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Apple Patents GUI Theme Engine
SirFlakey writes: "Just browsing the Patents database at delphion I came across this patent from a couple of weeks back. Apparently Apple Computer has patented a method of theming the OS. I wonder how this affects theming on Linux ?" Perhaps unsurprizing, considering Apple's general unhappiness with Apple-like themes, and that they convinced themes.org to remove Aqua, AquaX and others. Apple obviously has a lot tied up in their look-and-feel, but the patent's actual claims strike me as pretty thin. Sounds like Apple wants to be the sole owner of complex desktop customization, which I think some people might object to.
If this was applied for in 1998 then that was the point where Apple was preparing to release themes that worked inside the Appearance Manager control panel (namely Hi-Tech, Gizmo, and Drawing Board). Apple was preparing for the release of Mac OS 8.5, which was going to handle themes above and beyond the standard Apple Platinum - there is supposedly an SDK somehwere and various themes Apple never released. They weren't readying for a challenge by WinXP or trying to attack Linux - they were trying to protect the Mac OS itself from third party developers using the OSs theme abilities.
No. You are wrong. Apple can survive just fine without Microsoft products. That is just like saying Linux can not survive without Microsoft products. Most of the people I know using Macs don't use Internet Explorer or Office.
why would you want to theme cde?
Dunno. Why not ask them?
1st Law Of Networking: Loose ends are bad, termination is good.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
I suspect this is a defensive patent. One of those "we should see if the PTO will grant this, cause if they give it to anyone else we are screwed" patents.
It does sound like it - this was definitely pitched as a big deal for Copland, and even when the Appearance Manager was spun off for Mac OS 8 themes were still being mentioned. One of the constant reminders when the Appearance Manager was introduced was that you shouldn't hand-roll your own UI components in case the look and feel changed again in the future (and if you must hand-roll them, to use the built in brushes and primitives so that you'll look somewhat right).
I seriously doubt it'd be resurrected today, but I guess it looked like a prudent idea at the time.
-dair
And Platinum was, in turn, based on a theme prepared for Apple's Copland OS
:-), and the name "Platinum" came along later.
Yep, I was a bit vague - Aaron was based on the then Copland look (since that was his name
-dair
Legalese not being my forte, I had imagined...
A CLI <-> Explorer <-> HTML browser <-> Finder
When selecting themes.
Going by the then planned OS (Copland, which is where this patent will have come from), I don't think so. The behavioural changes that were present in the build of Copland that was half-released were all pretty trivial - menus flipped over vertically like some kind of paddle when you moused over them, dragging windows around produced sounds, etc.
It's arguable if these are really 'behaviours' as such - but irrespective of the theme your buttons were still buttons, zoom boxes were still zoom boxes, etc.
-dair
...the integration of Classic and Aqua? Someone's comment about "multiple theme engines running side-by-side" caused me to think of this.
When Classic is running under OS X, its windows behave exactly like OS 9 windows, even when among Aqua windows. They also have different behaviors (no buffering, no soft shadows, windowshade feature) from Aqua windows.
Try plig.org/~xwinman. It's an older windowmanager, afaik lisp-based.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Yes, there is definitely prior art.
gtk-themes beat them out by at least two months. If you look at the GNOME CVS log for gtkthemes.c, you'll see that it was first checked in in March of 1998, which is before that May of 1998 application date for Apple's patent.
Of course, Enlightenment also beat the Apple patent (by an even larger margin), however, IIRC, Enlightenment use pixmaps and scripts to do its work, while gtkthemes uses plugins (one of which can load arbitrary pixmap themese, but others, like Notif and Redmond95 are full-blown shared objects).
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Interesting.
So I can see a product in the marketplace, run off to the good old USPTO and apply for a patent for an idea that is used in that product, and then sue the maker of that product and there is nothing they can do about it?
The US patent system is even more screwed up than I previously thought...
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The Hotmail addres is my decoy account. I read it approximately once per year.
Part of the agreement between IBM and Microsoft was that Microsoft would be able to retain the right to resell MS-DOS to others. (I remember reading somewhere that Microsoft wanted this fact to be very clear to IBM, and IBM accepted it.) If IBM had told Microsoft that they would only license MS-DOS if Microsoft would agree not to license it to anyone else and Microsoft agreed, then Compaq would have faced a much greater and more costly (financially and time-wise) challenge: to have to clone and reverse-engineer MS-DOS in addition to the IBM PC BIOS. I doubt Compaq would have had much incentive to do this if that were the case.
So, yes, in a sense the Microsoft OS "helped Compaq [to] clone the IBM PC."
You see, that cross-licensing deal means that Microsoft has to pay for the stuff they use from Macs. So if Apple has a patent on the interface, Microsoft is contractually bound to pay for their use of it...
date of the patent: 8 may 1998.
date of themes.org domain registration: 25 april 1998.
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After skimming the patent, I think it is reffering to behavioral models, such as the Simple Finder (Mac users will know what I mean), whereas different levels of useability are associated with the interface. This can be very useful, especially for new or young users. It allows for varying degrees of sophistication. An example might be a window, where in Level 1, you just have a close button, Level 2 might have a minimize/maximize button, and Level 3 might include the first two plus a button to bring up preferences for that window (color, transparency, etc.)
Just my $0.02
Who is the master of foxhounds, and who says the hunt has begun? -Pink Floyd
Actually the windows 95 plus pack had themes. Even though it wasn't the greatest in the world it did allow for simplistic chang of cursors, sounds, icons, graphics, fonts...all the things that can take 20 min or so to change...
Although this is not as complex it is still called theaming and was around in 1995, which does predate the pattent. Not that I am implying this is M$ created but they did come out with it.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
Its Aston Martin and Austin Healey, you heathens. Get yer British cars right...geez
Of course, changing the behaviour, could also just mean switching scrollbars from athena-style to motif-style. Does this deserve a patent???
bye
schani
Apple has lots of patents it does not enforce. In fact it was one of the loosest companies out their when it comes to their IP. So isn't better to have a friendly company like Apple patent something like themes. Then have soemone else do it for them. And possibly take a unfriendly bent?
Cheers,
Tomas
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where did you find that date?
In the patent I see filed May 8 1998, maybe I looked somewhere wrong??
but if May 98 is right, forget that patent... previous art... Remember that 'MS Plus' for win95... Too bad that KDE was only 1.0 in June 98.
MUI on the Amiga dates back to around 1992 or maybe 1993.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Try this:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_lu
It's got about 10 shots of Windows XP.
You know, I was just thinking about buying a Cube--not just because of the hardware, but OSX looks quite slick. I'm not about to change my mind, but it saddens me that Apple, in a move to protect a good idea, is going too far. I really wish Jobs and co. had a dose of sanity to go with the LSD-augmented genius.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
That patent ws filed at May 16, 1994, where the Fxxk was Linux at that time !? ...
I don't think so, because back in '97 Apple and MS signed a 5 year cross-patenting deal. That deal was announced at a summer expo, so unless they signed it in January 97 it should still apply.
You haven't used enlightenment, have you (or really mucked around with its theming stuff, anyway)?
The X11 libraries have an option to put an image
in the border or the title bar. Just look up the
manpages and documentation on a nearby unix-
workalike computer.
Prior art must be 1 year in advance of the filing date of the patent.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
If there was no alpha, there's no way microsoft could come up with an interface like the one shown in the screenshots. And not only can I feel the interface, I can feel the look, and taste it as well.
Of course it's not an argument against microsoft if that's all you see. But for me, the feel is blatantly alpha and pissed me off the second I saw the screenshots.
The Magic User Interface library I had in 1994 had both widget rendering libraries and pixmap data parametrization.
Prior art, anyone?
My guess is that Kaleidoscope will be updated for OS X. Maybe not... but one can only hope.
It would have to be completely rewritten. Kaliedoscope under Classic Mac OS works by using traps -- which don't exist under OSX (too prone to instability). The interface in OSX can largely be altered by modifying various PDF-format images an other things in the filesystem.
- Scott
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Tree House Ideas
As evidenced by the Flower Power iMac, Steve Jobs is certifiably insane.
Actually, the flowered iMacs could quite possibly be a huge hit in Japan (where they were introduced), and will probably appeal to women in the US. My mother wasn't the least bit interested in computers until she saw the iMac, and she thinks the Flower Power one is the coolest thing she's ever seen (personally, I would never buy one). My sister decorated her original iMac with a flower emblem.
Bottom line: computers aren't just for guys. People that aren't into floral patterns on computers can always buy an Indigo or Graphite (really cool). Or a Cube, or a G4 tower, etc. Though, I know there are still people out there that truly believe one doesn't deserve a computer unless one knows how to compile source.
- Scott
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Tree House Ideas
Yes - a lot of OS-X is built on open standards but Apple's system is not standard (it doesn't even have X-Windows for god's sake)
A lot of people feel this is a good thing. If you want to run X Windows on OSX, you are free to. Either way, far more of OSX is based on open standards -- or outright open source code -- than Windows*.
and apple did not even create large portions of it
This is incorrect. Apple/Next employees wrote the kernel, the Cocoa frameworks, the Carbon frameworks, the Classic compatibility environment, the window server, the rendering libraries, QuickTime, Quartz, NetInfo, all the application services, the OpenGL implementation, the I/O Kit -- the list goes on.
The only parts that weren't created by Apple or Next employees were the BSD portions. Much of BSD will be an optional install in based Mac OS X, except for the core networking and threading and such. Next/Apple took BSD but has given all kinds of things back (listed in my previous post) that were not previously available to the community. From what I can tell, the BSD community isn't too upset about any of this, and many are actually quite enthused.
Furthmore, they continue to invest in the Mach/BSD environment. This, like everything else in Darwin, is available to the community. Anybody can go and download this stuff. Yes, you have to notify Apple if you change it. Big deal!
- Scott
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WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Here is another idiot that thinks MS is going to take over the computer world.
Thanks for the personal insult.
By a lot of accounts, they already have taken over. It's more a matter of taking it back now.
If you want to compete than build something that average JOE can use.
That's exactly what Apple is doing. In fact, Apple is the teacher in this area, Microsoft is the student.
- Scott
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WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
staunchly 'protecting' their trademark designs (iMac, and now Aqua theming)
This patent was filed well before Aqua existed.
Apple believes that people *have* to copy their design because it is the *best* out there
I don't see what this has to do with patenting, but it really doesn't make any sense anyway. Jobs has said on multiple occassions that designers have an infinite variety of choices when creating the look of somethings. Many choose to just copy Apple's.
so what is people copy off of them?
Well, if there's room for the consumer to be confused when they purchase something (like the iMac knockoffs), then they have every legal right to fight it -- especially since the iMac has such a distinctive look. You'll notice Apple isn't going after the wintel towers that have colored panels on them -- that design is more generic.
I, for one, think that the Aqua interface is far too colorful and overdone.
Heard of Aqua's Graphite mode?
I'd rather not make my political statements by carrying a transparent computer
The iBook has translucent plastics, but the Powerbook does not.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I know computers aren't just for guys, but you should realize that I would think a computer with Transformers written on the side would be equally silly and tacky.
That would KICK ASS! Although I'd definitely want one with the Thundercats logo.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Mach, which is the core of the Mac OS X (and NextStep) kernel, was not written by Apple employees. Tevanian was one of the developers of Mach, yes, but there were many others. Mach was developed at CMU before Next even existed, and the guy who actually headed the Mach project (Rick Rashid) is a VP at Microsoft.
I was aware of all this (except the bit about Rick), but the fact that Tevanian was one of the key people really makes it seem like he has a right to use the code for projects at Next and Apple without getting too much flak for it. In fact, even if he hadn't worked on Mach, he would still be allowed to use it. Granted, I should have been more specific about the fact that Tevanian was not the only developer.
Do you have URL that describes the development of Mach -- the people involved and the project itself?
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Then again, Microsoft's bloc of non-voting shares in Apple (circa 1996?) may still be a strong deterrent against Apple's wielding this particular patent over them.
They were purchased in 1997. At the same time, Apple and Microsoft signed a broad patent cross-licensing agreement. This was possibly due to the whole fiasco with Microsoft allegedly stealing QuickTime code to make Video for Windows.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Because there was a Microsoft to provide an OS to them machines that Compaq managed to hack away the IP rights from IBM we all enjoy hardware advances we would have never seen otherwise. All this, at costs WAY below what would otherwise have been available.
If my deciphering of that is correct, you're saying that the MS OS helped Compaq clone the IBM PC. The truth is, Compaq only had to clone IBM's copyrighted ROM BIOS. And there's always the allegation that Gates & co. didn't even write DOS, but stole it..
I just read that Viacom patent and one of their claims really stood out:
creating, using a computer program for developing customized drawings under a control of a user, the pictorial frame elements having an arbitrary pictorial design;
I'm not a patent lawyer, but it certainly looks like they're claiming to have patented drawing images on a computer.
Kaleidoscope predates the Appearance Manager. I can remember using it somewhat successfully on an 030 Mac under 7.1. And before that, there was an extension which gave the System 7 desktop the look of the (then) upcoming System 8. So theming on the Mac has been around since at least 1996.
BTW, these days Kaleidoscope is amazingly stable. I'm running it and PowerWindows, which gives transluscent effects to menus and windows, with no ill effects in the dozen or so regularly used apps and I have crashes no more often than what a G4 under OS 9 would normally have, i.e. every 3-4 days unless Easy CD Creator is used. Blech.
umm ...
1. get over one-click. it's not the end of the world. that shouldn't stop you from "evangelizing," which by the way is NOT what apple needs -- no offense, but it's not religion, it's computing.
2. you didn't really read the article,did you?
3. how is this all the bodily damage you say it is? please explain it. just crying won't convince anyone (except the other anti-apple folks in this forum). back it up.
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
i just wish the Powers That Be would stop posting apple-related stories. nobody really reads the damn article -- they just start flaming cupertino. then somebody comes along about 10o posts in to say that, wait a minute, whatever was alleged isn't really what apple is doing.
... it's all the same.
by that point we've all wasted too much time on something silly. apple, katz
my proposal: no more apple topics.
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
This came up earlier in the thread, but did anyone stop and think that Apple has been showing off a themed operating system since the mid-1990s? Copland was first seen by the public in 1994 or 95; amongst its many features was the Appearance Manager which allowed theming of the GUI. Though Copland was killed in 1996, the functionality did appear in the MacOS 8.0 in, iirc, 1998.
Apple's got its own prior art with the first public showing in 1994 or early 1995. (Greg Landwebber's 'Aaron', which mimicked the Copland Platinum theme, was released at MacHack 1995. MacHack is a spring event.)
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
You know, I like Apple products. I even like Jobs himself (His technotheocratic attitudes are fun to watch, and at least he's not out for World Domination, at least not that I know of). But damnit, Apple needs to higher a new legal team. And while they're at it, they need to hire a new Ad company. Better yet, just let Stevey boy do all that stuff. He might be insane, but at least he's not an idiot.
Is it possible to file a patent application without using the word "plurality"? I've certainly never seen one! Apple's has 13 in just the claims...
Ya know, this is exactly what Geoworks got a patent on around 94 or so. The one they're using to get money from everyone using WAP. This patent just seems like a subset of the Geoworks one.
I'd also have to question whether Copland is truly Apple's sole invention, and how much actually derives from their partnerships with IBM at that time.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If it were about changing the color of the interface, or altering your windows and widgets, well - everybody's been doing that forever, right? I first encountered "theming" in the most literal sense with WIndows 3.1 - oooh, you could change the color of the interface [active/passive windows, fonts, highlights, etc. My Packard Bell was set for red type and borders and black everything else.] , but the damned interface still sucked.
This bit of theming begat skinning- with Win95+, winamp, the toolbars of IE/Win and Mozilla being prime examples. Yeah, you're changing the look and feel of the interface, but it's [application / OS ] still the same thing at the bottom and it still does whatever it is that it does when it's running the skin that it came with.
Anyone that's fidgeted with the Appearance Manager that ships with MacOS 8.5+ has noticed the "Appearance" option under the "Appearance" tab in the "Appearance" control panel. This is, what I think, the patent in question is referring to. One "theme" ships with MacOS- Platinum, the look and feel that it's had since OS 8. Apple was very dilligent about squashing the other three that were lurking about but didn't ship - Drawing Board, Gizmo, and High Tech. Since then, a bunch of others have cropped up (including an Aqua theme, go figure). Look and Feel is far more critical to the MacOS than it is to, say, everthing else out there- that's the important bit. These themes replace the Platinum UI *ENTIRELY* - different icons, different toolbar, widgets, even the startup screen. This carries over into OS X, in which the first change I made was to turn off the gumdrops and replace them with graphite. Again, impacting the entirety of the experience from startup to logout. [I've used classic Mac OS for several years and I have yet to find a more eye-pleasing and less cluttered theme than Platinum. OS X was the first time that I felt I *needed* to make changes in order to improve the experience.]
Were the OS a human being, Windows, Linux, etceras would be wearing their skinnable, easily modified UIs like a set of clothing. In the case of the MacOS, the UI isn't clothing- it's the epidermis itself, an integral and inseperable part of the body. [for Windows that would be DOS, for Linux the command shell] In the case of Apple products, the GUI is as integral to the OS as the shell is to *NIX. As such, theming has a much more radical impact on the experience- the patent is justified in this instance.
I'm guessing that this is how the Classic environment can blend in so nicely with the MacOS X native environment -- its widgets' behaviors must be different to play well with MacOS X so there must be some kind of "MacOS X" appearance theme to change those behaviors. They probably implemented this type of theming for that purpose and decided to try for a patent on it. Incidentally, that explains the date as well; I think May 1998 was around that time that they started work on the (mostly) seamless Classic environment instead of the MacOS X Server 1.0 style separate application (that was annoying).
I don't think that Apple could really claim ownership of the "Aqua" buttons. I worked for a company doing CBT, and they had a similar looking interface prior to 7/98.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Oh yeah, and IE too!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Anyone find it interesting that on the Windows XP page, they keep referring to Windows Media Player 8 as "mp8". Sounds to me they might decide to use that as FUD to get all the newbies out there to say "ohh man mp8 is way better than mp3".
IF anybody wants to see prior, just type: whois themes.org
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
>>How do you expect a company like Apple to compete with something like
... yah. Sure. What were you doing during the 1980s? Sucking your thumb and soiling your diapers?
... you have a point. :-j
>>Microsoft without leveraging whatever IP rights it has a right to?
>
> How about they actually produce a better product for a reasonable
>cost to consumers?
Where to start with this attitude? OK, how about defining the "product"? Apple produces computers (i.e., Macintosh) that are highly integrated with the OS. The OS features a by now very mature GUI which was designed from the beginning as part of the OS.
For many consumers, the elegance and ease of use of the Macintosh is indeed very reasonably priced. For such a discerning consumer, the value of that elegance isn't available anywhere else at any price.
> Before MS-DOS hit the streets, darn near any machine available to
>us consumer types had a closed architecture with a closed OS.
This is plain ignorance. THE first widespread Disk Operating System (DOS) was CP/M from Digital Research which ran on 8080/Z-80 systems. Early versions had to be configured and installed by the hobbyist (calling them "users" at that point in time is ludicrous). As the fledgling "microcomputer" industry -- still wearing diapers -- got up off all fours and toddled about the room, vendors were selling CP/M boxes already configured.
When IBM went a shopping for a DOS for their IBM PC, everybody and their brother fully expected it to sport a CP/M DOS since IBM made it known that they weren't going to develop their own. Lo and behold, Microsoft emerged with the contract using a CP/M rip-off they bought for a paltry $50K.
The rest of the industry which included companies such as Apple, Commodore, and Radio Shack, each had their own proprietary DOS. Microsoft -- quite literally -- created nothing and changed nothing.
> Because there was a Microsoft to provide an OS to them machines that
>Compaq managed to hack away the IP rights from IBM we all enjoy hardware
>advances we would have never seen otherwise. All this, at costs WAY below
>what would otherwise have been available.
Uh
The IBM PC Clone market during the 1980s (and well into the 1990s) was dominated by the ISA bus originally designed for the IBM PC AT; an archaic and slothful beast that led to some of the most amazing kludges to get the machines do more than act as more than glorified smart terminals (in terms of graphics) and do more than beep (when it came to sound).
Virtually everything done prior to the PCI bus for PC Clones was a futile exercise in playing catchup to what the Mac II accomplished back in 1988 (high speed 32 bit plug-and-play bus; fast memory mapped video cards sporting 24 bit color, et al.) based on the groundwork of the original Mac back in 1984 (fast memory mapped graphics, 3.5" floppy, built-in sound chip, built-in high speed serial) and fleshed out with the Mac Plus in 1986 (SCSI bus for high speed peripherals, and networking leveraging the high speed serial bus).
While it is certainly true that the PC Clone market supported a dizzying array of inexpensive hardware available for it, making it work could make the cost soar if you included labor costs. There was an old commercial with the tag line "you can pay me now or you can pay me later". Mac customers paid up front. PC users paid less at first but kept on paying in the long run.
> I thank the computer gods daily that way back in the day Apple
>decisively lost the battle for the desktop.
They did? Do you use a mouse? GUI? Memory mapped graphics? Multiple monitors? Synthetic sound?
Virtually everything you take for granted on your desktop machine is there because Apple developed it. And don't whine about how they "stole" it from Xerox PARC because (a) Apple paid for the privilege of examining what PARC was doing, (b) Xerox had no immediate plans to develop what was happening in PARC at the time as a product, and (c) Apple developed what we see on the desktop; what came out of PARC in the guise of the Alto was a very different beast.
>As is in constant evidence by
>their actions, they have no interest in allowing the rest of us lesser
>folk decide what we want in a machine or what OS will run on it. We sure
>as hell wouldn't have seen anything like a Linux come around.
If by "lesser folk" you mean geeks who are often more concerned with hacking their OS and hardware instead of just using it to get work done
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
Anonymous coward wrote:
...
:-)
... IBM had introduced ... MCA ...
...
...
>To correct a few of your points:
>
>(2) The decoupling of software from hardware is something Microsoft
>pioneered. Microsoft was not only the first software
>company,
"First" software company? Isn't that a bit of a stretch? IBM was writing software for years.
>(3) NuBus ran at 10MHz, which was faster than the 8MHz achieved by ISA
>(and, being 32-bit, NuBus was twice as wide), but
>not particularly 'high-speed'.
Speed was -- and still is -- relative. The fact was that cards could do things on NuBus and MCA (and a few others) that couldn't be done on ISA. Virtually all Macs could take advantage of NuBus (aside from toaster Macs) whereas ISA completely dominated the PC market.
The PC market has been so (relatively) huge for so long that it's almost always been possible to point to some instance of hardware or software comparable to all other desktop platforms (think C64, Atari ST, Amiga, Mac, etc.) At some point the weight off averages has to be considered and until PCI, all PCs may just as well be considered to have been ISA only, IMO.
>(4) SCSI is inferior to IDE in most single-drive configurations, and is
>far more expensive. Moreover, this is not a recent
>change. The SCSI-1 implementation used on Macs for many years was far
>slower than standard IDE interfaces on comparable
>PCs at the time.
Whoa! Unless my memory is fading faster than I thought, IDE didn't even exist when Apple introduced SCSI on the Mac Plus. SCSI was the fastest kid on the block for a long time. That aside, my point was that the Mac had a high speed external plug-n-play expansion capability standard since 1986 (aside from setting SCSI ID, of course). The closest PCs have had is USB and that market needed the iMac to kick the chicken to lay the egg.
>(5) Sythesised audio was not invented by Apple
I didn't say they did. What I did say was that it has been standard on every Mac since day one. Sound cards have become standard on PCs only within the last five years or so.
>(6) Apple was not the only company investigating the GUI in the 1980s. It
>was the first to release a product (the Apple Lisa), but
>the core concepts had been around for years. What changed in the 1980s was
>that microcomputers became fast enough and cheap
>enough to make GUIs practicable.
Good point though I must emphasize that the Mac GUI (largely inherited from the Lisa) was a quantum leap beyond what came before it. And making the first Mac "fast and cheap enough" was a major accomplishment. Too bad Scully over priced it against Jobs' recommendation.
Quibbles aside, your points are well taken. To summarize, I must reiterate that Apple -- via the Mac -- has far from "lost the battle for the desktop" (quoth the original poster I responded to) when in fact they created it in terms of what it looks and feels like today. Hmmm, "look and feel". Sounds familiar somehow
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
Some of the patents referenced by the Apple one are interesting. Viacom's patent on images in window borders looks pretty bad.
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Spelling by m-w.com.
What have you been smokin'? they look nothing alike-- other than the dock is also in the shape of a horizontal rectangle along the bottom of the screen. I can see all kinds of suits now, we'll call them the "Geometry Wars"
Actually, it reminds me of a nautical design done for the Gap.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but the other post is right, dammit. It's an image from the sample images that come with Photoshop. If anyone is pissed, it's probably Adobe. Still, the XP 'look' is as good as any previous design of a Windows OS. And I mean that.
I don't know. If they require all themes to be signed by Microsoft's cryptographic signature, it could be damn hard without patching critical system files (which of course would cause the system to crash everytime you upgraded to a new version of Internet Exploder, or used Windows Update).
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Well as Apple begins to fail (again) it would appear that they are doing the great money grab by patenting other people's ideas as their own, meanwhile bitching about how everyone is copying them. Hypocracy!
So Apple has now harrassed several theme sites including Stardock about Aqua themes but I have yet to hear anything about them harrassing Kaleidoscope.net who interestingly enough make a GUI themeing software for the Mac. So then the question that begs to be asked/answered is "will Apple begin suing companies that offer software for the Mac and further cut their own throats?" I mean if they are so very interested in protecting their alleged IP then shouldn't they by law have to protect it across the board and not be able to draw lines over who they do and don't go after. Otherwise someone might be able to point out in court that Apple wasn't interested in truly protecting their IP but merely used the actions as a means to hinder other companies from cashing in on a trend that they themselves had nothing to do with.
Now if Apple truly has some unique method of skinning the entire OS GUI that's non-obvious then more power to them. BUT, someone else could just come up with another method in which to do it that is different than Apples and we all still retain the right to do what we want.
It's somewhat ironic that Apple started the whole think different phrase some time ago and yet what they really meant was "think different, just like us".
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
http://homepage.mac.com/Cipher13/.Pictures/verglei ch.jpg
You're right. It is absolutely rediculous. So we're now down to arguing desktop icon placement and artwork are we? What a fucking stupid goddamn world.
:wq
I bet the Smalltalkers (and other OO-developers) are either laughing or crying at the absurdity of a company patenting Object-Oriented patterns, such as the Model-View-Controller pattern, which is commonly used for this specific type of GUI theming.
Actually, they purchased Q-DOS, which stands are Quick and Dirty Operating System. You said it was "QD-DOS", which I am pretty sure is incorrect.
The joke is that the original version of MS-DOS was exactly the same as Q-DOS, with all references to "Q-DOS" replaced by "MS-DOS".
now come on guys, this is getting beyond a joke. what a none-story has been posted here. yet again accusing apple of X, Y and Z. what is it with slashdot? are they THAT scared of OSX killing Linux or something?
mmmm..yes, and I give about a week before the format is all figured out. What are they going to do. Change the format with every version, patchlevel. Prolly....
Whatever it really means, I don't see anything for which there is not an extensive amount of prior art. IMHO, the ppl at Apple must be getting awfully desperate if this is where they think their profits will come from. (some sort of 'really unique' look to their GUI). There's a place for art, there's a place for engineering. There's no reason to try to mesh the two.
How can you trust that site? They use some weird moon-man language. I don't even think that's ENGLISH!!
--
You are talking about two different things....
The important difference between KDE, Gnome, Win95,... ist their API, not their look and feel.
By just using Sawfish/GTK Themes you can sure make Gnome look alot like Windows... but this doesn't help a bit if you want to port Windows Software.
Providing compatibility in OS/X for Win/Linux.. Software would be about providing the APIs of these OSes/GUIs. Which IMHO has _nothing_ to do with themeing.
Seems a little bit un-original to me...
>
Wow, the concept of using a magnifying glass for a search is really original...
>
So they're different, right?
>
This is just ridiculous. So they used a similar demo pic? please!
>
The garbage pail can be moved around the desktop in both MacOS and Windows. That's just down to the user's preference.
-Ciaran
"also an icon from the Sherlock family"
Wow, the concept of using a magnifying glass for a search is really original...
"yellow files = Win; blue files = Mac"
So they're different, right?
"what a coincidence...M$ also uses a flower to demonstrate the new surface"
This is just ridiculous. So they used a similar demo pic? please!
"oh, look at the place where the garbage pail now stands"
The garbage pail can be moved around the desktop in both MacOS and Windows. That's just down to the user's preference.
-Ciaran
Yeah, I'd like to see MacOS X without Darwin... wait a minute, it won't even boot without the BSD layer, now will it?
The BSD stuff is a mix of 4.4BSD for the basics, Mach for the microkernel, NeXT for the ObjC/Cocoa stuff, and FreeBSD for userland. The only apple code on that layer is what had to be done to support Mac technology and that XML stuff they're doing.
And obviously you've never seen Word 5 used anywhere. Back in the day it was the one and only, and Office98 was pretty good as well (better than Word 6 although a bit bloated).
You, sir, are the kind of Mac user that makes the rest of us look bad. Or you're a troll. Or both.
/Brian
I'm not saying that they're copying X-Window themes. I'm just saying that they're patenting something that's been in practice for quite a while.
-Aaron
selecting a theme from among said plurality of themes;
That's just retarted.
-Aaron
To a large extent, I think this patent is a defensive patent.
I agree. Lighten the fuck up, people. The stuff with themes.org was pretty sketchy, but there's a difference between copying concepts and ideas and copying the entire interface. And unlike trademarks, you don't have to enforce a patent to keep it (though you *do* have to enforce it consistently if you want to go after someone, right?), so let's wait and see if Apple sends cease-and-desists to all those window manager writers.
Remember the Adobe suit against Macromedia for "tabbed pallettes"? Or a suit by some fly-by-night company nobody ever heard of over ColorSync? Or how some maker of OSes for electronic appliances was going to sue Apple over the name "OS 9"? I'd be paranoid too if I were them. OS X is for better or worse one of the most innovative combinations of technology to come out in a while (for worse because I hate the damn genie effect, for better because I'm sooo happy it's Unix), and Apple can't afford to take it up the ass from some other patent holder.
Personally, I think Apple's being a bit anal about all those Aqua themes. Won't stop me using their computers, though, since they've still shown a genuine willingness to work for and with open standards (ditto for Sun, SGI). I don't care if the APSL is "Free Software" or not. If OS X lets me get my job done better than Irix or Linux, I'll use it. The fact that large parts of the OS have been made available (or are already available) in source form out of good faith in the community means a lot to me, and I trust Apple's not stupid enough to jeopardize what could be a great opportunity by legal terrorism of free software developers.
WE all have the same feeling here on /. it seems... IP laws and copyright laws are simply being pushed beyond thier limits after all they have been around simce umph-te-um and they were certinly not thinking of GUI design and Complex Theming when they were written... so the answer here is apple is just doing business as usual and trying to prevent others from gaining the little market share that they have. I think that while this attemt is not noble it is understandable... but hey if everthing went my way there would be new IP laws and legitimate uses. In the end Linux will prevail because no AMERICAN law is stronger than the freedom that an INDIVIUAL feels they have... Linux users and hackers will continue to hack GUI code with or without government support because hell we are INTITLED to resonably priced stable software and nobody-- not Apple, not Micro$oft, not even the drones who claim to be part of our own movement. This is not going to be stood for and if Microsoft doesn't fight it (fat chance) then WE will.
--OStone
"The Devil made me do it"
Remove *your pants* to send me email.
and just WHY are you critical of hippopotami? isn't that hypocritical of you? didn't you take the Hippocratic oath to do no harm? it isn't Hippocratic to be hypocritical of hippopotami, they have feelings too. shame on you.
I wonder, if the man in Redmond went after the open source fvwm95 window manager as a violation of their exclusive rights to a look and feel, would the collective we jump up in their defense?
--
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
Well, as far as bevelled buttons and soft colors go, OpenLook had that a long long time ago. I loved that interface, it may not have had the best widget set, but it was very pleasant to the eye.
The whole business of Apple staunchly 'protecting' their trademark designs (iMac, and now Aqua theming) is quite insane. Apple believes that people *have* to copy their design because it is the *best* out there.
1) so what is people copy off of them? If everyone does, it doesn't make Apple generic; it makes them the leader and innovator of the pack, something which will be respected by the consumer eventually. (and will certainly be applauded by us slashdot types)
2) they assume that their design is the *best* out there. I, for one, think that the Aqua interface is far too colorful and overdone. I'd rather not make my political statements by carrying a transparent computer and using a transparent UI - I prefer the simple, usable functionality of Be and photonGUI.
Oh really?>
Did Apple try to ruin Java, or break Kerberos?
Get a grip. Microsoft isn't known as the evil empire for nuthin'....
Yeah let's go kill all the apple copyright duckies out there and while we're at it we can destroy all the apple trees too... the big guys upstairs has some nerve to go copying apple computers logo like that.
- Toby
Steve Jobs is NOT insane.
According to Segfault, Jobs IS on crack however.
As seen on www.segfault.org:
"Steve Jobs Now Officially "On Crack"
Fri 23 Feb 16:29:22 2001 PST
Shortly after the release of the "Flower Power" and "Blue Dalmation" iMacs, Apple officials today confirmed that Steve Jobs is, indeed, on crack. "
The more I think about this, the more I believe that the true purpose of the patents is to "protect" the (US) economy from competition, by allowing US companies to sue everyone who even farts in a similar way as they do.
Imagine the Russians would have filed a patent for "an apparatus that transports a human into earth orbit and back", i.e. Gagarin's rocket. Does anyone believe that this could have stopped the US space program? Or how about an "apparatus that transports humans and payload, using a combustion engine", i.e. Daimler's car.
The list of truly innovative inventions that could never reach the degree of patent protection that most of the IT bullshit these days receives is long.
The intention of this blurb is simply to point out that the true reason for the current patent-nonsense is not what the patent office or politicians try to make us believe. It is simply about preventing competition for the US industry.
I never cease to be confused over the patents I see pass on my browser. I thought the patent system was developed to protect true innovation and not to protect the latest implementation of a concept (that has been around for years) whenever a megacorporation feels the need to protect its latest bell or whistle.
If this is not a bold-faced attack on the ability of the little people of the world to develop any competing products (or alternatives for that matter) then I don't know what is. I used to think RS of GNU was over the top, I am now starting to realize he just understood the misguided plans of our "friends" at Apple and Microsoft (and others).
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
I think that their attempt to patent any kind of theming hard or dynamically coded is absurd. I have heard of plans for GNOME to be taken to a non X-dependant method of implementation. So why would they want to get away from X?
More speed maybe? so what if they decide they want to hardcode in a default theme to improve performance even more. Oh...Apple holds a patent on that huh? Oh, well. They are really innovative, wish I had thought of it first... hardcoding that is...please...
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
I agree whole heartedly...I hearby dennouce use of all Apple products for life. Lol...
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Windows NT was selectable between the Win3.1 and the Win95 interface. The interfaces were data configurable from the control panel (border width/color, mouse double-click speed and left/right-mouse-handedness (i.e behaviour)).
When was that version of NT released? Is it prior art (to claim 1 at least)?
Can MS do the big money thing, and stomp on this patent before it takes hold?
FatPhil
--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I claim that I had the concept first, and cite the length of my post and my typing speed as evidence :)
Dave
Dave
It seems everyone if forgetting that Apple (as with all computer manufacturers) is a corporation.
Corporations produce products. These products have a design, a look and a feel. Products solve problems (some problems may be small, but all products perform a function that solves a problem). The way that these products solve these problems becomes property of the corporation (that corporation has the right to give up ownership, however).
If someone makes a car that looks like a Corvette (with a few alterations), Chevy has the right to stop that corporation from making that product.
When it comes to computer hardware and software, corporations still must do what corporations do. Adobe Software has its own look. If Corel were to make its applications look like Adobe's (pallettes etc), Adobe has the right to stop them.
The same goes with GUIs. Aqua solves the problem of displaying information to a user on a monitor. Therefore Aqua is a product bundled with Mac OS X. If another corporation takes the look of Aqua and puts it on top of another OS, Apple has the right to stop them or help them. If Apple chooses to stop them, I support Apple.
Poor, poor Apple... :)
Yes poor Apple but I'm darn glad that it's MS who's got a monopoly not Apple
How about Windows 95's theming stuff? All the X-Windows theming stuff?
You fool. Apple does not even need the BSD code. The MacOS is mostly based on Mach/Classic code. The BSD layer can actually be removed from OSX without consequence. Also, the BSD layer is actually written by Apple
Ha and I thought they were going to improve their OS. I guess it'll just keep on crashing then.
Up until Office 2001/IE5 Mac users didn't even use Microsoft products because they were bloated and unstable. Apple would easily survive without Microsoft's help. In fact, ask yourself this? Would you have a graphical Office or even Windows without Apple's existence?
I know lots of users who used Office 98. For the GUI well I don't like GUI's and can happily live without them. And yes I would have had a graphical interface without Apple's existence, their are 6 billion people on the planet and lots of them get the same ideas each day and hundreds if not thousands of them act on this idea. Yes GUI's would have existed without Apple, hell it's Xerox who invented GUI's But since you put it that way, ask yourself this would the Internet even exist without UNIX existence? And Apple didn't make much of a contribution to the internet, hell they still don't have capable Servers yet.
Grow up.
That is just like saying Linux can not survive without Microsoft products. Most of the people I know using Macs don't use Internet Explorer or Office.
They have Office and IE and they're still strugling to survive, imagine what will happen to Apple without support to those products.
MAC's are dead forget it, it's no longer the MAC vs PC's era it's the Windows vs Linux era.
If there was any justice in this world, Apple would be able to sue Microsoft for competing with them
Funny guy, do you really think apple will survive without MS's Office and Internet Explorer? For one they should be grateful that MS is keeping them alive.
How is Apple innovating by using Xerox's GUI and BSD's code? Is their anything they actually can do without basing their product on someone else's?
Now take a good look at that patent, print it and since you like it so much stick it up your candy ass.
well if you go here: http://www.thetechzone.com/articles/preview/winxp/ page2.shtml youll see that Windows XP has skinning abilities. So it is possible for people to make MacOSX skins for Whistler.
-nbot
here's my reply to all of that.
They all look like CDE, and quite frankly, I hate CDE.
think about this people, why would you want to theme cde?
How much of this patent claim actually "holds any water"? I read all 16 claims, but I am not particularly proficient in legalese. It would seem to me that everything in each claim has already been done before.
Can anyone clarify exactly what they are trying to patent here in layman's terms? Because if they are trying to patent OS themability in general, then it certainly won't hold up. However, it almost seems like they are trying to patent a certain *method* of themability. If this is the case, then perhaps the patent could stand, but rather weakly, it would seem.
Could someone please clarify this a bit?
I can understand why Apple would want to protect Aqua to the fullest extent possible. That interface is their current baby and they have invested a LOT of money in it. And I can understand if the purpose of this patent is to help protect that. Hopefully, Apple won't jump on the bandwagon of patenting stupid things solely to suck money out of others (Rambus, anyone?).
just my $.02US.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I believe you make a good point here. Even though I do agree that software patents are stupid, jumping in and beating them at their own game might just be the way to go...
just another way to hide the evil in sheep skin.
--this mesage will self distruct in five seconds--
I have an old 486 at home that's running twm as its window manager. Twm is pretty `themeable' and it's bloody ancient. You can specify things like the number of buttons that appear on the title bar and the bitmaps (monochrome only!) used to draw them.
I see no justification in Apple being awarded this patent. Ironically, the MacOS has had a thriving niche market in third-party UI-patching utilities for years, e.g. Aurora, Kaleidoscope, Greg's Buttons, Aaron, and countless others before Apple themselves got in on the act.
It specifically mentions that when a theme engine is used that the appearance *or* the behavior of the application in question changes.
I don't think I've seen very much prior art of a theme engine in which changing themes changed the behavior of a program!
An example I used in a higher level post was of a xterm window that changed shells based on themes, or changing to a finder style browser, a netscape style browser, or to an explorer style browser.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
It really depends on the question of whether GTK+ and E, and Windows Plus Pack, are covered by the patent.
If they are, then Apple is just dense and stupid, and I hope the patent gets thrown out.
If they aren't the same, then I hope Apple has something really nifty and cool in mind with this patent. ^^
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Here's why. In the first claim the patent mentions the changing of either appearance(skinning) or behavior(?) of an application when a theme is selected.
Theming, in this example, has *not* been done for years and years. Give me an example of an application that changed behaviors when a theme was selected? My example would be an xterm changing from csh to bash, or from a CLI interface to a Finder interface, or an Explorer interface, or even a 3d Doom style interface ^^
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Gomen!
I stand corrected!
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Perhaps my posts have been in error ^^;
The first claim describes a theme engine in which an application can change appearance(skinning) or behavior(?) when a theme is selected.
Is behavioral changes covered by the Copland whitepapers?
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Where they implement behavioral changes in the application due to theme selection?
I honestly don't know, other than speculating, if there is prior art.
Legalese not being my forte, I had imagined...
A CLI <-> Explorer <-> HTML browser <-> Finder
When selecting themes.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
All these examples only cover half the claim in the patent, where appearance is selected by the theme engine.
The other part of the first claim was that behavior would change when selected by a theme engine.
I don't know that applications have changed behavior when a theme is changed. Does your DOS box change to a CSH shell when you change themes in Windowblinds? That's a speculation on my part on theme selected behavior modification.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
The claim mentions behavior changes of an application when a theme is selected. Does the behavior of an application change under Motif or any other skinnable apps when a theme is selected?
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
You might be right.
I just didn't think all the anti-patent bashing folks should be the only voice.
On the other hand, it might not be the same. The wording of the patent is vague enought that E might be in the same field, and if it is then the patent falls due to prior art.
But if E is not at all what Apple's patent means when they say 'behavioral change', then E also has nothing to fear from Apple's patent, right?
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
What's gwm?
I am but a single person, and not able to find everything, as vast as the net may be.
What does gwm do?
Other than the speculation of Graphical Window Manager? Good Window Manager?
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
You're right, those are trivial aspects of theming.
We don't know what the intention of the patent is by the fact that the then planned OS never quite made it to market.
Everything is speculation unless we can ask Ed Voas or Arnaud Gourdol
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
I dunno if widget and menu redefinition was the intent of the Apple patent.
Does the xterm change behavior if the menus attached to it change? Does it change behavior if the buttons attached to it change place and use?
I don't know if Enlightenment and Apple 'themes' are the same. I just know that the patent claims more than just appearance, and 'application behavior'
It could very well be that Apple's patent is invalid insofar as the scope in which Apple intends to apply it.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
There's a place for art, there's a place for engineering. There's no reason to try to mesh the two.
What, like a Austin Martin, an F1 racer, an Acura NSX, the Golden Gate bridge, or the Arch of St. Louis?
Engineering helps push what is possible with art. Art helps to push what is feasible with engineering.
Apple likes to believe at least that the products they make are a nice blend of art and form with engineering and function.
So dose Ferrari, I think. Or Lamborghini.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
No, I don't think it would.
I don't know Apple's intentions. I do know that 'behavior' is vague enough that if you went to the extreme of it's definition that it *may* be patent worthy.
I just didn't want the thought that it might be a valid idea be drowned out by all the posts declaiming skins and patents.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
they have a patent on the method of theming; not on the end result. If you can prove that you can to the same end result without using the same method of getting there, then you're ok.
I would say that ripping off the theme from apple is not replicating their method. Then again, one could argue they ripped the whole gui thing from xerox, and so ripping it off from apple would be against the patent in the sense of using the same method.
This is why I will never be a lawyer ;-)
Well, you haven't forgotten the words of Jim Allchin allready, have you: ;-)
"Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business."
We need to copyright everything.
This is the returning subject of companies taking copyright of the function in a application.
It rather seems to me that taking a patent on everything rather kills the software world.
--------
The duck is actually a common clipart item. You can move the recycling bin around, notice that in the next picture it's gone. Also, if you've used Windows XP before, you'll know that by default it's not in that position. You'll also notice that Windows has been using the same icons for their folders for a long time, and that those icons were available in themes for Windows before they were made a standard on OSX. In any case, these are things that you wouldn't notice at first glance, and wouldn't affect your first impression of either OS. I hardly think of this as intellectual property as these OSes hardly resemble each other aside from 4 icons. Ooo.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
i don't think the patent is either concise enough or broad enough for them to use it against something like Linux, nor do i think they really have any inclination to do so.
"All you theme engine are belong to us" - Steve Jobs, 2001.
i wish i was but oh well
Here's an idea,
save all these patent stories for a once a month posting?
Micro$oft's.
The whole purpose of cloning the BIOS was so it could run the same software as IBM's PCs, whose OS was Micro$oft's.
I think we should email the US patent offece and prove that this patent is UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Technically if we prove theming existed before (we all know it did) we can get them to give the patent to the open-source community! Heck, if this is what we need to do to keep linux going we might as well begin to file for these ridiculous patents. Anyone up for patenting the open-source movement idea?!?!
I guess you were looking for this picture: http://homepage.mac.com/Cipher13/.Pictures/verglei ch.jpg
I agree with the fact that the patent was filed for in 1998, but it was only granted Feb. 13, 2001. IANAL but I guess this makes is "Patent Pending" for the 3 year period in between, and as such would probably have some "lesser" enforcement rules. I am curious however where you found info about the patent being transferred.
--
Jon - TheSpork
I don't think Enlightenment, kaleidoscope or any of the other theme's have anything to worry about, after all, this is an easy one to win in court, they were around before the patent.
I am wondering how the patent ever got awarded, themes have been around forever, almost as long as the gui itself!!!
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
...people sheepishly parrot...
That's one of the funniest mixed metaphors I've heard in a long time. I'm adding it to my list.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Right. You're obviously not a patent lawyer.
Just imagine what kinds of patents we would have if every element had to be unique. We wouldn't have many patents, would we? An idea may be unique even if every element is not - it's the combination of them that counts.
Apple's patent may very well be upheld if it's not overbroad.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
I agree - Apple's recent actions show them to be even less "open" than Microsoft. Everything that Apple makes is proprietry and they seek to patent/copyright anything which they can lay their hands on. You don't for instance see Microsoft patenting GUI designers ans in VB and they even allow you to use the IE control in a design enviroment. Apple on the other hand have this special system where they capitalise on the work done on BSD and then prevent you from redistributing code which you base on their work. Is this blatently hypocritial or what? Owain Kenway
Yes - a lot of OS-X is built on open standards but Apple's system is not standard (it doesn't even have X-Windows for god's sake) and apple did not even create large portions of it. Microsoft may not release their source code but then they have the right not to - they wrote it - whereas Apple's licence requires you to only provide any software using their components to people who already have an Apple licence.
That is just one "theme" in XP. It has many different ones, including the "standard" Windows look and feel. The one you are talking about did look a little like OSX though. There are many many themes other than this, and you can of course even make your own with XP.
The first application that is definately a theme manager that I can recollect was way back in August 1995 - some three years before Apple filed this patent. And the name of this product? "The Windows '95 Plus Pack"! It let you set the wallpaper, sound events colours, fonts, widget sizes... so I think that qualified as a Theme Manager.
Yes; it's true! Micro$oft have done something with a GUI before someone else thought of it. It's going to be fun watching Apple try and enforce this one in the courts, but not as much as seeing the same people who are currently bashing Apple for their actions over Aqua try and have their cake and eat it by bashing Mircosoft also...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Then you need a lot of money to fight it. Apple has plenty. Have fun.
Maybe they make the mistake of going after Microsoft over Whistler. Then M$ could use that prior art to kill the patent. For once, the big bad Borg might do us a favor.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Patents have to be non-obvious and innovative... this is merely a natural extension of the *truly* innovative Winamp skins...
To those who don't agree with us: Do you want Microsoft to get complete monopoly or something? Why can't you think in the long term and see that these patents are the only way to stop a beast like Microsoft? Apple is trying to help us here, so don't be so ungrateful.
innovation is not always doing somthing no one has ever done anything like before its also makeing tiny but very perceptible changes or using old stuff in new ways apple does this alot and microsoft does too (sometimes)
A company that has spent time and money researching something has the right to protect its interests. In the case of Apple, they have been working on UI's since the early 1980's. It is what makes a Mac a Mac and therefore is a major part of their company. They have the right to protect it by any means necessary. Now, I'm not so sure how I feel about this whole theme patent but I strongly believe that they have a right to protect their property. And if they can prove that they have had the idea for themes since the 1980's, before anyone else, then I believe that they should have the rights to it. If you don't like the patent laws then go do something about it. Don't just sit here whining every time a new patent turns up.
--- (-1)^(1/2) Alcohol and calculus don't mix - PLEASE don't drink and derive.
Before MS-DOS hit the streets, darn near any machine available to us consumer types had a closed architecture with a closed OS.
Can it be that I'm the only one who remembers CP/M?
Closed architecture computers were the exception, rather than the rule, in the days before MS-DOS. I built expansion cards for the old Apple II, no closed architecture there. And once you pulled the Apple II out (what passed for an OS on it was indeed proprietary, but considering you could pick up annotated source listings easily, or books like "Beneath Apple DOS" readily, it could hardly be called closed) the majority of machines ran CP/M, an OS from a company which didn't sell CPUs.
The idea that MS-DOS somehow opened up the microcomputer is either revisionist history or ignorance, I'm not sure which.
And the dozens of different machines which all ran CP/M don't count? Or the numerous CP/M luggables that showed up after the Osborne? Kaypro? Otrona Attache? Or all the S-100 bus machines?
The idea of software which could run on many different brands of hardware, all running the same OS, was bouncing around the computer industry for years; it wasn't something which just suddenly sprang out full-grown from the brow of Compaq.
Didn't SGI do this with Motif a long time ago? Or the web or any skinnable apps.
Well, they don't say that you couldn't develop your own themes, only that you wouldn't get it with XP CD.
I don't think it matters anyway, if they don't release the format (or tools to create themes), it will be hacked.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
I think that there will be some product to make themes, but I don't think that it will ship with XP.
(Think 95 and Plus!, frex)
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
I tried reading the patent, but I'm confused by the language. What's the difference between themes and any *nix system w/your favorite X11 window manager be it twm, kde, gnome, etc?
first post? nope, im better than all that, im here at the back of the class with the amazin last post posse. LAST POST!! W00T
If I read the claims correctly, they are referring to "hard-coded" theming capabilities. Is this different from the theming capabilities of GTK? Aren't GTK theme engines (plain, pixmap, and maybe others) dynamically loadable? If that's the case, then Linux really has nothing to worry about. It looks, as everyone else has already stated, that this is merely Apple trying to protect themselves from Microsoft, and the theming capabilities they want to put in XP. IANAL, but that's what it looks like it's saying (I'll consult a patent lawyer later today, and see what he says about it).
--Rob
-- Rob
Y'a jamais des choses qu'on peut pas se débrouiller ; juste laisse-moi t'aider!
The idea of moving away from X IIRC was using a framebuffer, which would allow programs using GNOME-libs the ability to write directly to the vid-card, going around X completely. This is ideal for embedded situations, like PDAs, etc. I also believe TrollTech has QT/Embedded, which writes to the framebuffer. (Okay, that was a little offtopic, but who cares.)
--Rob
-- Rob
Y'a jamais des choses qu'on peut pas se débrouiller ; juste laisse-moi t'aider!
"Better product"? He's talking marketing here, not products. I won't even get into the whole "better products" and "Microsoft" issue.
I just find it constantly amazing how anyone who can even entertain the notion that freedom and computing have ANY relationship to Apple Corp. Bash Microsoft all you like, but let's not forget that it was those evil folks that made it possible for the seperation of the hardware from the OS. No, some mainframe at MIT doesn't count either, nor does some kit machine. Before MS-DOS hit the streets, darn near any machine available to us consumer types had a closed architecture with a closed OS.
Microsoft did not create MS-DOS. MS bought rights to Seattle Computer Products' 86-DOS. The only software that MS ever truly created (as far as I can determine) is BASIC.
If any group is to be credited with opening up computing to the masses, I have to say it was IBM. IBM's decision to build an "open architecture" machine is why the PC world exists as it does.
Care for a few links on the subject?
Yes, but, that's not the point. Microsoft does not *plan* to allow regular end-user development and implementations of themes, which means that they did not design XP with that 'feature' in mind.
Whether or not the OS theme format can be hacked by a third party is a moot point: you can already "hack" Windows and give it a unique look... the question was one of ease and also one of intention.
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
Just because Windoze, KDE, GNOME, and Winamp themes are only skins
Hey! KDE2 themes aren't only skins! They can change the behavior, placement, and size of widgets both on windows and inside KDE applications.
[me@localhost]$ prolog
| ?- god.
! Existence error in god/0
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
You bet. I'm sure if MS went away Apple would die and wither... NOT! You guys are clueless, the relevancy of MS less and less as time goes on, a loss of Office already would be surviable on everything from Mac to Linux (Oh! Wait! There IS NO IE or Office for Linux. It must be going down the tubes then!) Soon it would just be a speed bump.
In recent news, the Apple Corporation has sued some of top makers of goldfish bowls. They claimed that they had a patent for them. They stated that the patent said: "Clear or translucent rounded container that is desgined mostly for decoration with specialized hardware for supporting it. Its function will be greatly reduced if it becomes frozen, as internal processed will be killed. The processes will need to be restored in order for it to resume its function. It requires periodic cleaning of internal medium contents due to fragments left behind by running processes accessing that storage medium. The processes will be killed if they are removed due to inability to access storage medium. It can become very unstable if there is not enough space available, possibly causing a crash. If the container applications do not recieve bytes regularily, they can also be killed." (IMAC == fishtank)???
Great, I'm going to have to recompile KDE if I want to change the theme:(
I wonder if the fact that KDE, Enlightenment, Gnome, etc... have been using themes for a long time will help them much if Apple sues them?
Actually the duck was included with OS9. It was one of the icons you could use for the multiple users feature. The MS version of that (the login screen), where they are using the picture of the rubber duck, looks *very* similar to the OS9 multiple user screen. Is it any coincindence considering how many ex-Apple employees Microsoft has hired? Or that fact that in some circles at Microsoft, Apple is referred to, internally as "R&D south"? :-)
Actually the duck was included with OS9. It was one of the icons you could use for the multiple users feature. The MS version of that (the login screen), where they are using the picture of the rubber duck, looks *very* similar to the OS9 multiple user screen. Is it any coincindence considering how many ex-Apple employees Microsoft has hired? Or that fact that in some circles at Microsoft, Apple is referred to, internally as "R&D south"? :-)
Sigh...You might be interested to know that Apple has been using the duck icon since before Mac OS X as well. They've been using it since OS 8.5. In other words, since 1998. Granted it is just a stock photo, but why choose one that Apple had already been using? Are there so few good stock photos in the world that they could only use the same one as Apple? Just wondering why Microsoft has so few good ideas before someone else has already thought of them. iklinux
Hello people! Patents aren't granted in a week. In fact it can take several years to be granted a patent, which is why so many products ship with the label "Patent Pending", which means that the company has filed for a patent, hasn't received, but isn't going to wait two or more years before shipping the product. The Apple patent that this article is referring to has absolutely nothing to do with OS X or Linux. It has to do with OS 8.5's theming ability. Perhaps you've seen the Hi-Tech, Kids Theme, or Platinum themes that were all supposed to ship with OS 8.5, well only Platinum shipped with 8.5, but Apple had already applied for the patent. You guys have fallen for the same mistake that most of the Mac rumors sites fall for all the time. They see that a patent has been granted to Apple, read the discription and fail to realize that it is talking about old technology and think that it's some new technology that Apple's about to come out with. It's not, it's just that patents often take a couple years to be granted since there are so many people and companies applying for them these days. So, the solution is obvious: Put ignorant readers on notice that if they persist in behaving like ignorant airheads they will be treated like ignorant airheads and will be mocked in the posts.
Looks like apple has violated my patent...
on SUCKING.
Ask the folks over at Kaleidoscope.net what Apple's attitude is to the theming of its OS?
Interestingly, one of the authors of the patent (Ed Voas) worked at one point with Greg Landweber, the author of Kaleidoscope, on Aaron. This was the precursor to Kaleidoscope, which restyled System 7 to look like the current Platinum appearance.
-dair
I'm not sure about KDE, but I know that GNOME (actually the underlying GTK widget set) already allows for multiple theme engines. In fact, even the Sawfish window manager allows multiple theme engines.
I'm guessing that there should be enough prior art to overturn this patent, or at least to make it an obvious technology.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Enlightenment has always been able to change the behavior of buttons based on the theme used. You could also change (for example) the ability to windowshade on a per-theme basis. Those abilities pre-date the filing of the patent by 6 months to a year.
IAAL,BIANLY
IIRC, trademarks have to be defended and used... patents don't.
The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion.
Repeat after me: theming is obvious. There is nothing innovative or complex about it. Theming 'engines' are also obvious. People were and are theming without any reference to Apple at all. And Apple isn't going to be going after Microsoft with a lawsuit (which they would lose) - they are going after the people they can intimidate and overwhelm.
I wish a lot of people would get over their instinctive, blind hatred of MS. I dislike them for the reason that I dislike any closed-source vendor: they are a closed-source vendor relying on the unnatural and invasive enforcement of IP laws against sharing in order to turn their development-service in to a unit-product. But they really are no worse than any of the others that are doing it, and far better than many. Including Apple. (Case in point: we can play Windows media content in Linux using the avifile libraries, but we can't play the Sorensen-codec Quicktime files.)
And what about Java's Swing toolkit, which lets your application look like a Windows program, a Mac program, and so on. I dunno exactly when it was released, but I'd guess that it was in development before the patent was filed.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The patent is specific in what it claims. For prior art, you need to prove that something already existing worked exactly the same way.
Then you need a lot of money to fight it. Apple has plenty. Have fun.
Plus, Apple changes its mind all the time. This is from 1998, and may have to due with the themes they never really used in Mac OS 9. You're reading way too much into it when you bring up Whistler.
I think OS/2 does a blue-screen-white-background core dump or something.
Are you serious?!!!
Ask the folks over at Kaleidoscope.net what Apple's attitude is to the theming of its OS?
I would love to look at the "prior art" search conducted by the patent examiners. This is a particularly brain-dead patent -- granted I will note -- just one month before the release of a new OS that touts its use of Open Source derived software elements.
Typical. And Hypocritical.
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
That statement is based on the assumption that MS looked at OS-X and then decided to use the same image. It's entirely possible (and more plausible) that both teams, earlier in development of their respective OS's, made a similar design decision--without knowing what the other team was doing.
The "theme engine", as I see it, would be an X window manager.
If the X Window manager is the theme engine, then X is a graphical user interface. If I was in the jury, you'd have a tough time selling me on the idea that X is a grapical user interface.
The claim 1 is:
1. In a graphical user interface, a method for rendering objects and handling behavior of said objects comprising the steps of:
o providing a plurality of themes, each theme controlling an appearance and behavior of objects rendered on said graphical user interface, wherein at least one of said appearance and said behavior is controlled differently for an object when said graphical user interface is operated in accordance with one theme than when said graphical user interface is operated in accordance with another theme;
o providing a plurality of theme engines, each theme engine associated with a different theme type, wherein at least one of said theme engines is hard-coded and at least one of said theme engines is a data-driven, parametric engine; selecting a theme from among said plurality of themes;
o identifying one of said plurality of theme engines associated with said selected theme; and loading, by said identified theme engine, theme data for operating said graphical user interface in accordance with said selected theme.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
Geoworks' patent that affects WAP is for flexible UIs -- essentially themeing on crack. They've had the patent for a very long time. Since the mid-80's I think...
I wonder if Geoworks will try and bitch-slap apple over this?
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
How long do you really think it will take before someone figures the scheme out?
And how long after that before the latest bug in IE or Outlook allows a virus that effectively (to use the word in its real meaning, instead of its DMCA legal meaning) scrambles the user interface like spaghetti. I hope Whistler has a 'Safe Mode' since it doesn't have the ability to boot to DOS to fix things up.
Oh, and the reason that MS isn't releasing the specs? So they can say "Oh those terrible hackers! Those awfull Open Source people!" (yes, we'll be lumped in there). "They went ahead and went around our backs to break our Theming Scheme! We did this for YOUR protection, and what did they do? They stole our scheme and made viruses to harm you! Its all THEIR fault!"
And the public will buy it, instead of wondering why the bugs existed, and without wondering if an open review of the structure could have prevented this mess.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Hrm...would the Themes that came with MS Plus 95 count? I recall getting this CD, along with the Windows 95 upgrade, back on December 25, 1995. Spent a while after that digging up new themes from across the 'net. What can I say, I was a relative newbie to everything digital at the time.
When was the Windowblinds project started?
For that matter, how long have KDE and GNOME been around? Could GTK apps be themed before GNOME, or is that just a result of the GNOME project? How about Enlightenment, or other window managers?
The filing date on the patent is May 8, 1998, so anything before that is fair game for prior art, I think. Emphasis on the "I think;" patent law is such a quagmire to outsiders like me, I'm never quite sure what's legit and what isn'
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
As evidenced by the Flower Power iMac, Steve Jobs is certifiably insane. He deserves your sympathy and pity, not criticism.
As for the patent, hell, even Apple has published prior art (i.e., more than a year before the date of filing of the patent), and they're aware of it. If you look at the patent, you'll see a list of references that include volumes of Inside Macintosh from 1988. To a large extent, I think this patent is a defensive patent. Perhaps there is some legal patent mumbo-jumbo we're not aware of, too.
The only original innovation here seems to be the idea of having widgets behave in an entirely different way in different themes. Not a big step, or one that (IMHO) should be patentable, but the blame for allowing such a patent (and thus forcing companies to apply for them to avoid losing control over their own innovations) lies on the USPTO.
--
And Platinum was, in turn, based on a theme prepared for Apple's Copland OS which was being worked on even while Apple was still using Motorola 680x0 chips instead of PowerPC. Apple's been themeing for a LONG time.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Yup. And I was just pointing out that Apple's actual work on themes predates the first public appearance of Copland---which was October of 1996, iirc, in MacWorld. I'd venture the conceptual work goes back as far as '92 or so, maybe farther.
Typical with Apple: they get the great idea, but they just implement it before the world is ready. ie, the Newton.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Even so you'd think they would take a chance at being original and use some other picture.
War is necrophilia.
I think it's much more plausable that they simply copied it. I imagine MS does incredible amounts of industrial espionage and they knew full well what was going on in cupertino.
Even if what you say is true once they found out what icon the competition was using (whose screenshots came first?) they should have switched the icon. How hard is it for chrissake.
War is necrophilia.
I think the adage, "The enemy of your enemy is your friend" applies in this case.
Slashdot is definately linux, or at least OSS -centric. Both the Macintosh and Linux/OSS have the potential to affect Microsoft's consumer and server OS markets.
Microsoft is, in fact, somewhat schizophrenic towards Apple, and vice-versa, since 1) Microsoft knows that Apple is a lucrative market for selling Office, and Microsoft makes more money selling Office than it does their OS. 2) Apple knows that Microsoft and Intel comprise their main platform competition, but also know that many people would NOT buy a Mac unless Office was availible for it.
Despite the fact that Apple and Microsoft "kissed and made up" a few years ago, and Microsoft made an investment in Apple, I believe that APPLE would have the most to gain if Redmond got phase-shifted into another dimension, since Apple currently offers the --ONLY other practical solution for a consumer computer--.
So, I think it's pretty obvious to most people here that Microsoft and Apple are still, basically, 'enemies', and that since the OSS community usually views Microsoft as the 'enemy', that makes them a -mutual- enemy.
Additionally, one could say that Apple is even 'Open Source Friendly', and has yet to take any legal action against any open source project that is not blatently flaunting its disregard for Apple's ownership of its own artwork (sorry, folks, but cutting and pasting Apple's buttons/widgets and turning them into a theme for E, I don't think reasonably qualifies as 'fair use').
Therefore, if Apple gains a piece of ammunition to potentially use against Microsoft, I think the crowd here would be more accepting of that, than if Microsoft had gained a piece of ammunition against Apple (for example, if Microsoft claimed the same patent before Apple had).
Hard coded? What do you mean by that? That you can add code snippets to Widgets? This would allow you to code much more complicated effects than the simple pixmap switching that most skins allow you.
I think that sawfish has some of that ability (being a dialect of lisp it is turing complete, but you know what I mean), with some themes generating all their images on the fly (gotta use those cycles for SOMETHING).
Anyways, I wanted to steer the discussion back towards code; display postscript -- as used in (NeXT? NeWS? I forget) -- was massively powerful for this reason; its UI was driven by a [restricted?] postscript dialect. This allowed you to basically push alot of nift into the display logic. Now this would all be of historical interest only if it were not for the fact that PDF is a restricted form of Postscript, and apple's display technology is based on PDF.
the only caveat is that AFAIK, pdf is so restricted that it is back to being a file format and no longer a turing complete programmign language.
If you want to spend your time browing for patents that companies any large hardware/software corporation holds you will find *many* frivolous patents just like this one, most of which probably won't hold up in court. Does that make the patent holding company (in this case, Apple) the bad guy? Not if they don't actively sue other companies using their patent.
There is such a thing as a defensive patent. It is in the best interest (due to the USs moronic patent and legal systems) for companies to seek out as many frivolous patents as possible, on the off chance that some other company may sue them for violating some other frivolous patent. Instead of dealing with the hassle and monetary cost of taking it to court, they just exchange a bunch of their frivolous patents and everyone is happy.
Please stop shouting that Linux has had theming "engines" for years. We all know that, and Apple probably knows that too... and until Apple starts suing random companies for patent violations based on this patent, no one really cares.
So please stop shouting every time someone sees a frivolous patent owned by company X. Unless company X starts suing company Y over a frivolous patent, it doesn't really matter to anyone.
Derek
The Windows 95 user interface by itself had a series of somewhat unrelated Theme organizers.
A theme for the coloring, typefacing and sizing metrics of common controls.
A theme for the background and standard icons.
A theme for the sound events that could be invoked by apps in a standard way.
A theme (or profile) for various recurring hardware enumerations, such as 'docked' or 'undocked' for laptops.
This patent by Apple appears to discuss a generalized system that combines all of these classes of "theme engines" into an over-arching "theme engine" that controls them all at once.
Windows 95 did not have a central theme manager, but the Windows 95 Plus Pack (released almost simultaneously) did. The sounds, icons, wallpapers, colors, fonts and metrics themes could be controlled centrally by choosing themes with the Plus Pack theme manager.
Also, if you specified that different login names had their own private preferences, then Windows 95 managed all of those settings separately for each user. (Much as Unix systems do with .bashrc, .emacsrc or other shell login preference ~/.foorc files.) Switch users and all of these preferences are changed automatically (albeit shutting down all foreground tasks).
It looks like Apple has a high hill to climb when Microsoft attacks on this. Of course, Microsoft has been laying low and settling cases out of court to keep the litigation threats to a minimum these days. Then again, Microsoft's bloc of non-voting shares in Apple (circa 1996?) may still be a strong deterrent against Apple's wielding this particular patent over them.
[
If I were to dissect it a bit, it's more than just *skinning*, which is to redefine the appearance of the buttons and widgets. The first claim mentions the method of rendering objects and handling behavior of said objects, as related to the appearance and behavior of bojects rendered by the theme. It specifically mentions that either appearance *or* behavior is controlled differently for an object when the theme is changed.
Of course it is. And enlightenment, when a new theme is applied, has different widgets on windows, with different functions mapped to them, and also can have different pull-down menus.
Just because Windoze, KDE, GNOME, and Winamp themes are only skins doesn't imply other windowmanagers/applications are incapable of changing more than just appearance.
Mod parent up !! Themes were available in linux at that point. Heck, my RedHat 5.2 release has themes for fvwm2, and that was before the patent filing date. I am pretty certain enlightenment had themes at that point too. GNOME's introduction of themes occured in very close time proximity to the patent filing as well.
Actually, Microsoft has no plans to allow third party developers/users to create new themes for Windows XP. Microsoft fully intends on keeping the format proprietary to Microsoft to prevent this. The only themes you'll be able to get for Windows XP will be officially created ones from Microsoft. Too many people are getting excited about the ability to 'theme' Windows XP's GUI without reading the fine print that's attached. Pretty sad, though. Yes, ugly broken themes that crash applications or your computer will be created, but that's not really different from any other software out there, is it?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Even though his wording was a little harsh, I feel asackett has a valid point.
When we hear of stupid patents from comapnies like Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft, we get upset. Usually we express ourselves with harsh words, boycotts and sometimes inappropriate actions.
Yet Apple seems to be an execption. They have made people remove Aqua and AquaX themes, created patents for themes, and done some very, very nasty stuff in the past. Yet we still view them as "good" overall.
Can someone explain why Apple is an execption to this rule?
MyopicProwls
MyopicProwls
My homepage
Let's dissect this and see what Apple is really trying to kill:
a processor yadda yadda yadda
Athlon.
a display blah blah blah
X11 and your video card and monitor.
a plurality of theme engines
These are called Enlightenment, Sawfish, IceWM, Blackbox, Window Maker, etc. Any themable window manager can be considered a "theme engine" under this patent.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
the theme only affects the window manager, not the windows being managed
Except the step from "changing the behavior of titlebar widgets" to "changing the behavior of widgets inside the window's content region" might not pass the "non-obvious" test in patent law. But then again, with our corrupt USPTO...
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I read throught the patent, and reading through the legalese, I'd say that there's absolutely nothing in this patent for which there isn't prior art. Basically, it claims a system in which there are multiple "theme engines", at least one of which has a hard-coded theme, and at least one of which has themes user-configurable through data files, and that themes customize either or both appearance and behavior. Now, the key is in the definitions, which aren't adequately given.
The "theme engine", as I see it, would be an X window manager. Obviously, there's more than one of these, so that requirement is met. FVWM has a hard-coded theme, so that requirement is met. AfterSTEP has data-driven themes controlling both appearance and behavior. Thus, most Linux distributions prior to 1998 are valid prior art. This patent doesn't have a chance of holding up in court.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Here's a translation of what's in the pic:
Actually, they purchased Q-DOS
You are quite right. I stand corrected.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Actually, Microsoft has no plans to allow third party developers/users to create new themes for Windows XP.
Personally, I have no intention at this point of ever running XP, but this sounds like FUD. Care to back this up with some facts? A link to an MS FAQ on XP, interview with an actual MS employee? Anything at all?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Let's take a look at this from a purely cash flow point of view. Apple needs MS for their browser and office suite. MS feels that Linux and open source software is it's biggest threat, yet can't act directly to attack it without the justice department all over their ass.
Now Apple goes and actually tries to enforce this patent at some point in the future. In the process, the ask for a ludicrous royalty to be paid for the right to do theming. Who really loses?
Well, Microsoft can afford the licensing without breaking a sweat. On the other hand, this patent sounds a LOT like what Mozilla does with it's themes. Damn near describes exactly the operation of Gnome and other Linux style window managers. Furthermore, who do you think is going to be able to pay for the lawyers to fight this thing? A bunch of hackers working out of their bedroom? They going to be able to pay the licensing for thinking a certain way?
Microsoft isn't going to fight this. In fact, if they weren't somehow behind it they're certainly celebrating. They've got somebody else to go out there and fight for their market leads in both the OS and Browser fronts without having to get their own hands dirty.
Think Different!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
If my deciphering of that is correct, you're saying that the MS OS helped Compaq clone the IBM PC.
Your deciphering is not quite correct. Compaq certainly worked alone on hacking the BIOS. Then what? They've got themselves a BIOS that's all hacked, but no product to put on the market. MS comes into play after this point, bringing the other piece of the puzzle into play. Neither company could have done this alone.
And there's always the allegation that Gates & co. didn't even write DOS, but stole it.
What allegation? Hell, MS didn't even want to do the OS for them PC's. They referred IBM to GDR to put CP/M on there. It wasn't until after GDR refused to sign a non-disclosure that MS was faced with either coming up with an OS or lose a ton of market for their programming languages.
They purchased QD-DOS (Quick and Dirty DOS) from a fella working at a computer store. They put $50,000 cash in his hands for all rights to it. More money then this guy ever saw in his life. You also have to keep in mind that neither this fella nor Microsoft saw the huge cash cow that selling an OS would become.
Nothing was stolen, nothing even underhanded. There are no allegations, other than those dreamed up by folks who thought "AntiTrust" should have been an Oscar nominee.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Right. History has shown the superior product always wins over the inferior one with superior marketing.
Are you meaning to suggest that Apple didn't pour big bucks into marketing? They ran a LOT more ads on both TV and in movie theaters for the Mac when it came out then MS did for Win95. Today Apple has another huge marketing blitz on the iMac and now the new G4's. Somehow, I don't think MS is especially worried about it.
Apple sells hardware and software as a single package because it makes the final product far more coherent.
Eeyup, that's the standard line for ANY proprietary hardware platform. So?
Microsoft isn't probably going to open source anything anytime soon, but Apple has open sourced all kinds of stuff.
Oh really? I guess all that XML that MS was integral in the development of must all be "closed source" then. How about USB devices, which again MS was a major player in the development of. Both of which are readily evident on free OS's and software right now, today.
With all that Apple is doing for open source software, I suppose I should be able to load up some of them things on my FreeBSD box. Like a QuickTime player, or a Firewire adapter, or something! Hell, at least the Linux world got a journaling file system out of IBM.
Oh, and doing a quick search through the FreeBSD ports collection (that's the OS that Apple is giving SO much back to with the single developer on staff with commit rights to the FreeBSD tree) no sign of a QuickTime server actually produced by Apple. One server is in there that somebody hacked together... the web site was dead though.
By contrast, a substantial amount of OSX is built on open standards -- TCP/IP, Apache, NetInfo, OpenGL, I/O Kit, Java, BSD, Mach.
OpenGL was out for NT LONG before Mac, which was a serious problem for Apple as they were losing market share in the graphics realm for a while due to this. All the rest is JUST now going in, on layers behind the fluff that was the older Mac OS's without any of that stuff.
With Windows, you have to deal with NetBios, WINS, IIS, DirectX, ActiveX, and kernel source that nobody can look at.
You got the source code to Mac OS9? Wow! And you don't have to deal with AppleTalk, Network Seeding and all that? Get real. Also, you're not gonna get much of a peek at anything but Darwin for MacOSX anyway.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
When IBM went a shopping for a DOS for their IBM PC, everybody and their brother fully expected it to sport a CP/M DOS since IBM made it known that they weren't going to develop their own. Lo and behold, Microsoft emerged with the contract using a CP/M rip-off they bought for a paltry $50K
... yah. Sure. What were you doing during the 1980s? Sucking your thumb and soiling your diapers?
One more try at bat here. First off, nobody knew that IBM was shopping for an OS for a new PC platform. IBM was very strict about non-disclosure agreements. Folks had assumed that if such a project were going on CP/M would be on there. Those folks included Microsoft. In fact, it was Microsoft that referred IBM to GDR for CP/M. It was GDR that turned IBM away, not MS stealing anything.
The only reason MS took on the project at all was to have a platform to sell their development languages on. They didn't have the man power or time to do it, so they bought it. No evil conspiracies, just a major screw up by GDR that changed history.
They did? Do you use a mouse? GUI? Memory mapped graphics? Multiple monitors? Synthetic sound?
The notion of a GUI, MM Graphics, and synth sound easily pre-date Mac, and out in the general public I might also add.
Virtually everything you take for granted on your desktop machine is there because Apple developed it. And don't whine about how they "stole" it from Xerox PARC because (a) Apple paid for the privilege of examining what PARC was doing
If it was all so clean, why did Xerox end up suing Apple then? Xerox lost, pretty much on the same grounds that would decide a defeat against Apple when they tried the same on Microsoft. Sorry, Apple is not the Alpha and Omega of all things GUI. They did some very interesting things based on the work of others, as has Microsoft, Gnome, KDE and others. That doesn't excuse them for being assholes with lawyers.
Uh
No, I was actually putting a lot of the platforms you mentioned to use first hand, to include the Mac. I know, if I refer to the crap things that Apple has done in their past I must either be 15, ignorant of computers, or what not. How can anyone not see the true glory that Steve Jobs has brought down from the mountain to us? Yes, I'll drink the kool-aid!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
GTK+ has several different theme engines that behave differently. On my Gnome 1.4 machine right now there are these engines:
- metal (libmetal.so)
- notif (libnotif.so)
- pixmap (libpixmap.so)
- raleigh (libraleigh.so)
- redmond95 (libredmond95.so)
These engines (at least most of them) support skinning. What most people think of as GTK+ themes are simply pixmap theme skins.
It's important to note that more changes than just graphics with these themes. Different themes have different capabilities, and some significantly alter the behavior of widgets, such as listboxes, scrollbars, and pane separators.
Maybe you believe that Apple has done more than this. Maybe they have. The problem is that what they have done is EVOLUTIONARY to what the Gnome and KDE folks have done with their theme engines. There is no true innovation here, its just the obvious next step forward. I'm so sick of a brick wall being built in the way of the natural path of a technology by a patent.
The way the patent system works right now, there is probably no legal piece of software out there that isn't more than seventeen years old.
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Sigh...You might be interested to know that Microsoft was using the duck icon in an MSN Explorer beta before it was shown in any OSX context. And the designer of MSN Explorer, Craig Hally, used it in design mock-ups about a year before that. It's just a stock photo. Calm down screwballs. :-)
IM sorry - who the hell is working at the USPTO? This is beyond ridiculous. Not only is there tonnes of prior art but the idea that a method to change themes is *not* obvious to a average person trained in the arts is also ridiculous. Are the USPTO taking bribes directly? What the heck is going on?
Apple has been promising themes since the first glimpses of Copland hit the news media (read: Mac magazines). At the time, everyone thought it was a great idea... let the user decide how they want their interface to look. This was when the "Platinum" look that OS 8 and 9 currently have was initially released. There was a "kiddie" scheme and another "Techno" scheme, in addition to the Platinum one. Some of the fonts from those schemes did make it into OS 8.
At any rate, Copland promised this and Apple denied it to us. However, the Appareance Manager calls were there, and developers slowly implemented them (some wrote their own, which defeated the whole purpose). Then Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose wrote Kaleidoscope and brought themes to the Mac, thanks to the Appearance Manager hooks (which they wrote, IIRC).
But Kaleidoscope has been a third party product, and has had its various conflicts with programs. Had it been an Apple program, there would not have been these problems, as developers would have written their program to support it.
Now, with their Carbon base, Apple will finally have full Appearance Manager support under OS X, and they have a much greater ability to force companies to write 100% Appearance Manager compliant apps (this is good). Apple wants to have a coherent user interface (whether it be Aqua or something else), and now it is finally available in the Appearance Manager.
However, while themes are something that CAN be done, they will likely not be. Again a third party developer will have to come along and write an app to allow themes. My guess is that Kaleidoscope will be updated for OS X. Maybe not... but one can only hope.
This brings up an important issue. Apple may have a patent (in fact, the patent is from the Copland era), but if they don't use it, don't they lose rights to it?
With Windows XP built for themes, and OS X using the Appearance Manager, Apple needs to include themes with their final product.
First to come under fire were greengrocers all over the world. Apple Computer's co-founder, Steve Jobs said today: "Apple Computer, Inc. has invested a lot of time and effort in designing the apple shape(tm) and it's simply not fair that these so-called 'fruit retailers' in every country are making a huge profit from what is essentially our design".
Once the competition from orchards is over, Apple Computer plans to move on to products in any way derived from the "apple shape", citing Del Monte as a major competitor.
Reacting to earlier comments from the Pope that "The apple was designed by God, not man" while citing the book of Genesis as proof, Jobs pointed out that "Though our legal team is looking in to these claims, two points seems obvious. Firstly, that the word apple is never mentioned in the book of Genesis, and secondly, that, whatever role he claims to have had in the design, God neglected to patent the apple shape(tm)"
Steve Jobs is mad.
According to the article, the patent was filed on May 8, 1998. There is most certainly prior art existing if Apple even tries to take out Linux theming in any way. In fact, I really don't think they have plans to go after themes in Linux. I merely think they're more concerned with Microsoft "stealing" their ideas, and coming out with new customizeable guis with different types of setups (whistler, hint hint).
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
The claim in the patent is that the theme engine can change not only the appearance(skinning) but the behavior(?) of an application.
I don't know if that is 'obvious' but I can't think of prior art, either ^^
My example is a CLI going from bash to zsh, or Explorer styled browsers, or Finder styled windows, when a theme is selected.
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GPL Deconstructed
http://delphion.com/details?&pn10=US05959624
This one was filed in Jan 97,
Systems and methods for providing a user with increased
flexibility and control over the appearance and behavior of
objects on a user interface are disclosed. Sets of objects can
be grouped into themes to provide a user with a distinct overall
impression of the interface. These themes can be switched
dynamically by switching pointers to drawing procedures or
switching data being supplied to these procedures. To buffer
applications from the switchable nature of graphical user
interfaces, colors and patterns used to implement the interface
objects are abstracted from the interface by, for example,
pattern look-up tables.
Seems to have been granted in 1999 and covers the concept of theme switching by changing resources in look-up tables.
As opposed to the patent in the current story, which covers the theme engine, which is the process by which themes are changed.
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The enlightenment I've played with lets me redefine buttons, skins/bmps/images, and mouse actions/events/menus.
I was definitely overzealous in my responses to the initial flurries of theme posts.
The real question is whether Enlightenment's implementation of behavioral changes based on themes is the intent of Apple's patent.
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"LiQuid" isn't as bad as it looks, I use it myself - Am I breaking the law?
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Well, if you're talking about this comparison, I think it's absolutely rediculous. Comments?
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
"Dont steal our ideas...Think different"
I don't blame them for their latest MS like behaviour, after all, they'll need a source of income of some kind...OSX won't bring in much.
i wish i was but oh well
I wonder if Microsoft has a patent on the blue screen? You don't see it in any other operating systems that I know of.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
Please, do! To have the install fests, you have to buy the hardware, and Apple could really use the sales right now!
;)
Apple is a hardware company. They might like you to use their OS, but it doesn't hurt them one bit if you don't. Don't they pay people to help make the very Linux that you want to punish them with?
Mothra 1961-2001: Her heart can reach!
Furthermore, even if there didn't exist decades of prior art, this kind of "themability" is a natural result of using standard object-oriented design principles and using dynamic object-oriented runtimes: creating separate software components communicating via abstract interfaces for appearance, user interaction, and behavior is a natural evolution of library design for graphical user interfaces.
What this patent mainly demonstrates is incompetence and ignorance on the part of the Apple engineers that applied for it.
It's also part of another disturbing trend: companies like Apple and Microsoft have depressed the quality of software libraries and software engineering so much that things that used to be pretty simple and straightforward might now be considered major breakthrough inventions in their systems.
There isn't much one can do about the patent office. But what you can do is examine patents critically when people apply for jobs. A long list of patents is not necessarily a recommendation, in particular when a closer list at the patents suggests that the people who wrote them simply aren't familiar with key developments in their field.
MacOS and MSWindows originally sacrificed flexibility in order to lower resource requirements. That's nice, but it is wrong to let them patent all sorts of features now that their platforms have caught up in terms of performance that used to be commonplace on high-end machines. (Incidentally, I don't think KDE or Gnome are much better in this regard than MacOS or MSWindows, which is too bad, since they had a chance to do a better job.)
Apple helps push the proverbial envelope of technology; often this is done by taking what geeks like you and i would consider simple technologies and advertising them as its own, touting impressive UI design and whatever other features we already know it for. by adding it to its systems [ after patenting it, of course ], Apple takes great ideas and publicizes them. a good example is Apple's inclusion of several shareware utilities, incl. WindowShade and Extensions Manager, in its System 7.5. although they were considered essential technologies to macaddicts, most end users had never heard of them. by including them in System 7.5's default installation, Apple pushed innovative products into the mainstream.
for this service to society, along with Apple's rebel facade, we think that it's a company on our side.
How do you expect a company like Apple to compete with something like Microsoft without leveraging whatever IP rights it has a right to?
Ben Schumin :-)
This sounds a lot like QT2's method of themeing, used in KDE. For example, certain widgets have their behaviors changed when switching from theme to theme. In the Windows-like theme, scrollbars are just like the scrollbars we all know and love, but in some other themes, the scrollbars have both buttons (up and down) at the bottom of the scrollbar. I believe it would also be possible, using QT's theme engine, to create an entirely new method of operating a scrollbar (or any other widget) by replacing the actual code in QT that draws and operates the widget, on the fly. QT's theme engine does just what this patent describes:
> providing a plurality of themes, each theme controlling an appearance and behavior of objects rendered on said graphical user interface, wherein at least one of said appearance and said behavior is controlled differently for an object when said graphical user interface is operated in accordance with one theme than when said graphical user interface is operated in accordance with another theme;
<QT2 does this.
> providing a plurality of theme engines, each theme engine associated with a different theme type, wherein at least one of said theme engines is hard-coded and at least one of said theme engines is a data-driven, parametric engine;
<This sounds exactly like KWin's theme management, and it probably applies to QT2 as well.
> selecting a theme from among said plurality of themes;
<The new Theme manager in KDE 2.1 does this.
> identifying one of said plurality of theme engines associated with said selected theme;
<KDE Theme manager again.
> loading, by said identified theme engine, theme data for operating said graphical user interface in accordance with said selected theme.
<Yeah, that's sort of necessary for themeing, now, isn't it!
This is disturbing. If Apple actually enforces this patent, KDE would be the first to go (And they're just finally starting to get some good themes on kde.themes.org)! Hopefully QT2 came out soon enough that it was before this patent took effect. I'd hate to see TrollTech sued over this dumb patent!
[me@localhost]$ prolog
| ?- god.
! Existence error in god/0
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Beveled buttons and soft colors? This is what you are using to say that MS is copying the Aqua theme, beveled buttons and soft colors?
Yeah, *nobody* used pastels or embossing in design ideas before Apple came along!
(rolls eyes)
'at least one of said theme engines is hard-coded and at least one of said theme engines is a data-driven, parametric engine' and 'providing a plurality of theme engines, each theme engine associated with a different theme type, wherein at least one of said theme engines is hard-coded and at least one of said theme engines is a data-driven, parametric engine;
It looks to me like what they have here is more than just theming or a theme engine, or widgets that change behaviour, but rather they are claiming a system that support multiple theme engines. That means functionality on the order of an OS that allows plug-ins that act as theme engines.
If so, I think Apple does have something totally new here. Imagine an architecture that would allow you to plug in a theme engine, i.e. have KDE, Gnome, Win95 GUI etc all as theme engines running side by side.
The flexibility of this seems to me to be terrific. It means a theme engine for each of a different class of GUI implementations.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
It's time for Apple to drop thier foolish patents. Enlightenment, even fvwm did desktop theming first
Read the article before you comment on it, or at least read some of the other comments.
1) Apple didn't file this patent, Ed Voas and his colleague did. Ed worked on the Kaleidoscope shareware theme-switching software prior to coming to Apple. Though I don't know if the filing or the employment came first.
2) The patent was actually filed nearly three years ago -- in May 1998! It was just recently transferred to Apple, though.
3) As somebody else pointed out, the patent affects more than simple theming, it's about changing UI behavior based on theme (not just where the widgets appear)
The truth is without us hackers Apple's attempt to regain the Education market will fail.
Apple's VP of Software Engineering was one of the key architects of Mach. I think he has some right to use his own code.
They sucked enough information out of us, and Apple has not given anything back.
Ummmm... ever heard of QuickTime Streaming Server? Darwin? NetInfo? I/O Kit? Go to publicsource.apple.com. They've given all sorts of stuff to the community.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Here's a bunch of screen shots from M$: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/guide/newlook.a sp
And here are some Mac OS X screens: http://www.apple.com/macosx/usingosx/desktop.html
Xt or Intrinsics upon which Xaw and Motif are built can provide a ludicrous amount of appearance and action. Just look at x.themes.org for some examples. GTK is also prior wrt some claims. As for the extra utilities to aid in theming, there's editres and probably a few collections of shell scripts et al. that change the xrdb (X Resources Database); I had one that adjusted the colors of an app based on which workspace it was opened on.
(Hmm, has anyone patented multiple desktops/viewports/workspaces/etc.?)
In a groundbreaking engagement today that has left many constitution signers spinning in their graves, Apple has finally stopped beating around the bush and patented style.
The patent reads as follows:
Systems and methods for providing a user with increased flexibility and control over the appearance and behavior of objects on a user interface are described. Sets of objects(read: clothes, accessories) can be grouped into themes to provide a user with a distinct overall impression of the interface. These themes can be invoked by calling a corresponding theme engine(read: wife, girlfriend, mother). Theme engines can be hard-coded(naturally stylish) or data-driven(Cosmopolitan, GQ).
Carrot Top was among the many celebrities concerned about this patenet and was, astonishingly, available for comment. "Oh man, I just made a milkshake machine out of a remote control submarine and a spatoon! That's got style, right? Right guys? Oh man, they better not try to patent this bad boy! I've got prior art, and it tasted like crap! Man, if they sue me, I'll finally get a spot on Extra or ET again like the one I got for beating the boy out of Gary Coleman!"
At first, I thought that perhaps (ironically) Microsoft's own Windows 95 Plus Pack! would have been prior art (the patent filing date is May 8, 1998. But then I read the patent. The only thing remotely novel I see is that a theme can be hard-coded rather than data-driven. In that case, I would think that Sun's Java JDK, with its Pluggable Look And Feel (PLAF) would suffice as prior art.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
- a processor for performing control functions and processing data;
- a display for outputting data received from said processor and for receiving input from a user of said computer system via a graphical user interface; and
- a plurality of theme engines each capable of rendering a theme by drawing an object on said graphical user interface, wherein a selected one of said theme engines is commanded to draw said object based upon a theme selection coordinated by said processor.
That sounds extremely broad to me. Looks like they're making a claim against any system which includes data processing capability and has UI themes. Note that they don't specify changing behaviour in this claim. And they talk in terms of themeing a particular object so an argument could be made that this would apply to themes within a single app (e.g. WinAMP skins). Of course the prior art on this one would be voluminous.http://delphion.com/details?&pn10=US05959624
They actually have a patent that already covers theme switching by changing resources or drawing procedures.
09/074,543
That one (can't find it, but it's referenced) covers sound effects in a GUI.
So I don't know that there is anything 'wrong' with this patent, given that there are other similar patents in the system, or that this is anything other than 'business as usual' for corporate America...
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I am curious however where you found info about the patent being transferred
My mistake. The scanned in documents are hard to read. Turns out it was invented by Ed Voas, etc. but it belongs to Apple.
However, the bottom line is the same: the Slashdot version of the story is extremely misleading. It makes it sound like Jobs just marched down to Apple legal the other day and asked them to patent themes.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
How about they actually produce a better product for a reasonable cost to consumers?
Right. History has shown the superior product always wins over the inferior one with superior marketing. Yep. But this really doesn't have anything to do with the topic. Microsoft has patents on theming stuff as well. Big deal.
I just find it constantly amazing how anyone who can even entertain the notion that freedom and computing have ANY relationship to Apple Corp.
Apple sells hardware and software as a single package because it makes the final product far more coherent. For them, the money is in the hardware. This is why they can give away iTunes and all the web-based iTools services for free (with no banner ads). However, it's the integration of the hardware and software that makes the machine easier to manager and provides the value proposition.
Microsoft isn't probably going to open source anything anytime soon, but Apple has open sourced all kinds of stuff. QuickTime Streaming Server, NetInfo, I/O Kit, OpenPlay/NetSprocket, and of course, Darwin. While Darwin it is based on Mach 3.0/BSD, Apple is continually pouring money into Darwin development as the core of OSX, and the community reaps the benefits. Also note that Apple's VP of Software Engineering (Avie Tevanian) was one of the core architects of Mach.
Bash Microsoft all you like, but let's not forget that it was those evil folks that made it possible for the seperation of the hardware from the OS.
Out of the frying pan into the fire...
Microsoft is doing everything in their power to lock you into a single software platform. Long term, the hardware is probably irrelavant. Oh sure, you'll have all sort of hardware to choose from -- handhelds, desktops, laptops, cell phones, appliances. But if Microsoft has its way, they'll all run Windows.
By contrast, a substantial amount of OSX is built on open standards -- TCP/IP, Apache, NetInfo, OpenGL, I/O Kit, Java, BSD, Mach. With Windows, you have to deal with NetBios, WINS, IIS, DirectX, ActiveX, and kernel source that nobody can look at.
It is a good thing that there are open hardware platforms available? Yes. Is Apple evil for having a standardized hardware/software platform? No. It's just a different approach that has distinct benefits for both the developer and the user. Look up some of Carmack's comments on how much more cost effective it is to develop and test for the Mac because of the standardized hardware.
I wouldn't want a world in which Apple sold all computers, nor would I want one where either Windows or Linux is the only only OS.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
This was applied for May 1998. This is years after Apple published the Copland whitepapers describing themeing.
I'm looking at my dusty copy of "Copland Technical Overview" by Apple Computer, copyright 1995. It seems to describe the task fairly well.
The claims seem to be a set of permutions of "data-driven" and "hard-coded" applied to the elements of implementing themes. Of course the devil and the legal bills are in the details. All in all, if you asked someone to implement the scheme described in the Copland overview the claims are the obvious ways to do it.
I suspect this is a defensive patent. One of those "we should see if the PTO will grant this, cause if they give it to anyone else we are screwed" patents.
This patent was filed in May 1998 by Ed Voas and Arnaud Gourdol, at least one of which I believe worked on the third party Kaleidoscope theme-switching apparatus for Clasiic Mac OS. However, it appears (from looking at the documents) that the patent ownership was recently transferred to Apple. I know at least Ed Voas went on to work for Apple, specifically contributing to the Appearance Manager software in Mac OS 8.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Maybe this is an attempt to stop Windows XP from looking so ridiculously similar to OS X. If anybody's seen a picture of Whistler you'll know what I'm talking about. They have the pleasingly soft colors, the bevelled buttons, and even the duck cursors.
Does anybody have a picture of Windows XP that they could share to illustrate the point? I can't find the copy I saw.
1. In a graphical user interface, a method for rendering objects and handling behavior of said objects comprising the steps of:
If I were to dissect it a bit, it's more than just *skinning*, which is to redefine the appearance of the buttons and widgets. The first claim mentions the method of rendering objects and handling behavior of said objects, as related to the appearance and behavior of bojects rendered by the theme. It specifically mentions that either appearance *or* behavior is controlled differently for an object when the theme is changed.
So skinning falls under appearance changing when theme is changed. This would be like WinAMP skins, in which the appearance and buttons can change by selecting skins.
But then there's behavioral changes. By changing themes, the behavior of the application changes as well. So let's speculate an example: An xterm window. Change from Theme A to Theme B. To simplify, let's say the appearance doesn't change, but the behavior does. This could be as simple as shell shifting from ksh to tcsh, or DOS. Or it could mean changing from bash to a graphical terminal window, in which icons appear when you type ls, and selecting an icon is the same as copying, and double clicking a folder works the same as typing 'cd "new folder"'.
It could also be that changing from theme A to theme B changes the terminal window into a Windows styled explorer, or a Mac styled finder, or a Netscape styled web browser.
For other applications, like a CD player, that could mean a change from cli to floating button box to hybrid of the two.
This is all just speculation, but it's more than just skinning!
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Signs appeared at farmer's markets over the weekend, offering Malus domestica for sale. Apple [TM] responded swiftly that these fruit still had an "Apple-like theme."
To avoid costly litigation fruit-growers accross the temperate zones of the planet are currently grubbing up their orchards while tree nurseries are bulking up pear stocks and looking to a bumper year.
Some confused orchard owners are reported to be installing Linux PPC on their apple [TM] trees.
http://fsfeurope.org/