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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.
Now, we leave his capture to Apple's lawyers.
I think this is absolute nonesense.
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In its barest sense they are tring to enforce their "ownership" on a mix of colors. What if i was to paint my car like a mac desktop.
Would they come after me?
Could they come after me?
Patent laws are just getting more and more ridiculous, especially with regards to electronics
its like the guy here in australia who patented the wheel
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/02/113
pffft
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
Just imagine if Burger King has decided to sue Jack-in-the-Box because Jack's new chicken sandwich looks too close to Burger King's Chicken Sandwich.
Jack's new chicken sandwich is long and shaped identicial to Burger King. Shouldn't BK have the exclusive right to make this shaped Chicken sandwich.
Of course NOT!, so should Apple have exclusive right's to a theme? No.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
(Prepare to lose all karma)
Apple has changed, Apple is no longer the company it once was. Aside from the fruit-shaped logo and the menubar running across the top of the screen, Apple Computer is pretty much a modern consumerish NeXT. I've used Apple machines since my former job bought a small group of Lisas in 1983. While I mainly used Amiga and Windows machines at home, I had grown to love the Mac and it's various shaped beigeish gray enclosures. Over the years Apple had made one hellofa a platform. By 1992 we were using Quadra 950 and 800 machines stuffed full of ram, video and graphics nubus cards, and all sorts of wild accelerators. The MacOS (System 7.1 at the time) had no problem with our multiple monitors or our 640x480@30fps streams of mjpeg compressed video. Color correction, TrueType fonts, postscript, ethernet networking (both TCP/IP and AppleTalk/Ethertalk) worked great right out of the box. Macs in that era were ungodly expensive and worth every penny. Perhaps they still are today, though in a slightly different way.
Then came 1993 when Apple start seeding their early PowerPC machines, and eventually began selling them in 1994. Apple forgot how to make great hardware. They began to rely on the CPU to do everything. Sure the PowerPC had some great oomph, but it alone could not make up for poor design elsewhere. Luckily, the second generation of PowerPC based macs in 1995 (7500, 7600, 8500, 9500) were **very** improved, yet still nothing like the Quadras were back in their day. Eventually the third generation (G3) of Macs shipped, first in beigish gray boxes and later in the funky blue&white swing-down enclosure. By now Apple was bring back the performance, incorporating USB and Firewire. But what they had was nothing much more than a modern PC with a different CPU and OS. The G4 machines with their mighty PowerPC 74X0 CPUs have allowed us to do some pretty exciting things with the CPU alone, but again, it's nothing too special.
So what has Apple done to differentiate itself? When Steve Jobs returned he and his gang of NeXT thugs took the marketing and software angle. They introduced a funky new interface that looked nothing like MacOS, NeXTstep, or Windows. They created some cool consumer and pro apps (iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro) that made use of the G4 architecture and other features of their machines. They've also become far more mainstream with their retail stores, online ordering, and strict warranty policies.
It comes to me as no shock that Apple wants to defend it's GUI look-and-feel. I love the Macs I use at work, but to be honest, Apple is always on the brink of disaster. Consider the following: PC makers, along with motherboard designers integrate more cutting edge features that ever, and do so with great stability and success. Software makers, especially Microsoft, cater to both the newbie while still offering powerful professional features (much like FontSync and ColorSync) all while maintaining tight integration with said PC makers. Drop the price a bit, woo some users. Build some cool enclosures that both look nice and are a dream to work with. Boom. No more need for Apple.
If you think about it, this is already happening. And fast. As every month ticks by, Apple has to work harder, better, and faster to keep up. It should be no surprise that Apple wants to defend one of the very things that differentiates itself from the commodity Wintel PC market.
Apple has done some great things over the past 25 years, perhaps more so than any other company short of maybe SiliconGraphics and IBM. I applaud their efforts and love working with their products. I also wish them the best.
No, Eric Yang, it is not ironic. What it is going on is very simple. You are unilaterally, and retroactively, trying to impose some sort of bargain, agreement or understanding upon Apple. One that that they had no prior notice of, much less agreed to in advance.
When you, Eric Yang, tested cocoa for Mac OS X 10.1, and found a drag and drop problem with NSPopUpButtonCell, you did so without any prior expressed or even reasonably understood conditions, understandings, agreement, or contract. You gave a gift of your own free will. Apple had absolutely NO reasonable notice that you were doing your testing pursuant to your secret, unilateral, unexpressed subjective belief that if you did such work, you could "of course" help yourself to the intellectual property embodied in Apple's themes.
The solution next time is quite simple. Be honest and up-front. Contact Apple before you do the work and offer an explicit, clearly express contract: "I will do 'X' if you let me do 'Y.'" If Apple refuses your offer, then simply do not do the work.
What you should not do is give a gift -- or what every reasonable person would construe as a gift -- of service while holding a secret, undisclosed, subjective, unilateral understanding that the "gift" is in fact conditional, and then whine and complain when your previously undisclosed condition has not been satisfied.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
What makes you say I'm "misusing the word 'sociopath'"? Care to give your credentials? Are you a psychiatrist? Do you personally know Eric Yang.
I didn't think so. I'm formally trained in niether psychology nor psychiatry, nor have I met Eric Yang; but I am a member of MENSA and a student of human behavior. I think I know a sociopath when I see one.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
So, my Apple party member friends (You know who you are hehe) always tells me that a 500MHz Apple box is roughly the same as any 750 MHz Wintel box, in other words, a factor of about x1.5 extra punch.
Makes little difference when they overload the computers with GUIs that takes x3 extra resources.
And not to offend anyone (I hope), but it is stomachturningly cuddly with all those brightly colored thingummies. Think childrens TV on LSD. And this people wants to copy?
There is a reason there is a way of measuring speed in MacOSX called "bouncemarks". Yuck.
Done venting. Thanks.
"You might notice that Aqua Mozilla was not updated recently, and the main reason was that Apple contacted my employer in attempt to shut down this project."
Just once I wish one of these idiotic Lawyers would try this bullshit with me. If a representative of a company ever contacted my employer regarding content on my personal website, the lawsuit I filed against that company would be in the news so fast it would make their head spin. The idiot who did it would be fired on the spot, because they would have to to protect themselves from collateral damages. Even if the suit never went to trial or yielded me a dime, the brain surgeon that thought he could intimidate me would get a serious and rapid re-education.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun