As clearly stated by Wardell, who was interviewed in the article in question. "Apple has the right to protect their intellectual property". You can't patent art, but there are laws to prevent people from exploiting your work. In this case Apple has used alott of resources to create a well designed GUI for their new OS, so i understand it when they don't want other operating systems to look like OS X right before the release.
Ever heard about copyright? registered trademark? If you think Apple is the only one to do this you are naive. Microsoft, IBM, McDonalds, Burgerking and Apple (+ the rest of the lot). All will protect their "graphic profile", and their "tradmarks". We had an example in Norway a while ago where a little fastfood shop witch was called "Macdonalds fastfood" (the name of the owner was Macdonald) was sued by the international McDonalds chain, forcing him to change the name of his chack. The fact is that these companys spends heaps of money on profiling their products and their profile, and if someone else copys their profile, the copycats gets the advertising effect for free, and who wants to pay for a competitors advertising? In this case, apple has put alott of resorces and money in developing the os x graphic profile, and copying it would be copyright infringement. I do support Apples rights to protect their investments.
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As clearly stated by Wardell, who was interviewed in the article in question. "Apple has the right to protect their intellectual property". You can't patent art, but there are laws to prevent people from exploiting your work. In this case Apple has used alott of resources to create a well designed GUI for their new OS, so i understand it when they don't want other operating systems to look like OS X right before the release.
Ever heard about copyright? registered trademark? If you think Apple is the only one to do this you are naive. Microsoft, IBM, McDonalds, Burgerking and Apple (+ the rest of the lot). All will protect their "graphic profile", and their "tradmarks". We had an example in Norway a while ago where a little fastfood shop witch was called "Macdonalds fastfood" (the name of the owner was Macdonald) was sued by the international McDonalds chain, forcing him to change the name of his chack. The fact is that these companys spends heaps of money on profiling their products and their profile, and if someone else copys their profile, the copycats gets the advertising effect for free, and who wants to pay for a competitors advertising? In this case, apple has put alott of resorces and money in developing the os x graphic profile, and copying it would be copyright infringement. I do support Apples rights to protect their investments.