I'm flabbergasted at Apple's unethical behavior ...
 

Watson = Sherlock 3. Most of us knew that.

But now ...

Spotlight = LaunchBar

Dashboard = Konfabulator (they even mention the programs being JavaScript and the little programs being widgets!)

And I have a sneaking suspicion Automator is a direct rip-off of something I don’t use.

My God, this just blows my mind.

Uhhh.. this isn't anything new for Apple. Think Stickies was an Apple invention? Nooooope. That's just one of the more (in)famous examples.

Nothing unethical about including good ideas in the operating system. Apple has done that many times. 'Unethical' might be ripoffs that don't adequately compensate the original creator (Karelia Software announced just today that they have sold Watson to a 'large unnamed company'), but companies sell off their creations all the time. 'Adequate compensation' would be just an opinion, without knowing all the details. These other items that you mentioned may have similar announced (or unannounced) news in the coming days, or simply drop out of the public view.

At least Apple purchases good ideas rather than muscling them out like Microsoft. The first adaptation that I can remember was WindowShade.

I still use Watson over Sherlock because they have more modules available. Apple could have copied every single module, but didn't.

No, that's Sun that Karelia sold it to.

http://weblog.karelia.com/Watson/Fut...tson.writeback
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/KitchenSink

And frankly, given its history, I doubt Apple's Tiger "innovations" are anything but wholesale theft. Cf. Proteron and LiteSwitch.

An old saying has it that imitation is the highest form of praise. ;)

Nevertheless, using the word "theft" to describe Apple's own proprietary development of a concept like Launchbar is going a little too far, imo. Same with Watson and Sherlock -- which do very similar things, but in different ways. There are copyright and patent boundaries that Apple is legally bound to observe (same goes for all software developers), and beyond that, all is fair in love and marketshare.

Something to keep in mind in this context is that Apple has lots of internal projects that never see the (public) light of day. We don't know how much of Sherlock's Watson-like functionality was already in development at Apple before Watson appeared.

Apple used to have desk accessories as part of the OS, then they moved things like Calculator to be full applications. Now, with Dashboard, they are moving back to desk-accessory mode again. This may have been in the works for some time. And Apple may even have approached the makers of Konfabulator with a financial offer that was refused - we don't know. But offering financial compensation when producing a competing product that you are going to bundle with the OS is a nice thing to do, it is (as Phil has pointed out) hardly "theft" even if no compensation was offered.

And the functionality in Spotlight seems to me to go far beyond Launchbar (and its several existing competitors) since it is based on the metadata that will be present in the new version of the file system.

My memory's not what it used to be, but the first time I recall a third party utility becoming part of the OS was when SuperClock became became part of the Date/Time control panel, and the Mac acquired a menu bar clock.

I guess my take on this is if someone feels this strongly about it, they should vote with their feet and their dollars.

Personally, Dashboard looks to me like a rip-off of the Lisa 7/7 Office System. How dare they...

Edit -- it kind of reminds me of CyberDog too. Thieving scoundrels...

2nd edit -- and let us not forget Desk Ornaments. Start your photocopiers...

I remember the shareware/freeware/non-Apple versions of WindowShade and SuperClock, too.

Back in my primordial pre-System 6 days, I had an INIT called SFVol which let me create and name a new folder from within a Save / Save As dialog box. Of course, eventually Apple added it to all such dialogs.

The one Apple should've copied but didn't was PopupFolder, though, which is how the Finder oughta work.

Spotlight is *not* LaunchBar. If anything, Spotlight will make LaunchBar (and similar launchers) much better, as it's a low-level interface that means they'll be able to do their thing much more easily. At least, that's my read of it based on the data on Apple's OS X site, showing Spotlight at a very low level of the OS. Spotlight also does things that LaunchBar, Butler, et al don't do, or don't do very well. The author of QuickSilver, which is similar to LaunchBar, seems to feel as I do:

"Spotlight is gonna be awesome. QS with Spotlight is gonna be awesom..er. Spotlight is more a technology than anything. QS can use that technology to its advantage."

From this thread

When discussing Watson, don't forget that he readily admits he was inspired by ... Sherlock, which was one of the very first apps to use the web as a data source for a desktop app.

And as others have pointed out, there's nothing new in Konfabulator -- it's just another form of desk accessories. Instead of whining, what they ought to be doing is figuring out how to use the framework that Apple has put in place to add additional useful widgets. As an aside, the word widgets pre-dates Konfabulator's use of the term -- here's a definition from WordNet:

"Widget: a device that is very useful for a particular job"

It's also generically used to describe user interface elements (text fields, scroll boxes, etc.).

Was Apple inspired by Konfabulator? Probably, although I personally dislike the look of the widgets; hopefully, third parties will come out with some nicer looking tools. Does Apple owe Konfabulator anything? A public thank you for the inspiration would've been nice, but beyond that .... probably not unless someone goes to court and wins a judgement to that effect. BTW, the thing that would make Dashboard more useful to me than Konfabulator is the fact that the widgets live out of sight until they're needed; I hated the fact that Konfabulator widgets take up so much screen space (hmmm, guess I just need a 30" display, right?).

As someone wrote on some other board ... if you're a Windows or Mac developer, and what you create are small, easily copied utilities that have a semi-valid reason for existing within the space of the OS, you should live in constant fear of absorption by the mother ship. If, on the other hand, you develop more complex full-blown apps, then your fears can be reduced somewhat, though it's always a possibility (remember all the MP3 players before iTunes, etc.).

-rob.

-rob.

Rob, although I'll give you the Spotlight != LaunchBar point, I won't concede the Dashboard != Konfabulator or Sherlock 3 != Watson points, at least in my humble opinion. Apple does rip off their software developers, and it ain't kosher.

Sherlock was a web search application. There wasn't that much to it. The key was that you could make channels for it. Which is something of a waste of time when you think about it. I have a number of searches in OmniWeb right now. If I type g and the key words in the address field I get a google search, if I type gn and the key words in the address field I get a google news search, if I type y and the key words in the address field I get a yahoo search and so on. Easy... much easier than building a Sherlock channel was.

Watson was actually more like OmniDictionary (which came out about the same time as Sherlock... late 1998). An application interface for web based data. Watson was supposed to be a development platform for those web based services. Instead of having to make a full stand alone app, you could make a plug-in-like tool for an existing app.

And that is where Apple just didn't get it. Making Sherlock 3 channels is many times more difficult than making Watson tools. That defeats the purpose.

Apple should have bought Watson like they bought (and they did buy it) WindowShade and the like back in the System 7 days.

Sherlock 3 serves the purpose of working well enough to keep people from buying Watson and then letting them disregard web services altogether. Maybe Sun will do something with it and make Apple sit up and take notice. I know I thought Dan might move Watson to another platform. It looks like Sun has seen what Apple hasn't.

There is no way around this, Apple did the Mac community a major disservice when they copied Watson (and they did copy it) instead of just buying it outright. We had the lead in this area and Apple just didn't get it.

I think, however, there is a distinction between crummy implementation (which Sherlock 3 is compared to Watson), and unethical behavior (which is the allegation made in this thread).

Segue: Take a look at our "Wish List" forum sometime. I think you'll find a significant number of threads asking Apple to do just this: incorporate 3rd party products directly into the OS. WindowShade, PathFinder, FruitMenu, CodeTek Virtual Desktop, Shapeshifter and pretty much every FTP client have all been popular requests over time. How would you reconcile this?

Ah, good point C.R.A.

I didn't say they weren't equal; I stated that the sources of both were somewhat common ground backgrounds. I also stated that Apple did take the concept from Konfabulator, and that they should've at the least acknowledged the source of inspiration.

I admire and respect Dan's work on Watson, and it's still an app I use every day. I met him at MW once and had a good talk with him about Watson. One thing he told me at one point was that Sherlock3 had helped sell more copies of Watson, as anyone who compared them saw how superior Watson was. I'm not sure if that still held true trecently or not, though (it was a while ago when I spoke with him).

I'm afraid the future version of Watson, at least on the Mac, is gonna suck. I've never used a Swing app that felt anywhere near as nice as a real Mac interface. I use a few of them somewhat regularly (jEdit, jAlbum), and though the programs are very very useful, they're quite painful to use given the ugliness of the interface. Unless they've got some real tricks up their sleeve, I think the elegance and simplicity that was Watson's interface is now gone for good...

But my main point was in the last paragraph -- both MS and Apple have a long history of incorporating low-level "utility type" third party applications into the OS. Sometimes they do it by buying the code (Window Shade), sometimes by buying the code and development team (SoundJam), and sometimes they just ... go out and create and bundle similar functionality. Other times, they do more subtle things, such as hiring the lead developer of a small product, but don't actually purchase the product itself (there are at least two apps in my mind where this occurred, but their names escape me right now).

Do I think Apple should've bought the Konfabulator team/product? I have no idea. I don't know what their code looks like, I don't know when Apple started developing Dashboard, I don't know what level of integration Dashboard has with the OS vs. Konfabulator, etc. Too many unanswered questions. Do I think Apple should admit they were inspired by Konfabulator? Personally, I do, but professionally, I imagine the legal team would advise them that the less they say the better -- otherwise, they would clearly be creating an environment that would be ripe for a lawsuit.

In the big picture, I think Apple is getting better at working with devs, not worse, despite these two examples. For instance, they now have an SDK for their sync service, so anyone can use it. Ditto CoreGraphics and CoreVideo, Spotlight, etc. In years past, some of the coolest integration technologies seemed to be reserved for Apple-only solutions (iLife). But only time will tell how the developers see the Watson/Sherlock trend/incidents...

-rob.

The problem with most of the arguments here is that what appears to be "stolen" is really an idea or new functionality enabled in the operating system in a way different from the creator's. In the history of desktop computing this has happened again and again, and I don't consider it to be "stealing" myself.

I think it was Borg-Warner who built the first automatic transmissions, but it didn't take the big automakers long to figure out how to do it themselves. Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc showed up in MultiPlan, then Excel, Lotus 1, 2, 3, etc. TK!Solver's ideas were embedded in dozens of other applications. Most operating systems now incorporate core technologies for text processing and graphics with lots of hooks for any developer of a "better way" that were originally entirely separate functions.

Konfabulator, Watson, and LaunchBar are clever ideas, but they are really better accomplished at a lower level - a level the developers couldn't get at. Apple did that, and you can bet there'll be hooks that widget writers will use, and that LaunchBar and Quicksilver will figure out how to use what's available. Even when Apple was giving away MacWrite and MacPaint there were successful competitors.

[OT] Java Swing apps
 

This is off-topic for this thread, but I'd be very interested to hear what makes the jEdit or jAlbum interfaces less "nice" than other (non-Java) Mac programs. I would have thought that a developer can create just as nice an interface using Java Swing as using any non-Java toolkit. I'm of course assuming that (as I see in the screen captures of jEdit on their page) that the Aqua appearance is being used - not the Swing "Metal" appearance which indeed is ugly compared to Aqua. In other words, I think it is a question of design rather than a question of which toolkit is used. Again, if you can put your finger on what makes these Swing apps less usable, I'd be very interested to hear.

Theft?
 

I remember how Microsoft "stole" the GUI interface idea from Apple. The two went to court and the court ruled that Microsoft did not infringe. Now, did they steal the GUI? The court said "no", however, in the court of public opinion (and the humorous quips by Steve at the WWDC) Microsoft did indeed steal it. One is based on rule of law, the other rule of appearance.

With that said, being in Marketing in a global company, the last thing you want to do is anger your base or portray yourself as heavy-handed. I know that Apple tried to purchase Konfabulator, but the creators refused the offer. So Apple came up with their own version (less robust). Is this legal? Yes. But how does it appear? Would it have been better to bundle it with Tiger? Possibly.

Personally, I think Apple should spend more time making Tiger work effortlessly with Windows servers, correct permission issues, preference corruption, application lockups, and interface intrusion--and less time coming up with copies of someone else's ideas. These "looky looky" apps are nice, but I would like to solve more of annoyances with OSX for my $130.

I strongly second the motion! I don't use Konfabulator, and will probably continue to use Quicksilver as my launcher, Cocktail as my cleanup application, Wormhole for transferring files without DS_Store or "._xxx" files to my PC Laptop which can't deal with them, and Carbon Copy Cloner as my backup application.

What I'd like in addition to Schneb's very good wish list, is a suite of better (non-command line) GUIs to core system functions you have to get at once in a while, but sufficiently infrequently that you can't remember how to do them, and I'd like an honest list of what hardware isn't likely to work any more so I don't have to discover it the hard way.

If you want to create wish lists, there is a perfectly good Wish List forum for just that purpose. Aren't we accommodating? :cool:

They did? That's interesting. Where'd you hear that?

Yes, Craig;

Cool and accomodating, indeed. This chat sorta glided into a wish list. Feel free to move it.

Alternatively, people could begin a new thread, too. It's easy and fun. Or add to one of the many already existing threads in the Wish List forum. This particular thread is probably in the correct spot for the topic it started to discuss.

By the way, here is a little more info on how Dashboard actually does it's thing.

Sorry, I misread the following article excerpt...

"After the keynote address introducing Dashboard, rumors swirled around WWDC that Apple had tried to purchase Konfabulator, but Rose and his partner refused the deal -- a point Rose emphatically denies."

So it was just a post WWDC rumor.

A good article regarding this...

And a screenshot it refers to.

Why assume they're neglecting these matters? Apple is a big company and they can probably chew gum and walk at the same time. ;)

I think it's more of a "feel" like the interface was made by a myopic Cold War Russian engineer. Clunky and dangerous.

How do you know they did not or are not? Tiger is still up to a year away (first half of 2005 ends a year from now), and from what I'm seeing on the tiger preview pages, there aren't a LOT of user interface "goodies" that Apple is talking about. There's a lot more core system talk than there were on the Panther preview pages a year ago. Metadata support itself is enough to make me giddy, but the stuff being added to Tiger server... Can anyone say "enterprise"?

hear, hear! here, here? hear here!

and...

remembering all the comments regarding good third-party tools, "this should be built into the OS!" now they gone and done it and we hear cries of "No Fair!"

what a fickle lot we are. we don't even know if private deals have transpired.

gentle people, i ask that you consider more than what appears to be.

Frankly I do not think this unethical I fail to see what is wrong with including third party innvations that have become very popular. It saves me money and its also a way for develepors to put something into the OS that they want there ans once its there the third party developers will come out with something else which results in a mutua evolution of application and OS alike

Tis true, however, I be a bit cynical with Apple. We have had permission problems since when? Corruption of preference files since when? And it is not for lack of not knowing. There are scads of posts everywhere with the solution being to delete the application preferences (if the poor new user can even find them!)
OK, I know that Tiger has to have some great new apps to get people to actually buy it and to sell more hardware and draw more Switchers, I'm not blind. However, sometimes they concentrate too much manpower on the frills and not enough on the spills.
Now, I am optimistic in some points such as the adaptation of Rendevous in Windows. Hopefully this will greatly ease the pain of networking with that sloppy OS.

I personally have never experienced any problem with permissions. But I suspect that such problems arise when a poorly-written installer changes the permissions of files to something it shouldn't, or fails to set the permissions of files when it should. I.e. it is an installer issue, not an OS issue. This would only be Apple's problem for those installers that it supplies.

Again, preference file corruption is (I believe) a problem due to poorly written applications. It is not the OS that is corrupting the files. It is the application that writes its own preference files and it is up to the application developer to do all the necessary checks to be sure that the writes succeed. So this is not an OS problem - it is an application problem. Of course, some of the problems have been with applications that come with the OS. Finder is one such application that sometimes seems to have problems with preferences.

I agree 100% with hayne. A poorly written app can corrupt its prefs, a very poorly written one could corrupt nearly anything. I haven't experienced any preferences files corruption except in some rare cases where I had to force quit Mail, and I've never had permissions issues.

The daringfireball article makes a lot of very good points (about Lite-Switch and Watson as well).

For those who have, and who don't like the terminal, see the second article on this page: Test XML Preference files

Except most these apps are iLife or Mail or Addressbook. So who is at fault? OK, it is an app and not the OS. But it reflects badly on the OS no matter what the source of the blame. If various apps suffer the same corruption problem, then the average users is going to curse the Macintosh and not the application in question. If all I did was make folders and shuffle files, OSX would be perfect. No, we use applications and it reflects on X if they refuse to start, refuse to quit, or refuse to work. Shine the blame, fix the problem!

Not property
 

The user interface Watson and the concept of Konfabulator are not property, so their creators cannot control every implementation of them. The world be much worse if their control extended that far. So it doesn't matter who thought of the idea first.

It's a separate issue, though, whether Apple is stifling competition by bundling these with the OS.

Agreed. The last line "gentle people, i ask that you consider more than what appears to be." applies to almost everything in life: there is almost always more to a situation than what appears on the surface. The only exception to this rule which I allow myself is when I hear something bad about Windows or Microsoft.