Leopard dock resembles Sun's Project Looking Glass?

While yesterday's WWDC may have been relatively uneventful for those keeping an eye out for hardware refreshes, Steve made sure he showed off the desktop of Leopard in as much detail as possible. Interestingly, the newfangled dock he managed to brag about may have looked a tad familiar, and as a clever user over at Maxasia points out, it is. According to him, the dock revealed yesterday sports a "troubling resemblance" to Sun's Project Looking Glass. Of course, Apple's icons do look a bit less grainy, but especially when you consider the silver platter that the shortcuts seem to hover over in both iterations, you can certainly start to to see the similarity. But hey, it's not like Apple hasn't been down this road before, right?

[Nando @ Jun 12th 2007 2:06PM]

Oh gwad! Can't we all just get a bong?

[z @ Jun 12th 2007 2:08PM]

Ok.

[Kevin @ Jun 12th 2007 2:07PM]

To be honest, I would say the only true similarity is the fact that the dock is now slanted to make it look like it sits flat on the bottom of the screen. As far as funcitonality, Apple didn't really introduce that much new so I don't think it's fair to call it a ripoff of looking glass.

[z @ Jun 12th 2007 2:07PM]

Isn't this glass looking dock simply just something looking like real world objects on a glass panel? Are we going to imply Sun's copied the real world? ;)

[Joseph @ Jun 12th 2007 2:07PM]

Who invented the dock?

[FermitTheKrog @ Jun 12th 2007 3:01PM]

This all looks like my Commodore 64 version of Commando. I think Elite should sue everyone else for "Prior Awesomeness".

[randy @ Jun 12th 2007 2:14PM]

In my opinion, when you steal someone's work, then improve on it slightly, the original creator has the right to steal your improvements.

[Bruno @ Jun 12th 2007 2:23PM]

Mac OS X's dock predates Project Looking glass (which was first shown in 2003).

You can easily say Looking Glass copied the dock and its growing and shrinking icon animation.

Dropping the background of the dock so it looks like a floor surface is hardly the defining attribute of that interface. It's something Apple has been doing for a long time elsewhere, including promotional materials on their web site. This inspiration from Apple is what prompted the reflections in the original Cover Flow which Apple now owns, so it makes some sense for them to carry it to the dock.

The reflections on a perpendicular surface may have originally been inspired by the dock in Looking Glass, but that's quite moot since, as mentioned, Looking Glass borrowed heavily from OS X to start.

I'm surprised no one tried to say the slanted view of album covers, and now documents, in Cover Flow was "copied" from Looking Glass' treatment of windows. It works in Cover Flow. Looking Glass is just decorative to the point of uselessness.

[Eric @ Jun 22nd 2007 11:26AM]

In fact, Mac OS X's Dock was originally in NeXTstep 0.8, from 1988. So it predates GNOME, KDE, Windows 3.0/3.1/95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista, and Mac OS X itself, as well as Project Looking Glass. It just wasn't 3D until now.

[Chris @ Jun 12th 2007 2:17PM]

And the new "semi-tranparent" menu bar is a ripoff of Vista!!! (hey a Mac user would point out something this tepid).

[Rob @ Jun 12th 2007 2:20PM]

I really hope Apple rips off some more amazing Vista innovations... like... um... Super Spider Solitaire?

[Christian Martin @ Jun 12th 2007 2:33PM]

If this was a story about Microsoft, there'd be 50+ comments already blasting them for being unoriginal.

[phoomp @ Jun 12th 2007 2:57PM]

@Rob
Well, Leopard has already ripped-off Microsoft's long established 'System Restore'.

[Andy @ Jun 12th 2007 6:13PM]

Actually, not System Restore, Time Machine resembles Shadow Copy which was introduced in... Server 2003 I think, then included as a home feature in Vista.

[Spanky @ Jun 12th 2007 2:18PM]

everybody copies everyone else.... an apple looks like an apple, the only thing different is the color.

Sun runs a NIX type OS, Macs run a NIX type OS go figure...

[diulei @ Jun 12th 2007 2:22PM]

Meh, as I always say, there is no one that has a completely original idea these days.

Although when someone takes inspiration from Apple, the fanboys seem to be much more vocal.

[michael @ Jun 12th 2007 2:23PM]

This is kinda funny. That screenshot of Leopard actually kind of looks like Vista.

The dock bar is now more translucent (similiar to Vista's taskbar), and they even have a similiar grassy background (simliar to the one in prebeta Vista, although also in Vista). It seems that Apple took some design cues from Vista.

While I like both Tiger and Vista, I have to say that Vista is more gorgeous and elegant of the two. It seems that this time, Apple tooks some cues from Vista. Now that's just funny.

[Nate @ Jun 12th 2007 3:36PM]

They took cues? What? It has a transparent dock, wow, the dock I have right now is transparent too. And grass backgroud? Are you high? Its fucking grass, that shit is everywhere how is that a copy. In fact there is a blade of grass backgroud that came with Tiger.

[Hawkman @ Jun 12th 2007 4:19PM]

I think it's fair to say they'll have taken a few cues (although Apple have sort of been heading this way, draining the colour out of things and simplifying). I'd like to think some copying each way is necessary and allowed, otherwise we could never have the same feature appearing in more than one operating system. Imagine the mess we'd be in...

I'm intrigued that Apple have used more transparency in Leopard though. It seems like a step backwards - the original OS X was brighter, more showy, had more transparent and translucent bits... Then they steadily grew out of it, making stuff more usable instead, and more reserved. In Vista, I'd always thought that MS had suddenly discovered the joy of transparency and were over-using it, like Apple in the old days... Maybe it's more of a cyclic thing, like flared trousers coming back :-)

I'm a Mac user, and I think OS X is (and always has been) way more beautiful. But that's probably _why_ I'm a Mac user, eh?

[Mike @ Jun 12th 2007 6:23PM]

Yeah...except OS X actually works.

[eddie @ Jun 12th 2007 9:18PM]

Yeah, the Vista resemblance was disappointing, you think they did it purposely to resemble Vista? So the hesitant buyer would think, hey it looks kinda like Vista, so it must be similar to Windows, and so lesser hesitation? Like a business / marketing strategy thing? (Sounds lame though)

[bob e @ Jun 12th 2007 2:23PM]

I think the dock is a stupid idea anyway. I don't want to see all my programs lined up in a row - give me the start menu.

Plus they stole that grass background from Vista!

[syadasti @ Jun 12th 2007 2:29PM]

Its no secret that Apple isn't much better than Microsoft when it comes to innovation. In the beginning God...er...um Xerox created Gui.

Even on OSX Konfabulator was first. Konfabulator was bought by Yahoo and is the original (for OSX). They came up with the original "widget" concept in 2003 for Mac and 2004 for PC and Apple borrowed and added the Dashboard rip-off a few years later in 2005.

They are originally called "object packs" by the real innovators but they changed the name of their product's objects to "widgets" as Apple naming is the Kleenex of consumer tech terms with their marketing power. Desktop X for Windows was the first 5 years before Dashboard - released in 2000.

Lets not forget when they added Watson-like functionality to Sherlock

[Zadillo @ Jun 12th 2007 4:29PM]

I'm sorry, but this really oversimplifies history. Yes, Apple did get GUI ideas from the Xerox visit. But the way you portray it makes it sound like basically Xerox had a bunch of stuff sitting around that looked just like what became the Mac, and all Apple did was copy it. That is the way you could argue that Apple didn't offer any innovation with GUI's.

But of course, this isn't the case. Apple saw some core GUI elements that inspired them; windows, icons, the mouse, etc. (note of course that some elements of what was seen go back to Douglas C. Engelbert and a lot of his early work). But Apple's Mac team took things in a pretty different direction, in terms of how windows worked, how a lot of the GUI elements worked, the function of icons (a lot of the Xerox stuff used icons more as representations of functions, etc.).

It's not like this stuff isn't available for anyone to compare themselves. One can look at what Xerox was developing, even see what Xerox Stars and Altos were like, and compare them with what the Mac team came up with.

I know it's a popular fantasy that Apple just wholesale duplicated Xerox PARC's work, and didn't do anything themselves, but it isn't backed up by history.

[Sam @ Jun 12th 2007 4:45PM]

@Zadillo,

"That is the way you could argue that Apple didn't offer any innovation with GUI's."

From a functionality perspective, they didn't. They _wanted_ to replicate the Xerox interface much more closely than what was seen in MacOS. Indeed, the Lisa GUI was _substantially_ more advanced than MacOS in that regard. MacOS's GUI "features" evolved because of its RAM limitations (only 128K for the original Mac, remember).

[syadasti @ Jun 12th 2007 4:53PM]

The point still stands. Apple did not innovation the GUI. Apple's products are well rounded evolutions of existing technology. Microsoft's products aren't quite as well rounded and its fun to pick on the big guy but they aren't much different than Apple.

[Todd @ Jun 12th 2007 2:30PM]

Oh it gets worse. You know how the iPhone does that little trick to flip the orientation of the screen when you move the phone a round in three dimentional space? I watched Sun's CTO Greg Papadopoulos demonstrate the concept in person back in 2006:

http://www.sunspotworld.com/

I don't know if Apple and Sun "share" offically, or if the employees just all get drunk at the same bar. Dig deeper in Leopard, you find more Sun stuff.

[Dinraj Pradeep @ Jun 12th 2007 5:29PM]

F-origin's Myorigami had it in 2003.

[Minowar @ Jun 12th 2007 2:33PM]

And what about Vista's Flip 3D? I remember that Sun again showed a feature like that but Microsoft copied it identically. Sun showed that feature after Exposé at the Solaris 10 presentation.

[magicvash @ Jun 12th 2007 2:35PM]

I love how when Apple's OS has things that remind us of other operating systems (the glass bar from Vista, the floor-glass styled dock from LookingGlass) everyone rationalizes it and people say "wow well Apple is cool and they made it look good".

God forbid someone copying something from Apple, because all the fanboys will scream bloody murder. It's sacrilegious to steal from Apple right? Maybe we should burn everyone who steals from Apple at the stake or crucify them.

I'm writing this on an iMac so shut up. I'm not a Microsoft (or MS or M$ or however you want to write it so you look cool) fanboy. I have 2 ipods, 3 macs sitting at home. If you don't like what I say, bite me and come upstairs from your mom's basement.

[dogpants @ Jun 12th 2007 3:26PM]

wut are you doing in my mom's basement? bring out the gimp

[randy @ Jun 12th 2007 2:37PM]

I think it would be neat if the indicator arrows beneath icons in the Mac OS X Dock changed their color to red when the applications are HANGED and UNRESPONSIVE. Because it happens all the fucking time on Macs.

[Jeff Foster @ Jun 12th 2007 5:58PM]

hgahah that would be nice - my old "AGP" G4 always hangs... but my more recent G4 tower (dual 867mhz MDD) with enough ram doesn't really have the problem.

maybe your mac is broken, or worthlessly old. :)

[Joshua Ghosn @ Jun 12th 2007 2:40PM]

What`s impossible is to copy the mac`s fanboys sectarism!!!
OMG, Neither everything good had been created by Saint Jobs Co.

[nicleT @ Jun 12th 2007 2:49PM]

Hey! and the Vista's 45-degree angle windows strangely resembles to the Sun's project either!!!

[krizoitz @ Jun 12th 2007 2:50PM]

"Its no secret that Apple isn't much better than Microsoft when it comes to innovation. In the beginning God...er...um Xerox created Gui."

Yeah the difference being Apple had permission from Xerox to take some of the early concepts they gathered from a vist to Xerox Parc and use them in a real world OS because Xerox had no intention of doing so. Also the Alto while it did have a GUI lacked many of the things that Apple later incorporated in the Lisa/Macintosh, such as overlapping windows (Xerox's GUI had only tiling windows).

"Even on OSX Konfabulator was first. Konfabulator was bought by Yahoo and is the original (for OSX). They came up with the original "widget" concept in 2003 for Mac and 2004 for PC and Apple borrowed and added the Dashboard rip-off a few years later in 2005."

Which was a modern day version of Apple's own Desk Accessories from the original Mac System 1.

[syadasti @ Jun 12th 2007 3:24PM]

"Yeah the difference being Apple had permission from Xerox to take some of the early concepts they gathered from a vist to Xerox Parc and use them in a real world OS because Xerox had no intention of doing so. Also the Alto while it did have a GUI lacked many of the things that Apple later incorporated in the Lisa/Macintosh, such as overlapping windows (Xerox's GUI had only tiling windows)."

Borrowing someone else's ideas is not innovation.



No that was a crappy alternative to multitasking and nothing new either. Commodore was the real innovator back then - they had a 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking operating system... "Only on Amiga!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yckH20ngY4Y

[syadasti @ Jun 12th 2007 3:26PM]

Sorry it deleted your other comment...

"Which was a modern day version of Apple's own Desk Accessories from the original Mac System 1."

No that was a crappy alternative to multitasking and nothing new either. Commodore was the real innovator back then - they had a 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking operating system... "Only on Amiga!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yckH20ngY4Y

[Sam @ Jun 12th 2007 5:30PM]

If I recall correctly, they _had_ demonstrated overlapping windows (Smalltalk!), but such a GUI was considered a productivity impairment. Even today, most "power users" of *nix systems equipped with X Window System choose tiling and/or tabbing window managers (twm doesn't count; I'm talking about things like ratpoison, Ion, xmonad, etc) over the more frilly overlapping window managers. Both environments have their benefits and disadvantages of course. I'm a fan for overlapping window systems when working intensely with graphics, but otherwise I prefer tiling window managers.

AmigaOS worked around this problem via "screens" (the display contains one or more screens, each screen contains zero or more overlapping windows, each window contains zero or more gadgets, etc). Since the screen was a program-controllable object like windows, and not a statically assigned entity like virtual desktops, congestion on the screen was very rare. The only disadvantage to this is it impedes drag-n-drop. OTOH, AmigaOS had a substantially more powerful clipboard than Windows (the architecture was inspired by X11, but the storage format was inspired by MacOS). So even the Amiga isn't immune from copying other people's good ideas. :-)

[Kurt @ Jun 12th 2007 3:33PM]

Ha! This is what all the Vista haters are going to line up to pay $150 for?

It should be spelled Leper'd.

[Shabbis @ Jun 12th 2007 4:12PM]

Todd,

AFAIK, the Apple Newton already had this technology (orientation flip) back in 1994 or so.

[Zadillo @ Jun 12th 2007 4:31PM]

The Newton couldn't flip the orientation automatically by detecting a change in the orientation of the device itself though.... you had to do it yourself.

[Joonas @ Jun 12th 2007 4:44PM]

I don't know if I'm alone with this, but in my opinion whoever invents something first doesn't account for much in the big picture. If the original creator fails to see the importance of his design or fails to properly utilize or merchandize it and someone else does so instead, all the more credit to the one who has the vision and acts accordingly. I mean, MP3 players existed way before Apple got into the market but we all know what happened when iPod was launched. Most inventions turn into commodities at some point anyway after which only the qualities of the product itself count, not who originally came up with it.

So, in the end, I don't really care about who came up with which GUI element or OS feature; it's the execution of these ideas that matters.

[Constable Odo @ Jun 12th 2007 5:07PM]

I really like the way the dock looks in Leopard. It's a shame I always keep mine hidden in Tiger, so I rarely ever see it. I don't care for effects, so if a plain gray application launcher that used almost no resources was used, I'd be just as happy.

[mattnico @ Jun 12th 2007 5:20PM]

To me this is all a bit ridiculous. Who cares how the OS looks? That means exactly nothing when it comes right down to it. Sure, Vista's pretty. Sure OS X is pretty (and bears resemblance to Looking Glass). So what? I would use Vista over OS X any day just because it actually works. My experience with OS X is that it's about as fun to use as braided mop. I have to manually centralize my applications in their ridiculously animated dock, just so I don't have to go digging through Finder (the most-outdated file browser anywhere) just to open a text editor or calculator.

And when something goes wrong in OS X (about every ten minutes) I'm not left with many options. In Vista, I can hit ctrl-alt-del and get some information as to what is going on with my system. In OS X I use their little key combo (there's no character for the stupid apple key, so I'll omit it) and all I get is a listing of the programs that are running (or not running as the case may be). Macs were made for first-time PC owners who don't know anything about how a computer works except how to turn it on. If you want a real system, go for a dual-boot Ubuntu/Vista rig. You won't miss OS X at all, trust me.

[Jeff Foster @ Jun 12th 2007 6:03PM]

nerd. :P

really, if your mac is stalling up so much, it's BROKEN.

and if you're at all interested in really getting-things-done, nothing (and i mean nothing) beats OS X with QuickSilver. - you really don't know what you're missing.

[Jeff Foster @ Jun 12th 2007 6:38PM]

from PPC all the way up to PPC? wow.

i'm sure the 6 old macs in your office are a great way to judge all macs ever shipped.

and yes, if all the macs in your office suck, they're all broken. (ie: set up like shit, maintained like shit, etc.)

I've seen a lab of nice Mac Pros that were maintained by some moron who was only moderately versed at XP and had no idea what he's doing with a mac, and he really did manage to make them work poorly. (just like hew made every single windows computer in the PC lab seem like windows was written by retarded monkeys.)
he BROKE them. Does that mean every mac ever shipped is broken? no - it means your administrator is probably a moron.

or, there is always the possibility, that you're just a hater and all of your "experience" is just made up. that's equally as likely. in that case, there's not much i can say.

[Evil Bastard @ Jun 12th 2007 10:56PM]

I have been dual booting Windows/OS2 then Linux for some time now. I currently have Mandriva 2007 installed along side of XP. I don't boot to XP all that often, only when I need to run a piece of software that doesn't have a Linux equivalent.

I have Beryl and Compriz loaded so I get a lot of similar visuals available from Vista and OSX. Plus a neat utility called gDesklets lets me run widgets, and startbars giving me the same functionality found in OSX. Best part, ITS FREE :) (Well minus the work getting everything working).

[Dinraj Pradeep @ Jun 12th 2007 5:39PM]

Stardock is gonna emulate this in no time. And it would run on Windows XP.

My point is, Apple should give these gooey visual changes, slightly less importance. But Apple Inc's PR needs these to sell the product. "New Desktop", "New Dock"

[ptar.mock @ Jul 2nd 2007 4:36PM]

Stardock's evil! Their name means death! Object Pesktop (and crap) is pointless, a waste of money, and you can do all the same stuff with free software. I don't give a crap about "eye candy", anyway.

So what if Apple copied everyone? Everyone does it all the time, and it'll probably never stop. In the end, it won't matter.