Apple Still Says No To Aqua-Like Themes

JoFo writes: "Eric Yang, creator of several Aqua-like themes and skins for GTK+, KDE, Mozilla, gkrellm, and others, was forced by Apple to take down all Aqua-related projects on his web site. It appears they went to his employer as a way to strong-arm him. He writes on his web site 'I went to Apple to test cocoa for Mac OS X 10.1, and found a drag and drop problem with NSPopUpButtonCell. They didn't even pay me for my effort, yet they try to shut down my project. Isn't that ironic?'" Apple seems at least to be consistent in objecting to nearly any non-Apple project that reminds the company of Aqua, so maybe this was just a matter of time.

Comments

Qt/Mac

[infiniti99]

Trolltech had to recreate the Aqua look for Qt (the GUI toolkit, not QuickTime), since Qt emulates the look of the native system rather than wrapping. Like all other QStyles, there is probably close to no platform specific code in the engine. Unfortunately, only the Qt/Mac release will feature this style, as it apparently would go against "Apple rules" to distribute this into other Qt releases, like X11. So I guess it is ok to emulate the Aqua look as long as you are going to run on the Apple platform. That or Apple specifically granted Trolltech this permission, as Trolltech has mentioned they "coordinated with Apple" to make Qt/Mac.

While I have suspected Qt/Mac will not be GPL for other reasons, I believe this is a really strong reason as to why it won't be. If it were GPL, then any coder could just snag the style and compile with X11. Why mess with pixmap styles when you have close to the real-deal as a rendering engine?

Re:Qt/Mac

[update()]

From a recent interview with TrollTech's president on the KDE news site:

Q. When Qt comes to Mac will Linux and Windows users be able to use the Aqua theme?

A. No, they will not be able to. Apple is very protective of the Aqua design, so we will not be implementing it on other platforms. Apple has offered their help to promote Qt/Mac, and we don't feel that going against their wishes will help them or us.

Honestly, I don't get why free software enthusiasts aren't embarassed to keep whining about this. Apple created this, let them have it. Either come up with something better or stop snickering about Microsoft and 'innovation'.

Ferrari is the only company. . .

[kfg]

that can use the Ferrari prancing horse logo without express permission. Ferrari is even the only company, by actual court order, that can make cars that are SHAPED like Ferraris.

Ferrari is NOT the only company that can paint its cars red.

There are limits to claiming 'themes' as a trademark.

KFG

Re:Ferrari is the only company. . .

[q-soe]

Actually the exact shade of red that ferrari paint their cars is copyrighted and trademarked and they are the only company to use that exact shade - you cannot buy it unless you are an authorised ferrari repairer (and there arent many of those) - thus your argument is invalidated.

Re:Do themes =~ look and feel?

[Auckerman]

How different is this from the lawsuit with Microsoft oh so many years ago over look and feel?

Very different. Apple lost because they signed a bad license with MS and it was ruled that Apple had licensed their look and feel to MS. Not many people know, as part of the IE budle/investment agreement, MS had to pay Billions (it's unknown, but that is what Apple claimed MS owed them) in back payments to Apple for licenses and as far as I know is still paying Apple to this day.

Microsoft's Luna is sort of a Rip of Apple's Aqua

[plaisted]

For example, if a collection of friends decide to create an Aqua-like theme and distribute it, what's that to prevent Microsoft from doing the same?

Nothing. Microsoft has already done this, in a way. The user interface for windows XP (called Luna) seems to take a lot of inspiration from Mac OS X without directly copying it.

And look at this shot. of Mac OS X:

Now look at these shots of the next version of windows CE (Pocket PC 2002).

Notice any similarities in the upper right of the screen?

As to whether this is legal (or would be if MS didn't happen to have billions of dollars), IANAL.

Double Standard

[jrwillis]

Ok, let's see how fast I can get rid of all my karma....

I don't mean to start a holy war or anything, but after reading the majority of the posts thus far I'm confused. While I agree with most people on here, that Apple has a right to defend its design from being copied, is there a double standard here between Apple and Microsoft? I just can't understand why when Microsoft does something like this it's the "Evil Empire" but when Apple does the same it's defended by the community. Then again, I guess I shouldn't try to understand the mindset of a group of people that post goat sex links and racist jokes more than anything else.

Re:Do themes =~ look and feel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

Microsoft bought $120 Million in non-voting shares, promised to port Office and IE for awhile, and Apple said they'd make IE Mac OS's default browser.

Apple didn't need the money (they have a few billion in the bank themselves), they just needed to show investors that Microsoft wasn't going to kill them. Microsoft got to keep some competition around, which was helpful during their little stay in court.

Since then, IE has won the browser war, Apple is in a great (for them) position in the market, Mac OS X is out and growing strong, and Microsoft has not split and has quietly sold that $120mil of non-voting shares.

Billions in secret back payments? It's a nice story, but no.