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LinSpire LPhoto and LSongs: bring on the lawsuits!
Sir Joltalot writes "Over at OSNews they're covering the newly-renamed LinSpire's LSongs and LPhoto apps. Take a look at those screenshots, and you'll notice a striking resemblence to Apple's iTunes and iPhoto. Take a look at this flash presentation and you'll see that LPhoto and iPhoto are almost exactly alike. They look like nifty apps, to be sure, but how long will they last? I would have thought LinSpire might have learned from the whole Lindows name fiasco..."
Say it isn't so!
Call me a cynic, but before this entire thing, I never gave Lindows/Linspire a second glance. Now, they've been in the top of the news here at Slashdot several times. Nothing like staying in the eyes of your target audience, I guess?
But LTunes looks almost nothing like iTunes. Can somebody show me the similarity, other than the large song display? LPhoto does look very much like iPhoto... I just wonder if it has the same functionality.
Well, xPde look and feel is similar to XP, but I have not heard of Microsoft going after them...
It's amazing how similar the apps are, and yet LTunes still manages to look pants in comparison to iTunes. All this despite having almost exactly the same set of controls on the screen. There's more to this design business than you think.
Just take a look at OpenOffice...look familiar to anyone? Down to the toolbars and icons, it is a clone of Word. By design, to make the transition between the two apps easier.
So it's OK for "our" apps to copy the look and feel of a competitor we don't like, yet not OK for an "outsider" to copy the look and feel of a competitor palatable to many of us?
Give me a break...
The best feature of iPhoto and iTunes is that they integrate completely with the rest of iLife from Apple. Without this integration there wouldnt be any thing special about neither of them.
As long as the new Lindows apps doesnt integrate together, they wont last because other standalone applications exists that are better at what they do.
It was only resolved in reference to Apple v. Microsoft (and even there, Apple didn't lose on the merits of protecting look and feel, but on the wording in the licensing agreement it had with MS).
If you can argue that your product has a distinctive look and feel, then you can register for trade dress protection.
Also: you can apply for a patent for an interface (which someone else pointed out Apple has done for iPhoto).
Yes, cry me a river.
When apps _don't_ copy the look'and'feel we get all this whining about how the interface is "weird". See also: GIMP, Blender
So basically linux application GUIs are only allowed to exist in the interval marked "very very familiar -- not too different -- but different enough for my taste."
Anything else, queue the whining.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The screenshots are terrible. Is linspire a professional product? With which companies/OS is it trying to compete?
I thought that Linux UI had got beyond this stage?
And the problem is barely with the fact that they've virtually screenshot-copied from iTunes, but with the fact that the rest of the simple presentation elements (lists, titles, etc) are really poorly displayed. There's no alignment for example (something that would give it a lot of clarity), or spacing (visual simplicity, eases the user). It's the UI equivalent of a ransom note -- bits and pieces cut from elsewhere.
I understand that this is a commercially sold operating system. If they want to improve the UI of these products, I believe that I could do a better job!
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Its sad that with anything we do the first thought is either, 'we might get sued' or 'lets sue someone'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Design is more than just what pieces you throw together. It's all about carefully choosing those pieces, understanding how they relate, and then compositing them carefully. And doing that correctly improves a program's appearance and usability. It's an important lesson to keep in mind, whatever type of use your interface is going to have.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The tenor of this "flame"-thread seems that providing similar apps to Linux users that the company with the original idea refuses to supply, is bad. Time to start bashing gnucash, or any of the db people. How about bashing Sun for creating Star/Open office or Mozilla for copying NCSA Mosaic.
Geez guys, Lindows is not for programmers and IT staff, it is for people who want to get away from M$ and it's strangle-hold on the home desktop. Most people can't afford the base model Mac, but, they can afford a $200 Lindows/Linspire box.
As for interface, aren't all opensource project works in progress, and getting updated all the time?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
The same could be said of KDE (Windows ripoff), Evolution (Outlook ripoff), XMMS (WinAmp ripoff), KDevelop (DevStudio ripoff) and I daresay quite a few other OSS projects.
I can see not thinking that LSongs doesn't look like iTunes- only if you've ever used iTunes in browse mode. That's the only mode I use it in, personally. Or, maybe putting the play buttons at the bottom of the window threw you off- perhaps they have similar hopes for the judge.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Windows was a ripoff of MacOS (and to a lesser extent, CDE, which Microsoft worked on as a joint project with Sun and IBM).
Outlook was a ripoff of Eudora. Eudora was a ripoff of PINE. PINE was a ripoff of ELM. There's a long history of ripoffs there.
WinAMP was a ripoff of MP3PLAYER, the original MP3 music player from Fraunhofer.
DevStudio was a ripoff of Borland IDE.
Everything is a ripoff of something else. Just because YOU saw it first on Windows does NOT MEAN it was actually first on Windows. It only means you know a lot less than you think you do.
The karmic balance of the universe means somebody will now point out some obscure app or OS proving that I know a lot less than I think I do, and that is all good and proper.