http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/ Engadget Comments for http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 3:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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.
]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 22nd 2007 11:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Well, Leopard has already ripped-off Microsoft's long established 'System Restore'.]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 6:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
Sun runs a NIX type OS, Macs run a NIX type OS go figure... ]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
Although when someone takes inspiration from Apple, the fanboys seem to be much more vocal.]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
Plus they stole that grass background from Vista! ]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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.]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 3:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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?]]>Jun 12th 2007 4:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 6:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 9:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/OMG, Neither everything good had been created by Saint Jobs Co. ]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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. ]]>Jun 12th 2007 4:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
"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).]]>Jun 12th 2007 4:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 4:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/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.]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 5:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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.]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 3:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
maybe your mac is broken, or worthlessly old. :)]]>Jun 12th 2007 5:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 2:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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.


]]>Jun 12th 2007 2:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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]]>Jun 12th 2007 3:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
"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]]>Jun 12th 2007 3:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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. :-)
]]>Jun 12th 2007 5:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
Apple has taken Longhorn's search (All the way back from 2002-2003), Vista Beta's Stacks, the HORRIBLE HORRIBLE idea that transparency everywhere looks great (Didn't they learn from Vista and OS X 10.0?), Sun's dock design.
Just because Apple introduced the dock doesn't mean they get the right to STEAL a design. ]]>Jul 21st 2007 3:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
It should be spelled Leper'd.]]>Jun 12th 2007 3:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 14th 2007 9:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
AFAIK, the Apple Newton already had this technology (orientation flip) back in 1994 or so.]]>Jun 12th 2007 4:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 4:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 13th 2007 7:41AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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.]]>Jun 12th 2007 4:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/Jun 12th 2007 5:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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.]]>Jun 12th 2007 5:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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.]]>Jun 12th 2007 6:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/
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.]]>Jun 12th 2007 6:38PM