LinSpire LPhoto and LSongs: bring on the lawsuits! 481
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..."
Re:Linux apps that are hopelessly derivative? (Score:2, Informative)
There's no GUI originality these days..
Bu I doubt Apple care, it just assimilates more followers to adopt the MAc GUI paradigm...
There are (horrible) Gnome skins that look just like XP. I doubt M$ really care.
Ugly, but identical, wins the race? (Score:3, Informative)
All ugliness aside, they will be lucky not to get sued by Apple. But I doubt anyone will be confusing these for their Macintosh counterparts.
Granted, Linux could certainly use more entry level apps that are attractive enough to bring in the common home users, but these apps are definitely not going to cut it.
Re:LSongs? (Score:1, Informative)
does someone need glasses? (Score:3, Informative)
LSongs/iTunes similarities (Score:5, Informative)
The iTunes interface is patented (Score:5, Informative)
Ever since Apple got US patent number 2002089529 [espacenet.com], titled Media Player Interface. Look at the drawings -- that's iTunes. That probably also explains why LSongs has the player controlls at the bottom of the screen.
Re:Uh.... (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, the onus of putting TT fonts in ~/.fonts... Might as well move back to MS, its obviously unusable
Seriously, I have over 50 fonts avail. to me in OpenOffice.
Apple vs Microsoft (Look N Feel) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You can have your iPhoto (Score:3, Informative)
Lindows files to go public (Score:2, Informative)
Reuters
Software maker Lindows files to go public
Tuesday April 20, 8:47 am ET
WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) - Software maker Lindows Inc. on Tuesday filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (News - Websites) for an initial public offering of as much as $57.5 million in common stock.
The San Diego, California-based company, which said it was changing the name of its Linux-based operating system after a trademark dispute with Microsoft Corp.(NasdaqNM:MSFT - News), did not provide details as to the size and price of the proposed IPO.
Re:they didn't even try to be sneaky (Score:2, Informative)
Totally inaccurate (Score:2, Informative)
Re:LSongs? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Linux apps that are hopelessly derivative? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know exactly when X11 came out, (and a quick googling didn't net me that information), but I do know that Apple had the first commercial mouse out. There had been drafting devices that were used to input blueprints that were similar, but they did not do anything but designate points.
Re:Linux apps that are hopelessly derivative? (Score:4, Informative)
AFAIK, the first X11 came out aroudn 1985. A year or so after the Lisa, around the same time that MS Windows 1.0 came out. Motif was 1987 IIRC.
And Apple certainly didn't copy Unix, that is laughable. If anything, Apple copied Smalltalk, but as you point out, they bought the engineers behind it and did so more or less with Xerox's approval.
Re:This just in. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:LSongs? (Score:3, Informative)
And the first series of the lawsuit was dismissed because Microsoft had worked some wording into a contract with Apple in the agreement to produce the predecessor to Excel (one of the original mac os 1.0 programs) that allowed them to use the MacOS interface ideas... their interpretation was that this meant they could create their own OS with these ideas. The judge agreed.
A bit off-topic, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Several months ago, I purchased LindowsOS 2.0 and XandrOS 2.0 Deluxe, both of which use installers based on the old Corel Linux installer. I have several HP Omnibook 4150B (not 4150) laptops, and neither installer would work with my laptops.
The bug itself is known -- the 4150B cannot boot Linux without passing 'NOAGP' to the kernel at boot time -- but neither distribution's installer would pass the parameter correctly.
I contacted both companies with the problem, and the solution.
The Xandros people suggested a few alternative workarounds (that didn't work), then did the sensible thing: they fixed the installer so that the 'NOAGP' parameter can be passed. I use XandrOS almost daily.
The Lin* people suggested a few alternative workarounds (that didn't work), then sent me this note:
"Dear Customer,
I am sorry but with LindowsOS, you cannot change the boot parameters."
End of line. I wrote back, suggesting they change their compatibility listing for the HP Omnibook 4150B to "KNOWN TO BE INCOMPATIBLE", but here it is several months later and they still list it as "Believed to be compatible".
LindowsOS has yet to be installed on any of my computers, even the ones it is compatible with, for this reason.
Just something I thought the Linux community would like to know about.
That's because VMS + 1 = WNT (Score:2, Informative)
The shell in Digital's VMS had history and completion. David Cutler was a lead developer of both VMS and the Windows NT kernel.
Re:This just in. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:LSongs? (Score:3, Informative)
No. That was great demo, but it wasn't GUI. It was all text. They had a mouse cursor (called a "bug") moving above the text, but that's all. It wasn't what someone today would call a "GUI", by the popular definition.
(The popular definition is arguably wrong, since onscreen text is actually a subset of graphics)
Factually incorrect (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I know from personal experience that you're wrong. My computer illiterate girlfriend has an iBook (one of the all-white 2001 models with dual USB ports) and a 15 GB iPod. She routinely imports songs from CDs and then moves them into playlists that are hosted only on the iPod; once there, she deletes them from the iBook's local storage. So her iBook's precious hard drive space is conserved, and the music is put exactly where she needs it. And when she synchronizes, the songs that are only on the iPod stay on the iPod; they don't disappear, as you assert.
So if my girlfriend, who is not in any special way computer savvy, but who knows how to experiment with something until it does what she wants (and who isn't paralyzed by the fear of screwing up), can figure this out... then it can't be that non-obvious.
I have to admit, though, I was pretty surprised when I saw that she could do this. I was incredulous, in fact. But she showed me how she did it, and after she showed me, I smacked my forehead. "Damn, why didn't I think of that?" Well, it's because most people (like myself) don't bother creating iPod-only playlists inside of iTunes.
Like most Apple software, there are a lot of features in iTunes that aren't exactly hidden, but they're not in-your-face either; these little gems are often discovered by accident, or by reading a book of hints and tips. Many of these features are undocumented or poorly documented, something that is IMHO a flaw, but in keeping with Apple's philosophy that one should not need to read documentation to use a product.
(For those who are curious, I just called my SO to ask her, and she says there's a preference, either in iTunes or in iSync, that lets you turn off automatic music synchronization while separately turning on automatic synchronization of other things, such as contacts and calendars. Once you do that, you can manually copy music to your iPod and manually manage what's on your iPod, including creating iPod-only playlists that have songs not on your host computer's hard drive.)