how much free space you have, create a small file, and check how much free space you have again. free_space_before > free_space_after + filesize
FWIW, MS's DHCP is a steaming pile of krud which ignores basic stuff like the hostname.
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Then there's the Case of the Transplanted Programmers. Early on in the article, we are told that "Apple had hired some people from Xerox (like Jef Raskin, Bruce Horn) who believed in concepts of a Graphical User Interface." and "by no stretch of the imagination could this be called 'ripping-off'." But later, we find out that "Microsoft took [Apple's] best Mac Programmer, and had him making almost every design decision for early windows." This, of course, proves that "Microsoft on the other hand did rip-off Apple." Wow.
As the other poster mentioned, MacKido generally makes Linux zealots look wishy-washy. But this one goes beyond that into some creepy cultish nether realm. Mr. David K. Every seriously needs a quick course in critical thinking skills, perhaps some elementary logic, or, failing that, a job in marketing. Seriously, read the article, people. It's just bizarre.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
How can one stake ownership to the aesthetic feel that a theme provides to it's underlying window manager. A theme by today's standards provides no more than this.
:).
In my opinion, the real situation would be different if the themes in question were able to provide functionality that could emulate the MacOS, but they cannot. They neither acheive this nor reproduce copyrighted material of Apple.
What would follow next if Apple succeeded in their petty argument, would web designers be able to sue other sites for coding, from scratch, a site that has the same look and feel as their own?
Perhaps Apple should be quiet and accept the fact that if people are going to the trouble of creating look-alike themes from scratch, then they are both advertising Apple's original OS existance and advertising how cool it is (Aqua, cool
I neither use nor endorse Apple products, I find a bitter aftertaste from using previous products of theirs. But like many others, I find the existance of themes representing (read: merely looking-alike) the MacOS system making me more and more curious as to how 'cool' the original platform is.
Perhaps because of these theme's creations, I may even purchase a new Mac since I have almost tried before I've buyed...
Cow of ThirdEye
Actually, for all the crap that we give Microsoft now, we probably have to thank them a little bit. Before you go hitting the reply link with a flamethrower in hand, realize that I don't like the company much anymore either. One of the reasons we probably have to thank them, is that without them many of us would probably not be the computer geeks that we are, or have the jobs that we have. Windows is the software that has brought computing to the masses. I mean face it, even though I like Linux, its stable, its fun to work with, and it actually takes a little bit of thinking every once in awhile, it is most definitely not for the average home user. Without all these home users, we wouldn't have the net the way it is today, we wouldn't have people investing so much money in tech, etc. Even if you are developing some huge e-commerce site and serving it on Linux, its all the Windows using home users that are going to be flocking to the site and making you money. Anyway...while Microsoft has been unfair/scandalous/*insert phrase here* in the past several years, they definitely deserve their place in history.
Fonts aren't well protected, in fact.
If I (painstakingly) create a look-a-like font for Times, and call it 'Jimes', then I haven't broken any law unless I actually, physically, bit-for-bit copied the Times font and renamed it.
I can even legally scan in some printed output of the font, and trace over it in a font creation tool...
Similarly with any kind of graphical work - like a painting. If I simply produce a work 'inspired by' or 'based on' an existing work - without actually using any genuine copying technology like a scanner or a camera - then I haven't infringed anyone's copyright.
All of which is Right, IMO.
Jules
-- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a perl script.
If anyone uses an Aqua theme in an advertisement for a computer or software package that isn't actually running on Mac OS X, I think Apple should sue them for everything they've got. They're trying to make money off their products and freely using Apple's GUI to help them do it.
That's not the case here! Nobody's selling anything, and just because I can make my Linux or Windows box look sorta like Mac OS X, that's not going to make me any less interested in buying a G4 running Mac OS X later this year. No way in hell a mere theme is going to have the fluid animation, awesome-looking drop shadows, and other GUI elements that Mac OS X uses (it sounds like DisplayPDF rocks).
Also, we mustn't forget the "feel" half of "look and feel". I tried a Mac OS Platinum theme on KDE for awhile, then took it off. It looked like the Mac OS, but the feel was closer to Win95 than it was to a Mac. The inconsistency bugged the hell out of me so I got rid of it. The appearance of Aqua without the feel isn't anything special.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I have been reading /. for awhile now, actually a little over 2 years. One thing I have noticed, especially in comments on the MacOS, Gnome, K, etc is a lack of understanding of what makes a good GUI. Winaqua DOES NOT replicate the MacOS GUI. It merely mimics the MacOS Desktop. Winaqua CAN NOT replicate the MacOS GUI, because the underlying Windows code is not there to support it. In other words, the GUI is more than a set of icons, dock, desktop, theme. Now, alot of Linux desktop managers (they are not quite even GUIs yet) LOOK ok. They have neat buttons, sliders, icons, docks, etc. All the bells and whistles. They do not, hovever provide as decent a GUI as even MacOS 7, much less 9 or X. Why? They may look kewler. Hell, they DO look cooler, but their interface considerations, consistency, depts of admin capability do not even touch nT, which itself can not touch the Mac OS. Apple should leave well enough alone. Do not flame me here. I am a Apple/Lisa/Mac head thru and thru since 1979. But Winaqua is a joke. MacOS X is more about Mach, BSD, OpenGL, Quartz, Consistency and the overall fit and finish that it is about a set of dials and buttons. Oh, and one more thing...Windows did not invent any of the above items. I do not know if anyone here refuted the arg that they invented taskbar, menus yet, but these were also invented at PARC, and HEAVILY improved by the first MacOS designers.
1. There's a difference between imitating GUI concepts (such as curved edges and other 'look and feel' factors) and blatantly copying a piece of copyright art, even if done using the 'look and copy' method rather than the 'cut and paste'. People going on about GUI similarities between WIN95 and MacOS should look at this GIF animation showing a screenshot off sawmill.themes.org, with elements of the original MacOS X screenshot differenced out. Black means identical pixels.
2. Being able to emulate MacOsX's precise look on Win32 and X machines will harm Apple's campaign to market Macs as a trendy alternative - which is why they spent so much time and money developing it. Of course, you are are perfectly entitled to develop a similar look using their ideas. You shouldn't be able to just copy it directly.
3. This isn't about the right to emulate. That was settled in Apple's case versus Microsoft. This is about the right to copy.
As an analogy, think of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Originally a masterpiece. However, any half-decent artist can paint a very good copy of it. The true artist, though, takes the eyes, the smile and the use of color and paints his own masterpiece.
OLE is a technology that Microsoft licensed from Big Blue. This isn't just a thing Microsoft copied, it's a thing they continue to shell out cash to include in their product.
.jp news site, took him weeks to convince Win98 to let him do it.
DHCP is an extension of the bootp protocol, which is older than you.
Realtime spell checking was available as a shareware app for OS/2 2.0 well before Office implemented it. It's called Spellguard, and it dates back to before Win95 was released, let alone the versions of Office that implement it. see HERE if you don't believe me. A friend of mine wrote it.
ODBC - don't be silly, it's one more protocol for a concept older than you are.
MacOS and OS/2 both had extensive support for disabled people as far back as 1993.
Microsoft's foreign language support used to be pretty impressive, they've cut back quite a bit lately. I couldn't tell you if other OSs did a better job, I don't really know, but it's hardly an innovation - their implementation has generally be exceedingly buggy. Inbetween jobs i Y2K tested Win95 in several foreign languages, so i know first hand.
And their Unicode support is less than acceptable. I have a friend who speaks japanese and wanted to read a
As for docking menus and toolbars, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that. Didn't the edit window of SimCity have a docking toolbar? That was out before *Windows* man.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
To say that the skin is an original work is like saying a forgery of the Mona Lisa is an original work. Looking at the skin indicates to everyone that the source of the images used for the buttons, window controls, etc is MacOS X. If a user interface can be considered a work of art then it deserves the same protection as any other art form.
I have often seen unauthorized copies of Enlightenment windows on the Skinz site. The least these guys could do is ask the original author for permission to 'port' these window designs and accept it when the author says 'NO'.
Copying with permission is fine, copying without is theft!
M.T.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"Think Different. Or else."
IBM makes quite a bit of money selling software and services to the huge PC market that wouldn't exist if there were only one source for PC hardware.
Idiot.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
These are two strong signs that the author may be using some form of irony. Irony, for those not familiar with the concept, can be described as "when the actual opinion is the opposite of that stated". Ironys are in other words obvious lies, and are used as a way of stating the obvious in a humorous manner. (Do you understand the concept humour?)
Actually, the word you are looking for is "sarcasm." You're not alone, though. Alanis Morrisette doesn't know what Irony is either: "Rain on your wedding day" is not ironic. A sword-swallower choking on a toothpick is ironic.
Great, now I'm the irony police...
Memory hogs?
;)
;)
;)
(from wintop.exe -- a great program, part of MS Kernel Toys)
Word: 5192K Allocated / 3016K In Memory / 1868K In Use
Excel: 2556K Allocated / 1256K In Memory / 828K In Use
Outlook: 9836K Allocated / 2732K In Memory / 1460K In Use
Both Word & Excel have average-sized documents loaded.
(and for comparison, cause we all love Netscape to death
Netscape: 11104K Allocated / 8992K In Memory/ 8132K In Use
One browser running, this page as I'm typing up this message.
For MS Office's full suite on a typical install (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access & Outlook), the total disk space including shared files hovers around the 200 meg mark. That's around 100 less than Office 97 took up, I believe. That's actually VERY impressive, if those numbers don't lie.
These are just the facts on my machine -- take them with a grain of salt, if you will. However O2K hasn't crashed on me ONCE, and to MS's credit, Outlook 2K does a great job as a personal information manager. It's years above what Office 97 was. Plus, PGP integrates itself seemelssly into it. Before Outlook 2k, whenever I was in Windows I was using PC-Pine, so that should tell you something
And YES, the Office Helper can be turned off, hell it even asks you "Do you want to turn me off permanently?" if you hide it a bunch of times (and turning it off is only a matter of right clicking, choosing options, and clicking the box that says "turn off the office helper").
It's monolithic, yes, but it's an Office Suite, they're not ment to be under 100k in disk size. If you find one that is, let me know, better yet, if you create one and decide to sell it, rather then GPL it, let me in on your IPO
Absolutely.
Putting a patent on "translucent" dialog boxes is right up there with putting a patent on "one-click" purchasing.
Smack 'em hard.
cheers,
The earliest Acorn GUI was the 'Welcome' or 'Desktop' program that came with the Master Compact (which was a cut-down Master 128, which was a beefed-up BBC Micro). This was a simple toy desktop environment, with a calculator, calendar, that sort of thing. IIRC it had a bar at the bottom with icons for the different 'applications', although you couldn't add new apps. This was in 1986.
The Desktop in Arthur (the OS for the Archimedes when launched in 1987) was rather like this; it was implemented as a BASIC program which called the OS's windowing routines (making it very fast as the windowing routines were written in assembler). It featured icons on the left for drives and networks, and icons on the right for calculator, 'palette' and other junk.
RISC OS 2.0 (the first version, replacing Arthur 1.2) was released in 1988. Its desktop was part of the OS proper, and featured nonpreemptive multitasking. For the first time (I think) you could write your own apps which used the GUI, making it a useful environment rather than a toy. It also included drag-and-drop and all the nice things which have been discussed previously on Slashdot.
I have no idea how much of this was copied from NeXT; what year did the NeXT Cube come out? I thought it was 1987.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
When I finally found the official objection, it turned out to be a rant (more or less) against Apple. What I want to see is: The official letter from some official Apple representative stating the official objections Apple had. Until I see it, I reserve judgement.
Why? Here are some possibilities that "clear Apple's name":
Post the official objection. The wording will be more telling of Apple's position than the hearsay we've seen so far.
Perhaps this will help to clear things up:
Sec. 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 120, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Ginko
These claims sound like serious revisionist history, if you ask me. Richard Stallman's article on the GNU boycot of Apple may not have included everything, but you can be very sure he wouldn't have simply declared such a boycot because he was bored.
Oh, and you might want to note that Apple -failed- to mention that Xerox had developed a GUI before Apple, which was part of why they lost the case against Microsoft.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Nah, nah, nah, you've got it all wrong, mate.
That none of the allegedly ironic examples given in the song are actually ironic is deliberate. It's ironic that the song, called Ironic, is not ironic, thus making the song ironic. Thus the non-ironic song is thus very ironic, which is itself doubly ironic, or meta-ironic... er... or something.
Therefore Alanis is not a silly moo at all, but in fact very clever. Unless she really is dumb and is just being ironic about it all.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
1) mass-market software. Interpreted BASIC was nothing new, but marketing software to individuals was innovative.
:)
2) The usable footnote in Word 1.0. I know the lion's share of readers here don't go back that far, but footnotes on a micro before that were a bear--really no better than a typewriter. A method of automatically landing them on (usually) the right page was a God-send. OTOH, you sometimes ended up with bizarre gaps as it erroneously moved to the next page to get enough room. I was shocked about three months ago to find that the current versions can still do this, and there's still no fix other than to write an extra paragraph to fill space . . .
3) Bob?
Good Lord, they're about due for another one, aren't they? Oh, wait, they already did it--they invented a new way to abuse monopoly power [using it to advance a product they didn't care about just to destroy a competitor, forgoing the revenue in the process]. OK, we're safe for another ten years.
Err, publish/subscribe. Publish/Perish is academia
But on a fast machine for the time (SE/30 8mb), it was painfully slow to use and I gave up on it.
>Very few people started out on linux.
At about 6, she'd ask for "daddy's game", the one with colored faling sticks (xjewel?), in preference to the games we had for the mac and the like. She also would ask me to play "the kitty" game--nethack, where the kitten follows you--while telnetted into my linux box.
I came home and panicced when I found my freebsd box off--i thought my wife had hit the power. Nope, my daughter had rebotted to play a dark-side game, and then turned it off (internet is only through freebsd).
I'll give you your (1) (maybe), but automatic footnoting is hardly a Microsoft innovation. I had it in my FORMAL portable text formatter back in 1979-1980ish, which I believe pre-dates Word 1.0. And I probably cribbed it from Waterloo Script or one of the other text processors around.
:)
As for "Bob", the less said the better
-- Alastair
What a minute! I thought that was the strong point of Windows. It runs on all hardware. It Linux that no need to pay attention to the hardware with, because there are "no drivers".
If I have to pay attention to a "supported products" list, then what's the advantage to paying attention to the Windows list, over the Linux list?
-BrentThat logic requires believing that if it weren't for Microsoft no one else would have brought computers to the masses. I won't believe it. If Microsoft wouldn't have been there, some one else would have. Therefore, we can't attribute mass computing to a sole Microsoft feat, even though they were the ones who did it.
If it wasn't Microsoft it would have been someone else. Please remember that.
-BrentBzzt!! See this.
-BrentHeh, I'm posting this from a 3 1/2 year old PowerTower 180e!
I bought this particular machine because it was cheaper/faster than what Apple had at the time. My Micropolis HD died after 3 months, and I got it replaced. You'll notice Micropolis is no longer in business. The replacement Seagate is a trooper and a half!
How many of you have 3 1/2 year old "PC's" that work well for what you want to do these days?
The PPC 603-based clones were the most problematic, and unfortunately, those were the ones aimed at the Consumer market. Jeez, I'd take an iMac over a Starmax anyday.
I am a loyal MacOS user, because I hate Windows, and the Mac lets me get my work done the way I want to with the least amount of hassle! I was happier than hell to get rid of my 386 (and Windows) and get a 68040 Mac, and I've never looked back. Now I'm saving for a G4.
I'm not a hard-core gamer who thinks that 48fps is much better than 44fps and is worth spending hours to configure my hardware and software to make it happen, and I'm not a programmer.
I mean, jeez, can your OS/WM do this??
Yep, I create and organize my work flow my COLOUR. Sorting by Name, Date or Kind won't work, because I work with other people and need to keep their work separate from mine, but together in the hierarchy of the web server. For other work, I label by colour to indicate new or old versions. Until there's another OS that can do this, I'll stick with my Mac, thank you very much!
PS. Futurama fans might like this 800x600 desktop I made.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Apple persecuted this vigorously, too, and there was much discussion and ranting and noise about the matter, but the end result was the removal of HiTech themes 'from the wild'. If you wanted a high tech theme, you had to *gasp* make one up. Seeing as on the kaleidoscope scheme archive there are 127 different schemes from authors with names beginning with 'A' alone, there are a lot of alternatives to using a clone of HiTech- or Aqua.
Plain and simple- don't blatantly rip Apple's expensive and fancy interface designs until _after_ they are released. They are less pissy when their product is actually shipping. When it's a nebulous project (HiTech, which got 'steved') or the next big thing that's being built as a replacement to Apple Platinum (Aqua), they get real pissy about someone heisting a facade of what they're building and offering it around.
Think Go Computing and Pen Windows. In what way is making a thin facade of Aqua with only the look of certain elements, little of the behavior or animation, and little debugging, NOT like the classic vaporware tactic? I'm sure it's less prone to dry up investor support in Apple ;) but it's the same thing, releasing a facade of the new Apple interface to confuse, lessen the impact, and raise questions as to whether it's just the look of a window or a whole system involved.
Oh no, the dreaded Apple is stealing its, uh, its own graphical user interface. It's ruthlessly denying people free immediate hacking to largely arbitrary and artistic interface details that... geee, that _it_ paid handsomely for. Funny how that works, isn't it? Hire yer own damn graphic designers ;) or just keep on keeping on. I've been playing with Afterstep a bit. I may like to make it look like classic NeXT (ahhhh) but I feel no need to make it look like Aqua.
To give credit where credit is due, MS spends a decent chunk of change on original research. Check out research.microsoft.com to see what they're up to.
And as for other technologies, they seem to be leading the way in hardware products (or is that just me being ignorant about hardware trends?). If I recall, they were the first with the ergonomic keyboard, the wheel doohicky, the intelliEye (didn't someone tell the marketing people not to put so many vowels together? oh well) optical system, that bad-ass phone that you could hook up to your PC, the Timex watch data synchronization thing...
And the paper clip guy is pretty cool too, from a technical standpoint (if not from an actual usefulness standpoint). It's a Bayes (belief) network- you can find out how it works by rooting around for that topic on the MS research site.
-jacob
Actually someone did already, though I don't believe it's been added to the scheme archive. How do I know this? I created a set of icons (JPEG | Mac format) for my Mac and the author used them without asking. Of course I can't complain as I did the same to Apple.
I'm going to go out on a limb, here, and state that this is a different situation than a theme for a competing OS. Frankly, I don't see why Apple should care if users of the current MacOS want to make their machines look like the next generation OS. Greg Landwebber also authored Aaron which gave your Mac the Platinum appearance several years before MacOS 8.0 was released. (Aaron is a play on Aaron Copland, who was the name-sake of Apple's ill-fated Copland OS.)
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
I hardly know where to begin. Back in the days of the very first commercial home computer game ('Mystery House' by On-Line systems, later known as Sierra On-Line- 'Mystery House' was sold as a disk and a photocopied sheet in a baggie :) ), the game was shopped to Apple for possible distribution. It took Apple a _year_ to get back to the Williamses, because by that time Apple was _already_ a multimillion-dollar business, wealthy and kind of sluggish and dim. By the time it got back to the Williamses, they were already doing a roaring business as On-Line Systems...
Honestly, those who make accusations of revisionist history should either learn genuine history of some sort (even a small effort would do!) or should be old enough to have seen some of this happen. Just because you don't like the truth doesn't mean it's impossible. Apple was a huge business at the time, seller of Apple IIs to the exploding home market in its first big boom and to schools in their original marketing campaigns that got them so established in education back then. They were the Microsoft of that era. Microsoft was still coding Typing Tutor in Bellevue, Washington at the time. They not only had that much stock, it was worth a lot, and they did indeed pay Xerox for the right to go in, gawk like mad at everything and take notes and then go home and use whatever they saw or thought they saw.
MacOS has had themes for years: WDEFs. Can you replace the WINDOW MANAGER in Windows? No (although you can now overpaint it with windowblinds). I had my Mac looking like BeOS for a while.
And check out this freaky shit: here, and here. With Kaleidoscope, you can even use Enlightenment Themes!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Artists and engineers have no intrinsic right to their creations. The reason for copyright is not to protect producers but users.
.tar.gz) everyone uses, but it isn't popular because of a lame patent that was put on the algorithm.
:)
As RMS puts it, an idea or design is not spaghetti that only one person can eat; it can be enjoyed by everyone, therefore it should be owned by everyone. Artists don't have the right to punish _the whole world_ because they came up with an idea first.
A good example is the case of the bzip compression format; from what I've heard, it's much better than the LZW compression format (.zip,
This is exactly the same; if Apple has an intrinsic right to their GUI, that means that none of their innovations can be used by anyone else, thus disadvantage everyone. Imagine if the author of the first text editor with scrolling believed he had an intrinsic right to the technique, and sued everyone else who used it; millions would still be suffering with 'ed'-like editors
Broccolist
This isn't a flame, but like anyone in the Linux community should talk. What amazing innovations have come out of us? It's mostly reimplementation of closed-source tools.
... use the flag of your choice) is the development model. It's not what the software does (end results), but how it is produced (how you get there) that's significant.
The biggest "innovation" of the community for which Linux is currently the poster child (Open Source, Free Software,
I put "innovation" in quotes because in the digital world it's a pretty nebulous term and hard to define. Ideas and code and software are extremely promiscuous and incestuous. Pick any "innovation" of the last 5 years and you will find antecedants from the 80s and 70s and 60s.
Linux is a hotbed of "innovation" because it lives in an environment stripped of the rules and taboos forbidding sex. Anybody can screw anybody else, mixing genes and chromosones with glee and abandon, creating offspring similar but not quite the same as anything else. Gene swapping is common in the proprietary world too, but's hampered and restricted.
It's mostly reimplementation of closed-source tools.
True, many portions are reimplementations of closed-source tools. But many closed source tools are implementations of open source academic research products.
As mentioned, MacOS has had themes capability for a few years, and before that you could use Kaleidascope (ugly!). The reason MacOS only comes with one theme, Platinum, is because Jobs supposedly didn't like visual inconsistancies with apps that weren't theme-ready, so the other themes (which, by the way, have awesome 3d sound effects) were cut. By inconsistancies, I mean things like funky menus that assume silver-gray is the background color and hard-code it in or whatever, so the edges are all messed up. You can find the other themes like Gizmo on the internet or from people who have the dev versions of MacOS.
a prophet on the burning shore
Boy and to think they hired that guy from the cookie company instead of a genius like you.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
1. There is an "icon" even if the window is open. This idea seems to have eluded all the X and Mac (and the older Windoze) designers for years. Everybody else was convinced that the window icon should only be visible if the window was "iconized".
2. They finally realized that the TEXT is important, far more important than some image "icon". Though they did not get rid of the image, which might have been far too daring, they did shrink it down a lot, so that it is almost invisible. (now if only they would do that for their "desktop icons".
MicroSoft also made a major innovation in making a desktop design that got rid of a divider line between the "window border" and the window contents. I actually did this many years earlier with some work I did on the NeXT machine, and I'm sure others did, but it was never seen in a real product until Windows 95.
I would not call Plug&Play an innovation, the idea is rather obvious and apparently the implementation is bogus, seeing as to how much trouble they are having. Working around bad original machine design, no matter how difficult, is really not innovative since it is obvious it needs to be done.
DirectX is also pretty obvious. Apparently there are no real clever ideas in the enormous amount of interface that DirectX defines. For instance it is rather uniformly believed that OpenGL provides a superior 3-D interface, it would seem MicroSoft could have "innovated" something better, seeing as they had all of OpenGL already existing to refer to!
I believe Office contains many innovations in GUI. MicroSoft did invent the Shift+navigation to extend text selections. Also the use of squiggly lines to indicate spelling errors and many other little things that have greatly expanded the common knowledge database of graphical icons, making it easier for programs to present information without lots of "help" info.
What I'm saying is that if it would be possible to acquire them, you could leverage their technology to shore up several key Linux weaknesses (Most notably, streaming video) while continuing to let the company do its own thing with only a few changes to make its business model conform to one that has been PROVEN to be successful, namely the one used by the X86 world. Since Jobs would never accept any of that, he'd obviously have to go.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
M$ isn't a technology company. They are a MARKETING company, this is where to majority of their innovation and successes have been.
+&x
Exactly none of that is true.
Apple hired engineers from Xerox PARC.
Apple's design team visited PARC and PARC's team showed them what they were doing. PARC was a research lab, and Steve Jobs pitched them the idea that Apple was the perfect company to implement their ideas and take them to the public. There was no misunderstanding on either side about this.
Apple signed an agreement with Xerox, giving them stock worth millions of dollars, to be able to use some ideas from PARC.
And Apple extended the desktop metaphor way beyond what Xerox had done. The PARC had some innovative ideas but the Macintosh was much more usable and brought the whole concept together.
If you'd like to learn more about this myth you're propagating, read MacKiDo or SteveWozniak on the subject. Or just read some thoughts of Jef Raskin:
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
So yeah, maybe the Open Source community has brought forth a "rediscovery" of quality software design. But where are the innovations? And by "innovation" I mean something new. Something that changes the way you use your computer. Linux hasn't changed the way I use my computer, it's just made it a little easier in some places. Don't let the wild world of the Open Source Extravaganza blind you to what it's really worth.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Apple may or may not be legally right, but in terms of marketing, this seems like a dumb move. The more computers don't look like Windows, the more acceptable it will be for people to use non-Windows machines.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I was under the impression that while the idea of an optical mouse was nothing new, the MS mouse was leaps and bounds ahead of any other optical mice in that it can track on any surface and whatnot. Am I wrong?
-jacob
1) I may be a vicious Mac defender, but I'm not an Apple apologist. When Apple does something dumb, I'm right there in line to smack them along with everyone else.
2) Frankly, I'm torn. I do think that it's in extremely poor taste to copy a GUI on a system that hasn't even been released yet, even more so than copying one that's already been released. This said, however, Apple shouldn't be threatening legal action. One, they have no legal grounds for it. Perhaps they could try and nail you on copyright violations (since, at least for now, the only way to get the images used in these themes is to swipe them from Apple's own screenshots). But that's taking things just a bit too far.
3) I don't think OS-based themes should be on the public sites anyway. The major sites like Themes.org are supposed to be for original works. At least, that was my undrstanding. The Aqua-based themes (and the Win9X-based things, and the Amiga-based themes, and the NeXT-based themes, and so on) are not original work by a long shot. Even the AquaOS line for Sawmill (which makes a few trivial changes to the button layout) couldn't be considered truly original. I suppose the Win9X GUI can't either (perhaps it's not really a MacOS ripoff, but the buttons are copied pixel-for-pixel from NeXTStep, not to mention most of the test of the GUI).
4) The Linux community doesn't need an Aqua theme. We've always striven to be original, and succeeded. Witness the BlueSteel theme for E; there's proof right there that the Linux community can turn out a GUI that's even cooler than Aqua. Even those of you who don't like BlueSteel probably have your own favorites, and in most cases I'll bet it bears little resemblance to any existing GUI. Aqua's original. So were NeXTStep and BeOS. The Linux community can make and has made original GUI's in the past. Part of the appeal of Linux is that it isn't Windows or MacOS or BeOS or anything else. Why make it something it's not?
I'm a fan of the Scrollites themes myself. I have them all; even the "classic" three that were never released in 1.5 versions (and so cannot be used with the current version).
And none of them looked anything like Aqua. I suppose you could make a very big stretch and show a small bit of similarity in the scroll bars. The two both use "glassies" but that's not what's being talked about here. The themes in question are pixel-for-pixel copies of Aqua. I don't know if that's "right" or "wrong" but it is in poor taste.
Maybe I'm just one of those hopeless "function" over "form" people...
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