Is Apple copying too?

Apple have long implied, correctly or in-correctly, that Microsoft copy Mac features and designs and implement them into Windows products. Interesting speculation in my view, yet something that Apple have played on in a PR stunt this year at WWDC (photos).

Yet could Apple's poking at Redmond back fire? A new feature that has been launched at WWDC this year called Dashboard could be the trigger. Windows users might recognize it as being similar to popular desktop program Samurize. However, Mac users will recognize it as being very, very similar to an existing product : Konfabulator. Writing up a journal entry, chief developer of Konfabulator writes :

"It seems that Apple thinks Konfabulator is pretty cool! Just to clear the air, Apple has not bought Konfabulator, it hasn't hired the developers, it hasn't even talked to us. They just seem to like our product. A lot! We already knew that many individuals at the company liked Konfabulator (for various reasons but mostly because it was something that differentiated the platform in a very Mac-like way). Now we know that the corporation likes it ... or something that looks just like it. "

Looking at screenshots between the programs, one can see that they are indeed very similar. Apple really don't do themselves any favours with actions like this. Asides from the obvious PR disaster, Apple are foolish stepping on developers feet and putting programs that were being made outside of Apple into the program for free. They remove the incentive for developers to make products to Apple, and merely add to the stream of companies that have stopped making products for them.

View: Apple's Dashboard