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Apple Businesses

Apple Threatens Open Source Theme Project 414

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-a-bunch-of-jerks dept.
cloudscout writes "Macworld UK is reporting that Apple is threatening the Mac Themes Project for creating a theme editor. Apple accuses them of contributing to trademark infringement by enabling people to copy Apple's graphics. They've issued a cease-and-desist order insisting that MTP remove their theme editor from all webservers under their control, "including any hyperlink to other locations where the material may be available". They're even trying to invoke a shaky clause in their OS licenses which prohibit reverse-engineering the operating system since the theme editor utilizes unpublished specs. Apple is famous for its unfriendly attitude toward developers and tech media, but this is just ridiculous. How could they possibly suffer any damage by MTP's efforts? " I'm seriously disappointed to see this. Apple's lawyers are their own worst enemy: they've tried so hard to make Darwin open and gain acceptance, and then to pull crap like this. Its just so dumb I don't know how to respond.
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Apple Threatens Open Source Theme Project More

Apple Threatens Open Source Theme Project

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  • Re:For their own (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It was written for 8.5, and was included in most of the early betas of the OS. It was removed due to a decision by Apple's management at the last minute. This was probably an aesthetic decision, not a technical one. They probably wanted a "consistent look and feel" accross their platform. This is probably the same reason there are so few customization options in X.

    I think it's highly unlikely that they're planning their own theme editor. The Theme feature is dead, and since 9.1 is likely the last version of classic Mac OS ever, I don't see any way they'd re-introduce it in the future. Even if they theme OS X, it'll likely be a completely different format.

    So I have no idea what Apple's motivation is. They probably just want to kill off the theme feature to make tech support and stuff easier. But if that's true, then they would have disabled the theming feature in OS 9, which they did not do. So I don't understand this decision either.
  • Not only boost the popularity of the project itself, but boost the number of people lashing out at apple itself (ie: my email to my fellow geeks at work entitled "why apple is dumb" and referencing this).

    Of course, they wouldn't get the negative PR if they didn't do such incrediably-fscking-stupid things!

    Geeks are prone to lash back at things they object to, sometimese rightly, and sometimes wrongly (insert reference to the linux advocacy howto here). However, I think that in this case we are completely right to lash out at apple, or their lawyers, as they are finishing off with their own feet and turning the shotgun around to point at their own heads.
  • We have a geek mailing list at work, and while I wouldn't say "essay" I would say "minor rant" :)

    I'm not crazy!

    I'm not crazy!

  • I'm not trying to see guns get banned. But that *particular* argument doesn't work very well. There are better ones. I don't want to see the very valid complaint against Apple here get painted with the same brush as the gun lobby's arguments, because that will cause too many people to just throw it out. The primary purpose of a handgun is to be a weapon. They weren't invented for the sake of target practice or picking off squirrels. Those uses came to be later on. Let's not try to pretend that's not the case. Sure, you can use just about anything you want as an improvised weapon. You can run someone over with a car, you can whack someone with a wrench, but those are tools who's dangerous power is totally incedental to their primary reason to exist. Stick to the *good* arguments for gun ownership, like the fact that the government can run rampant when citizens are weak and powerless, or the fact that dependancy on the police doesn't work since they won't arrive until the deed is done, or the fact that it isn't even possible to take the criminal's guns away anyway, and the war on guns would be about as effective as the war on drugs has been (nil).
  • Threat of use isn't the same as actual use. So I say that "using" a gun for self-defense doesn't count unless the gun got fired. That 99% figure is arrived at by the sneaky trick of counting times that the POTENTIAL to use the gun scared someone off. By that metric, The US had used thousands of nuclear missles agaisnt the USSR. Granted, none of them were actually fired, but hey, they were a deterrant, therefore they were "used".

    It's a silly argument, and it's detrimental to bring it up when there are far better arguments for keeping gun ownership legal, like keeping the government honest.

  • I'm perfectly willing to say that guns not fired were "used" in self defence if you are willing to say that the US used its nukes against the USSR.

  • Re:Huh? well that's just great... (Score:3)

    by DunbarTheInept ( 764 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @11:54AM (#285372) Homepage
    wrench: primary purpose - turning nuts.
    screwdriver: primary purpose - turning screws.
    theme editor: primary purpose - making own themes.
    gun: primary purpose - throwing a bullet at dangerous speed through the air.

    See the difference?

  • and see

    Inventing the Lisa Interface [rr.com] to see that the Lisa GUI predates contact with PARC.


    in fact, it' has all kinds of cool stuff about Lisa.


    hawk, one of about 6 /. readers who understand that Xerox is not the sole inventor of the GUI

  • Re:BBWC (Score:2)

    by hawk ( 1151 )
    No, he certainly wouldn't produce that. But I bet I'd love to have one of what he *did* produce given a chance . . .


    hawk

  • >I always thought that Apple had to release their kernel source in some form


    Nope. No obligation at all. The simple fact of the matter is that, under certain circumstances, it makes economic sense for a corporation to use an open source model for the "generic" portions of their product--development and maintenance costs may simply be less than the market opportunities sacrificed. In other words, Apple's and IBM's open source activities are driven by economics, not ideology.


    I'm working on a paper on this right now, hopefully available in the late summer or fall.


    o.b. gratuitious plug: grad students in economics with a background in the public goods literature may feel free to contact me about co-authoring the paper :)


    hawk

  • I'm not trying to downplay Xerox's actions; they certainly developed a GUI on their own. I'm only trynig to point out that there was independent work by Apple on the Lisa GUI, including screen mockups, that predate exposure to the Star. Popular mythology has the Lisa and Mac as rip-offs of the sar. Their ultimate form was certainly heavily influenced by it, but Lisa started on its own.


    while I'm at it, a lot of it predates the Star--to a significant extent, Lisa and Mac were implementations of Raskin's master's thesis from the 60's . . .
    i


    hawk

  • "avi tevanian: hey steve, look! some guys are doing kaleidoscope for os X!"

    You paint a convincing scene, but I should point out that the Mac Themes project has nothing to do with OS X: it's about theming OS 8.5 and its descendents through the Appearance Manager. Here's what they say about OS X support on their web site [macthemes.org]:

    This document is not currently ready for publication. At a later date, we will be posting all of the information we know about using themes in Mac OS X, as well as updates about our development tools. Please check back at a later date, expecially once OS X final is released, information will be posted here frequently.
  • They are not selling the dev tools with every version of Mac OS X. Just this "sort of beta version" that they reciently released.
  • Let's try rephrasing this:

    This version of MacOSX will come with dev tools. It's is "quasi-beta" which means it's MS-quality release code (*snicker*).

    Future versions/releases will *not* come with the dev tools CD.

    Yeah, some will always be available at the website, but not everything you got with this version.

    Ciao!
  • Why did they fund MkLinux in 95 or 96? Long before funding open source projects created any hype. Corperations exist to make profits, by the law of the land (If they don't maximize profits, then shareholders can sue them for fucking up.) Apple believes that funding open source helps their bottom line. any corperation that funds open source projects can only do so if they believe it will help their bottom line. Apple seemed to "Get it" years ago, long before Linux was on the radar of hype. I am guessing that you where still watching the Smurfs in 95 so you are excused for being so ignorant of the facts. Anyway this seems to be a trademark case, and those are somewhat scary, as Trademarks are required to be defended, or else they can be lost. That facts should be more clear before accusations are bandied about.
  • I guess you can't read either. This is a TRADEMARK case, TRADEMARKS are required to be defended (Xerox, Photocopy), PATENTS are not.
  • There are several charges Apple's lawyers are alleging, and they're quite different.

    The one about infringing the Lanham act sounds pretty bogus to me. The theme editor in question is no more responsible for a trademark infringement a user of it may choose to commit than a camera manufacturer is if I choose to take photographs of someone's trademarked logo and use it myself. There is to my knowledge no history of camera firms, photocopier manufacturers etc. being held partly responsible for trademark infringement using their products.

    Copyright infringement is a very grey area around things like this -- sometimes the makers of tools that can be used to circumvent copyright are liable, sometimes not. However, the theme editor is capable of substantial noninfringing use, which strengthens its case.

    The final argument is that, because the API for doing things like this is not documented anywhere, the only way the writers of this tool could have found out how to do it is by reverse engineering Apple's OS, which is prohibited by their click-thru license.

    It's a possible infringement, but it would be an uphill task for Apple to prove. Firstly, the authors could have discovered the API through other means. If Apple have told ANYONE about them, then it could have been disclosed through that third party. If, say, Apple told a third party software developer how to do these things, and THEIR license agreement didn't have a 'don't reverse engineer' clause, then the theme editor programmers are in the clear.

    Then there's the problem of proving in court that the authors of the editor actually agreed to that click-thru agreement. If they got their hands on the Apple OS second-hand, for example. Sure, the license probably says that if you sell the software, you have to make the buyer agree to the license first -- but what if someone didn't do that? They are liable, not the editor writers.

    Then there's the issue as to whether the agreement had any legal binding whatsoever in the first place. The legality of click-thru licenses is somewhat suspect in most states.

    Apple have something of a case, but in a fair trial they have no guarantee of victory. It's probably not a risk they want to take -- if I were Apple, I wouldn't want this to go to court. What if I got found against?

    Apple are, I'm sure, hoping the editor guys fold before trial because they can't afford to defend themselves.

    All the above is ignoring whether it's smart of Apple to do this. From a PR point of view it's a disaster -- Apple really can't afford to be alienating people who'd care about this. The people this hurts are the Apple evangelists and diehard users who are a large part of what keeps the company going.

    I would guess that the PR angle was overridden by Apple's fear that, unless they're hyper vigilant, their interface is going to get stolen out from under them. Not by people playing with themes, but by a big player -- Microsoft, or someone else big -- who will use any failure by Apple to enforce their rights in order to get away with cloning the Apple interface.
  • And I'm going to respond by refusing to buy any Apple products --

    Oh wait, I've been boycotting Apple ever since they killed the Apple IIgs in order to promote an underpowered piece of crap without sound or even color graphics called... was it 'Granny Smith' or 'Macintosh' or something?

    Well, whatever. I'm really mad now.

    --

  • I can't understand how 'Rip, Mix, Burn' doesn't violate any copyright laws

    Maybe you've forgotten because of all the propaganda surrounding the napster case and the RIAA, but there is a legal doctrine called "fair use". If you own a CD, it is within your legal rights to rip a few tracks from that disc and burn them onto a mix CD. It's no different from making mix tapes to listen to in a car without a CD player. As long as you're ripping from CDs you own, it's legal. Don't listen to the RIAA's 'all copying is piracy' line. They're full of sh*t.
  • http://sourceforge.net/projects/macthemes/

    it was in the original story post.

  • It's obvious you've not bothered to read anything Stallman says or you wouldn't say that.

  • A fish and game warden comes upon a woman sitting along the river with a rod and reel.

    He accuses her of fishing without a license, because she has the equipment.

    She promptly accuses him of rape.

    He's flabbergasted -- he's not even touched the woman.

    The reply: "But you have the equipment."

    Simply making a tool that people could use to violate Apple's trademarks/copyrights/IP and that has other uses is a reasonable thing to do, and, if Apple were reasonable, would not be a problem any more than IE, which allows you to copy Apple's graphics from their website and do with them what you will. I do notice that Apple's not suing Microsoft...

    Dejaffa

  • But in this case, their trademark isn't being infringed. They are attacking this software because it "enables trademark infringment". Not because this project is distributing (or even using, I didn't see one Apple or Mac logo on thier site ... not that I looked that hard) but that someone, somewhere might use this software and distribute a trademarked logo.

    Furthermore, they are going after them for reverse engineering because they used OS hooks that aren't published.

    This isn't a trademark case, this is an instance of a company trying to maintain complete control of it's software. It's a lot more like the MPAA and DeCSS then it is making themes.org take down themes that really did have the Apple logo on them (that was an honest trademark case).
  • When Apple's advertise on television and other means their iTunes software with "Rip, Mix, Burn", are they not contributing to copyright infringement by enabling people to pirate copyrighted music and other audio? How do you think they would feel if the RIAA issued a cease and desist order on them for this...If someone from Apple is reading this, tell the hierarchy to concentrate on the real "pirates"...
  • MS has the single best developer support program of any software company in existence.
  • For what purpose?
    Philosophy, ***, I removed Windows from my home computer because of license and security issues. It's true, I'd prefer a better word processor (wait a few months), but that's not enough reason to expose myself. Not with UCITA and DMCA roaming around.

    As for Apple. I was interested, now I'm not. I still advise total newbies to go with the Mac, but if Linux gets better, and Apple continues to alienate me, perhaps I'll be willing to give enough support just so that I won't need to recommend them.

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • But they were good enough to earn 10% of the market. I don't think they have that much advantage anymore. They're retreating to the same niche that Amiga retreated to.

    The problem is, the graphic arts aren't that different from every other market. They demand slickness, and they pay a high margin, so if you have a slick enough product, you can retreat there for awhile. But they aren't a large enough niche to maintain a company. So you better have some strategy that will let you move out quickly. Or else you fade into the past as a reverred memory.

    I think that the Mac has a potential way out based on System/X, Darwin, etc. But if they alienate the folk that they need as supporters, it won't work. And this last move has made friends with very few.

    They may see it as protecting their short term profits. I see it as dynamiting their life-support system.

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • Probably. This kind of action causes me to despise both the company involved and the legal profession in general.

    Just remember, over 90% (95%? 99%? I don't keep track.) of legislators are lawyers. So the legal profession as a group is directly responsible for the mess that we are in, as well as directly benefiting.


    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • You left out the qualifier....

    If you have enough money and time to defend yourself in multiple court actions and appeals.

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • Linux may have been developed for the PC computer, created by IBM, MS, and the Federal Justice department, but before then the S-100 bus systems were considerably more open.

    MS was subsidized by IBM because the government was attempting to destroy IBM's monopoly over computer hardware. So IBM found so.meone else to create a PC OS for them.

    Competition? MS lived on indirect government subsidy almost from the beginning! And the "openness" of the PC was because when MSDOS split from PCDOS, MS needed someone to manufacture the hardware. Even with the subsidy they were too small, and IBM didn't dare compete directly (and didn't think it too important, and didn't want to cannibalize their mainframe business). So Compaq and Zenith and Packard and Bell etc. got into the hardware business with the MSDOS operating system. And since IBM had the dominant position, most of the new 16 bit programs were written to run on the PC, and MS new the internals of PCDOS, so they used inside knowledge in creating MSDOS so that the same programs would run on them.

    Fair competition. Yeah! Maybe once, but the more I look, the more it looks like a myth. Insiders making sharp deals is more like it, and certainly much more common, no matter what the laws say.
    (Or so it seems to me.)


    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • What does it say about slashdot moderators that this comment -- straight from the mouth of a member of the team working on the project, and the guy who actually got the cease and desist -- is moderated to a "3" and random rants against what a stupid decision apple made are up at "5"?

    Granted, it's a stupid decision by Apple. But how much obsessing about it do we need? Especially more than this?

    --
  • If you can create your own themes, isn't this the opposite of trademark infringement? After all, this means you're replaceing the Apple trademarked graphics with something else. Something else you or someone else homebrewed.

    There's only two reasons I can think Apple be upset about this.

    1) Fear of having their interface diluted. They don't want the MacOS associated with joe phearsum's 1337-7h3m3. Or maybe even joe graphic designer's luscious theme. It's worse if they throw in apple graphics.

    2) They feel like they're legally bound to defend trademarks.

    Of course, given the fact that most of their customers are fairly loyal, asking people nicely not to use apple graphics in their own themes would probably work....

    'course, now that they've lost goodwill....

    --
  • Actually, gun manufacturers are up next. Mostly, it's gun dealers that get sued. Not the ones selling stolen guns out of their trunks, (boots for our European readers), but the licensed and legal dealers selling to law-abiding citizens. Colt has stopped selling to non-government customers to try and avoid their turn on the freedom rapers hit list. Remember, this is America, where going after criminals is too hard. Going after the tool-maker is easier, since they aren't running and hiding.

    --

  • Re:Do you think they'll sue me for copying the iMa (Score:5)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:00AM (#285427)
    Just don't bolt a handle from an old car door to the top of it, then glue all your mouse buttons together to form one "super" button.

    --
  • Well, we all know Compaq reverse engineered the first PC clones, and that was legal. Microsoft created J++ in a clean room environment which was legal reverse engineering.

    First of all, Compaq could reverse engineer because they had the reverse engineering done by people who never agreed to the licence agreement. The ones who were "polluted" (wrote the spec based on the copywritten BOIS) couldn't reverse engineer.

    Secondly, MS did NOT reverse engineer J++. They licenced Java from Sun, and then willfully tried to get around the licence and refused to implement parts of the Java spec. Sun doesn't care if you provide additional non-Sun APIs to work with Java, even ones that interact with native code (Apple has developed many over time with nary a lawsuit). Sun did care that MS violated a licence agreement.

    -jon

  • Re:For their own (Score:3)

    by TWR ( 16835 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:52AM (#285429)
    You have to wonder why apple wrote in their theme system at all... it has been there for a long time and they have never made any use of it.

    Apple put the Theme system in back in 1994 or 1995. It was part of Copland and their idea of a scalable user interface. There were three Themes shown: Platinum, Gizmo, and High Tech. Apple even hired one of the guys who works on Kaleidiscope (a third-party Theme switcher for the Mac).

    When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he killed Themes. The official reason was that it made tech support too hard: people would call up and it was impossible to know what and where widgets would be on their screen.

    Personally, I think it was just Jobs' control-freak personality showing through. The Apple engineers implemented Aqua as a Theme in OS X (in older versions of Mac OS X, you could remove the Aqua Theme files and you get a Platinum look and feel. I don't know if this still works.), so there's some support for the concept inside the company. It's just crazy Steve Jobs again...

    The bigger question is if Apple is going to try to squish any shareware developer who writes UI widgets to fix the awful problems in Mac OS X. Aqua is pretty enough, but there is such a huge usability problem with OS X, I find my WinNT box at work easier to use than OS X at home. I've been booting back into OS 9 and realizing how _simple_ and _fast_ everything used to be...

    -jon

  • This theme editor stuff sounds pretty lame, but to make a rebuttal to the rest of your post:

    First, they promised this OS for years, and have finally delivered a product that requires a person to upgrade for $100 to OS 9.something in order to run their "Classic" applications, then spend $100 on the new OS.

    OS 9.1 (what you need to run classic apps) is included in the OS X box. You don't need to purchase it seperatly.

    Not to mention that the average Apple sold in the last few years is a DIMM or two short of the requisite 128mb of RAM.

    If you select the cheap option, sure. Other OEM's do the same thing.

    I priced upgrading my Rev. A iMac a week or two ago because of how everyone on Slashdot raves about OS X. I'm looking at probably $500 in software and memory just to make sure I don't lose a lot more than I gain.

    Only if you pay Apple's exorborant markups for memory. Just walk over to pricewatch, buy a 256 meg stick of PC100 for $45, slap it in your iMac and go nuts.

    o apparently "Think Different" doesn't mean "Different" except in terms of "Make sure different people have the money in your wallet". For $500 I can buy a whole new Wintel box

    Or you could do a couple seconds worth of research on Apple's products and shop around for a better deal on add-on hardware. But then you'd miss out on all the cheap karma from the Apple-hating moderators on Slashdot.
  • Oh god, this is turning into "HAL stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer" all over again.

    --

  • If Apple Were a Person . . . (Score:5)

    by Badgerman ( 19207 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:26AM (#285434)
    Let's analyze Apple as if the were a person, not a company.

    • They are unfriendly towards the people they depend on (programmers, etc.)
    • They are very reserved and secretive (there's a reason the PC s dominant over the Mac).
    • They are prone to lash out bizarrely (as witnessed here).
    • They invoke shaky claims to justify their behavior.
    • They are prone to grandiose statements.


    If Apple were a person, I'd think of them as a creative individual with schizophrenic tendancies marked with delusions of grandeur and persecution and a possible self-destructive urge.

    Certainly lashing out at the Themes editor is crazy . . .
  • Due to licensing of the OS, nobody anywhere is allowed to ever write anything for MacOS using anything but the API's Apple publishes? Yeah.. like that'll stick. That's worse than Microsoft!

    What.. are they jealous because they didn't include a theme editor?

    This is what will kill OS-X. I said over and over again to friends, OS-X is cool, I think it's *really* cool, but I just have this feeling Apple will fuck it up.
    Looks like they're on their way.
  • How is 'copying a grapic file' reverse engineering?
    I'm sorry... talking about the power of your OS, then forbidding anyone to develop for it without purchasing a developer kit & license is rediculous. What this effectively means is that if you 'figure out' how to do anything not documented, you can't share it with anyone, as you reverse engineered it.

    So much for apple.
  • So if Apple were a person, he or she would be a prominent poster on Slashdot?

  • Informative IMHO
    -----

  • Re:Apple, Apple... (Score:5)

    by Pengo ( 28814 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @11:14AM (#285446) Journal

    Your right, there are probably more KDE and GNOME users than OSX users out there, but if you have used OSX you would realize that they are two completely different worlds of usability.

    Though technically KDE and Gnome did bring A desktop to UNIX, I have a rough time comparing a window manager/development framework to a true desktop computing environment.

    I have been using OSX for about 5 weeks for development and administration. I don't even turn on my x86 box anymore. With the headstart that OSX already has on KDE/Gnome and the speed that it's moving.. I have a hard time believing that even KDE will catch up to it.

    the problem isn't KDE but the fragmentation of the linux community. The only chance that KDE maybe has to Linux Standards project. Until then I am still fighting with not only administrating our servers but my own workstation, no thanks. OSX is here to stay for me.



    --------------------
    Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
  • I upgraded my rev A iMacs, but it is not good.
    Even without classic it swaps it brains out with 96M of memory. Well, its ok until you start running applications, I assume you wanted to run something rather than just look at the dock.

    Be very careful getting upgrade memory for your iMac rev A. The RAM vendors have forgetten these machines and "works in non-slotloading iMacs" does NOT mean rev A. revA has the little key tab in a different spot on the SODIMM. I'm still looking for a big revA SODIMM. (And returning very nice but incompatible RAM.)
  • Michael Angelo, Picasso and all those other painters sued Italian paintbrush makers in their day.

    "How can an artist expect to make a living when our paintings and styles are so easily copied by these young upstarts? Everyone who is able to afford a brush considers himself and artist," one notable but whiney famous artist was quoted as saying in a poor rendition of an Italian accent.

  • None of Aqua is based on Adobe's software anymore. The primary motivation for moving from Display PS to Aqua's PDF-based system was to completely avoid licensing fees from Adobe. These fees were one reason that NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP were so expensive. PDF, however, is an open format.

    Also, rewriting a GUI for Darwin would be pointless, since the Aqua GUI and the Carbon & Cocoa APIs are foundation of every reason to buy Mac OS X. They define the user experience. Using Darwin on it's own just gets you a version of BSD/Mach with a weird filesystem layout and native support for HFS & HFS+ volumes.

    Also, the "theming engine" referred to is simply the Appearance Manager. It was originally intended to support multiple Mac OS interfaces, but Jobs ironically decided that allowing users to drastically change the interface would be confusing. (Poor, poor Kaleidoscope users. They must be so confused.) This product is simply a tool to create native Mac OS 8.1+ themes for use in the Appearance manager. I don't really understand what Apple's problem is with it.

    Otherwise, your points are all valid, especially the point about jumping up and down and shouting at Apple.
  • You don't honestly think the clone market was doing anything other than cannibalizing the Mac market, do you? Most post-mortem analyses of the Mac clone market I've seen point to less than 10% of clones being purchased by people who had never owned a Mac before. Of course, it wasn't long after Apple killed the clone market, including Motorola's own line of clones, that Motorola began phasing out Macs in use in their own business.

    If you read Motorola's website, it's quite clear that they don't care about the desktop market at all. All their documentation and marketing for PowerPC processors (which is all tucked away from their main products) advocates their use in embedded systems. You'll find nary a mention of Apple as a successful customer. The fact is that Motorla doesn't give a damn about Apple.

    As much as I like the technical merits of PowerPC processor family, I've been pushed over the past year into the firm belief that Apple should once again make the move to a different processor family or to begin designing a strategy that can continue to fund OS development without depending on hardware sales. I'm convinced that the failed AIM alliance is nothing but an albatross around Apple's neck. Maybe if Exponential's technology hadn't have been inferior to the PPC 750, we'd have a company dedicated to the Mac for survival right now that could keep Apple going.

    In the end, the G4 fiasco was a sign that Apple has tied its destiny to the whims of two companies who are content to let them die. Motorola will fiddle while Cupertino burns, and that great titan IBM, will simply shrug.

    (Is that enough pointless and melodramatic literary references for you all? <g>)
  • Three things: first the Mac clone market was in it's infancy and less than two years old (my memory may be off on this, I haven't checked) so it's natural that it would be Apple's market share that initially suffered. I bet IBM had the same experience in the early days of the PC market.
    Look how well that worked for IBM's PC business. They're basically a marginal player in the market they created. The OS that operated those machines, MS-DOS, was independent financially from the success of the original hardware maker's sales. This is not the case for the Macintosh.
    Second that 10% of clone buyers being new buyers is more than Apple managed up till the iMac was released.
    That was a conservative figure since I couldn't remember the exact statistics. The basic fact is that those machines weren't making nearly as much money for Apple in Mac OS and Mac ROM sales as they were costing in lost Apple machine sales.
    Thirdly, there is no guarentee that those Mac owners who bought clones would have bought from Apple if the clones hadn't been available. Every time there a story here about OS X or Apple a whole bunch of people complain about the cost of Apple hardware.
    Maybe they wouldn't have that financial quarter or the next, but this was in the heyday of the transition of users from m68k to PPC machines. If they wouldn't have bought from Apple then, they would have either bought from Apple in the future, or they would've moved to the Wintel platform. We can't really estimate if the clones significantly staved off movement to Wintel, unfortunately. In the end, though, I believe that the clones were a financially suicidal move for Apple. The damage done by the ending of clones was far less than clones would've done if they had continued. I know that my dream machine in the day was not an Apple machine, it was a Daystar MP machine.
    Of course they don't now. Apple screwed them. First Apple dragged their feet over CHRP, then they dragged their feet over PPCP, and then they killed off any opportunity for Mototrola to sell the processors to anyone but Apple. Why should Motorola care? The documentation used to be there. IIRC, you could even get a reference motherboard layout from either IBM or Motorola. They were both committed to AIM, it was Apple who weren't.
    Well, CHRP & PPCP were all part of the clone days, when they predicted you would no longer need an Apple Toolbox ROM to run the Mac OS in the future. If Apple had made that move, there would've been no ending the clone fiasco. You do have a good point, though, that IBM and Motorola were backing PREP/CHRP/PPCP pretty well until Apple yanked the carpet out from under them. Perhaps I've been forgetting Apple's role in the slow dissolution of AIM. Moves that seemed necessary at the time may have hurt them in the long term.
    As for Exponential, well Apple killed them so they've no one to blaim but themselves for that.
    Well, Exponential killed themselves too. Their processor was hotter, drew more power, was more expensive, and was slightly slower than the PPC 750. It was a no-brainer which chip Apple should've gone with. In the end, though, if Apple had given a little wellfare to the company, they might still have one loyal processor vendor.

  • The "G4 Fiasco" (Score:3)

    by Valdrax ( 32670 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @11:33AM (#285459)
    3: Remember the whole G4 fiasco? I wonder how many people actually bought one of those 350 mhz G4 processors....
    Um, no, I don't remember it. What are you talking about?

    I'll take this one.

    I remember this clearly because I was looking to purchasing my PowerMac G4 around that time. Originally, the first PowerMac G4s were going to be shipped with 400, 450, and 500 MHz processors. However, the thrice-damned Motorola was well into the swing of giving Moore's Law the finger, and they couldn't produce enough 500 MHz processors to meet the demand. Apple made a move that many, including myself, considered ill-advised at the time. Since they couldn't sell 500 MHz PMG4's, they retroactively adjusted the entire line -50 MHz for the same price. 400 MHz machines became 350 MHz machines for the exact same price. They simply waved their hand over all orders and changed them. I think I remember them giving special condolance offers to people who already had orders in the system, but everyone afterwards had to pay the same for less. It was a total rip-off.

    I ended up with a 400 MHz (middle-of-the-line) machine, with the intention to upgrade it with a dual-processor card (which has yet to materialize), but I feel a little upset in that I could've gotten that processor for cheaper before the change.

    Anyway, that's what he was talking about.

  • Re:What amazes me so much.... (Score:3)

    by Valdrax ( 32670 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @12:08PM (#285460)
    4: Or maybe how they claim PowerPC processors kick the crap out of x86 processors. Remember how they used to say the G4/450 was double the speed of a Pentium III/450? Somebody explain to me how a G4/733 (with an extended pipeline as the P4 has) can be double the speed of Pentium 4 1.5 ghz if that was the case. Do the math people....

    Well, you're kind of off-base about the pipeline.
    MPC7400 -- 4-stage pipeline (Fetch, decode, execute, and writeback)
    MPC7410 -- 4-stage pipeline (Ditto...)
    MPC7450 -- 7-stage pipeline (Didn't find the names)

    All this information can be found on Motorola's website in their technical specs for the processors. I'm very unhappy about them moving to a 7-stage pipeline, since that small, simple pipeline has been a key to competing with x86 processors. However, to say that they are just as over-extended as the Pentium IV is ridiculous. The Pentium IV has a 20-stage pipeline! That can be a 20-cycle gap in execution when you have a branch mispredicition. Sure, it can dispatch 6 instructions at once, compared to the MPC74XX's 3 at once, but when 50% of your instructions are memory-bound load/store operations, it doesn't really help that much in the average case. This why even the Athlon doesn't bother with more than 3 even with its 15-stage pipeline.

    Granted, Apple is exaggerating by saying that just because certain operations (all SIMD-heavy Photoshop filter) complete at half the time of a top-of-the-line Pentium system, that the PowerMac G4 is always going to be twice as fast. However, the fact remains that for those operations, a chip clocked at half the speed does perform twice as fast. It does go to show that MHz as a rating of performance is just an imaginary figure used to blow magical marketing smoke. Apple just decided to Blow Smoke Different.
  • But what they are doing is *not* copying th look and feel of Macintosh for other environments. They are providing a tool that allows users to change the appearance of the classic MacOS environment from the default Platinum look. A lot like Kaleidoscope for Macs, but intrudes further into the depths of the system than Apple likes. I don't see how this project in any possible way could hurt Apple's bottom line. It is a product that offers a nice feature *only* to Mac systems. You would almost think that this was a case of completely clueless IP lawyers seeing the words "mac" and "theme" in a free project and lump it together will all the other stupid theme related stuff they have been going after. I still am of the opinion that it will take more than different window decorations to make me shell out a few thousand for a new computer, and that all this stuff does nothing but hurt apple. I wonder if they would be as eager to toss around cease and desist orders at people who actually had enough money to defend themselves, and not just at people who they know lack the money to go to court to defend themselves.. Seems somhow cowardly to me..

  • They are duty bound to do this (Score:4)

    by Bazzargh ( 39195 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:07AM (#285468)
    I can't see a single post commenting that - as usual - companies sometimes threaten suit for trademark infringement because they are legally obliged to.[1] Don't forget that if you don't defend your trademark, then it becomes something anyone can use. This would be worse for apple than letting the themes site continue.

    I don't think anyone gains out of this but the lawyers. If Mr MacThemes managed to engineer his software such that it couldn't copy images tagged as apple's trademark[2], then I think the suite would disappear like snow off a dyke, since as everyone is pointing out, this hurts Apple too.

    -Baz

    [1] IANAL
    [2] And why not? It would be trivial for apple to put 'Registered Trademark of Apple Corp' in a tEXt chunk of a PNG or whatever.
  • Classic isn't pretty with anything less than 128 MB. After all, you have to consider that you're basically running MacOS 9.1 as an application, PLUS also running your classic applications in the same memory space, and then running all of that on top of MacOS X. MacOS X itself will get along with as little as 64MB of RAM. Course it'll be slow, but its still quite usable.

    ----
  • The ads ran with the permission of the estate/family of the person featured in the ad.

    Apple didn't make Caesar Chavez a sell out. His family did.

    ----
  • <i> It is not a copyright issue. </i>
    <BR>
    <BR>
    The article says: "improperly copying Apple's copyrighted software code and graphic files".
    <BR><BR>
    <I> ...And all the blubbering slashbots</i>
    <BR><BR>
    You don't agree with someone (but didn't even bother to read the article), so you unsult them? Real mature.
    <BR><BR>
    <i> Someday they will grow up and work in the real world, and find out that things don't always break down to "us vs. them".</i>
    <BR><BR>
    Who said anything about "us vs. them"? People don't like Apple Corp's actions, so they get decide to do something about it - would you rather they just sit there and let major corporations steamroller individual rights and freedoms? Well, given all your talk about the "real world", probably - for you, the "real world" is one where people don't have ideals, hopes, dreams. Well, that's certainly not the real world I know. One day, you'll realize how artificial your "real world" is - I just hope you don't fuck up too many lives before then.
  • Settle down. Apple is not "steamrollering" over anybody's rights. They are protecting their rights, specifically, their trademark rights, from those who they believe are violating them.

    Their lawyers ought to know better - this couldn't *possibly* be a trademark violation. Yes, I understand the nature of trademark law. Do you?

    Your attitude is exactly what I was talking about. You hear about one company suing one group and start shouting bloody murder at the top of your lungs, instantly insisting that Apple is an evil emprire out to destroy your freedom.

    Your mention of "one company" is a total red herring - that company is Apple. I never said that Apple is an evil empire - I said that they did something which is wrong, and which infringes on my freedom of speech. Why should I not complain when something like this happens?

    I would bet $100 that you never even used Themes... you probably have not even heard of them before today, and more than likely are not even a Mac user...

    So, we must be entirely self-interested bastards? We can't stand up for principles?

    yet you are among those complaining the loudest

    I would hardly call a post to Slashdot a loud complaint.

    because you make the knee-jerk, yes "us vs. them", assumption that any big company that sues a small group must be out to ruin democracy.

    It's hardly an assumption - I read the fucking article, and the quote from the letter *tells* me what they're doing. They are abusing their power, and attacking people who have done nothing wrong - again, this isn't an assumption, it's what their letter said.

    Count to ten, think calmly.

    Given that I actually read the article, clearly I'm thinking more calmly than a troll like you who rushes off to post before learning what the letter said.

    You might come to realize that while Apple may be wrong about the extent of their trademark rights, they very well might credibly believe that they needed to press this case in order to protect their trademarks.

    If you had actually read my post or the article, you would know that the only thing Apple said was about copyrights, *not* trademarks. Macworld said things about trademarks - but there's no *real* evidence that this is a trademark case. I don't see how it could possibly be - and if you knew anything at all about IP law, you would agree.
  • Considering the Themes project people themselves have come out and said, A) Apple is simply covering their asses, they had to do this, B) they are currently negotiating with Apple so that everyone is happy, C) the "Letter" was a legal formality.

    OK, now I've read their list archives, and I can say that this is totally wrong. Especially the copyright stuff, but also the TM stuff (See below)

    I would say this is simply a trademark issue which is not understood by anyone, other than the parties involved.

    Not understood by you, maybe - but I can (now) read the letter that Apple sent. I can understand the issues - they claim contributory infringement under the copyright, trademark, and trade dress acts, as well as licence violation. Well, there's no such thing (at least in Title 15 ch. 22) as contributory TM infringement... So, they have no need to cover their asses (copyrights don't require that). They *know* exactly what they're doing - and it's *wrong*.

    The funniest thing here is this was a rumour of a cease and desist letter, and everyone went ballistic.

    A news report is not a rumor.

    Did Slashdot editors try to contact members of the Themes Project? For that matter did Macworld UK?

    Presumably, MWUK was contacted by one of the members - they *did* have copies of the letters. Or, maybe they didn't - but the mailing list archives were and are publicly available.

    This is shotty journalism at it's worst. If you want to change the world, you have to do your homework.

    I looked up the applicable laws - what did you do?
  • Is like comparing Apples and Oranges. They're both fruit, but. For the same processor speed the ppc does perform operations significantly faster (though not 2x) than the x86. Different architectures between the same families. Actually, I think that the x86, at the same processor speed, is slower than alphas and sparcs.
  • As I noted in my story submision, the website proper at http:/www.macthemes.org hasn't ben up-dated since 20 March and still has all the files available for d/l, unlike, AFAICT the Sourceforge site.

    Wiliam
    --
    Lettering Art in Modern Use
  • But the perrenial comeback: What if you 1) do not see the license or 2) do not agree with it? Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to agree to it. If you bought a book that had a piece of plastic on it that said "By reading this book you agree to give us your firstborn child", would you really put any credit in it? A contract is only good when BOTH parties agree on it. Now if they had you sign some legal paper *at the time of purchase* that would be another issue...but then they'd deservedly lose many many customers.
  • Damn, where are moderation points when you need them ;)
  • "By clicking I Agree and continuing to install the software"

    There are many (legitimate) ways to install or use software without going through a clickwrap installer. If the company suspects all it's customers then it really should be having them sign agreements at time of purchase. Once I own (have in my physical control) a piece of software, they have already given up their rights. They can only hope that I will read their instructions, play nice, jump through their hoops, and rescind rights I already have when I leave the store.
  • A few people have said that KDE and GNOME brought Unix to the desktop. What is the obsession with KDE and GNOME? Am I the only one who thinks they are both too bloated to ever become a desktop standard? Sure, they're flashy, but they're both slow and almost unusable (practically speaking) on a 486. Even on faster machines, WindowMaker with fspanel is *much* faster, and therefore more usable.

    So I ask: you who use KDE/GNOME: what kind of machines do you have? Have you tried WindowMaker?
    ------
  • What is annoying are the little things, like not being able to resize windows by dragging out their corners - i.e you can only resize horizontally or vertically

    I do it all the time. Try grabbing the bottom left or right corners.

    No easy way to get a 'taskbar' - most of my apps appear as the default WM icon, which is extremely unhelpful I suppose i could go and assign a bitmap to each app, but i'd rather just have a taskbar, not some giant square brick with an unrecognisable glyph on it.

    fspanel [chatjunkies.org] should suit your needs there.

    I agree WindowMaker is lacking in some respects, but given my options, I would (and do) choose it over anything else currently available.
    ------

  • Sure i've tried WindowMaker, but it kind of sucks compared to GNOME/Sawfish.

    I actually do use Windowmaker on my server, since i haven't bothered to install GNOME on it, and it is fast.

    What is annoying are the little things, like not being able to resize windows by dragging out their corners - i.e you can only resize horizontally or vertically

    No easy way to get a 'taskbar' - most of my apps appear as the default WM icon, which is extremely unhelpful I suppose i could go and assign a bitmap to each app, but i'd rather just have a taskbar, not some giant square brick with an unrecognisable glyph on it.

    I do like the 'slide-up' menus, but you can't fix the menu in place, which makes it too easy to shift it around, and the 'sliding' behaviour seems erratic when run remotely, even with animations turned off.

    There seems to be 2 icons produced for each app - whats up with that?

    I used to use enlightenment (which was, arguably, the project that got linux noticed on the desktop) till i found sawfish, and now i wouldn't use anything else on my workstations.

    I would like to see a hybrid between the GNUStep style of 'dock' and GNOME desktop functionality.. i.e. get rid of the 'panel' and replace it with a WindowMaker 'dock'.

    Wmaker sliding, tearable menus are neat, and a great idea, but they need to be dockable, and you should be free to use a window manager that doesn't limit you like the WM default one does.

    Thats just my 2c. I certainly agree that a full GNOME/KDE setup is pretty slow and bloated, and i'd like to see more of Window Makers good ideas adopted into a stripped-down GNOME subset for those of us who don't run linux on 1GHz monsters.

    Maybe i just need to hack about with this stuff some more....

  • Re:Huh? (Score:2)

    by bugg ( 65930 )
    Perhaps if the people who developed software that pissed companies off spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying efforts, they would write the laws to idemnify themselves.

    My rule (which isn't too far from the law) is that if the intent in creating the product was to enable people to commit a crime, then it shouldn't be allowed. Obviously there's plenty of shades of grey in cases like this- but this specific case, it seems very clear to me that this is fair use.

  • Yeah, 'cause Lord knows Xerox didn't have anything to do with it...

    -----------------------

  • This crap is all legal stuff. No intelligent person in Apple outside of legal would really believe that this is good for the company. Any idiot can look at the situation and see that this is done for one reason - allowing the lawyers to rack up more billable hours.

    Eventually Apple will get with it an throw the bastards out. It might take a while, but eventually they will realize the same thing that AOL/Time-Warner did during the Harry Potter legal mess: YOU DO NOT MAKE, NOR SAVE MONEY, BY ATTACKING PAYING CUSTOMERS.
  • Must we put up with this IP crap before we engineer an invitation-only VPN on top of the net to give us a buffer from the corporate assholes? Kick 'em all off the net if you ask me.
  • The culprit, of course, is the new firmware update Apple unceremoniously dropped onto Mac owners, the one that makes RAM that doesn't adhere to their "stability standards" appear unreadable.
    Read the technote you linked to again. RAM built to Apple's standards (thereby making it suitable to be sold for your iMac) still works after the firmware upgrade. Whoever sold you the RAM and told you it would work in your iMac lied to you and owes you a replacement. Or, you can keep the cheap not-quite-up-to-spec RAM and blame every freeze/crash/panic on whoever you happen to be most pissed at at the moment.


    --

  • It seems aparent that Apple went out of their way to make "unblessed" RAM NOT work. Way to keep your users locked in, Apple!
    Locked into what? Apple doesn't make RAM. Apple isn't the only source of RAM that meets the standards. How are the locking they users in?


    --

  • Re:What amazes me so much.... (Score:5)

    by Mononoke ( 88668 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:07AM (#285515) Homepage Journal
    Hehe, I'll bite...

    1: They overcharge their customers for what is otherwise standard equipment that you can get for half the price on the PC side.
    If it's "otherwise standard equipment" why buy it from Apple? The Apple store's dropmenus aren't the only place to find RAM and bigger hard drives.

    2: Just a few weeks ago Apple released a firmware upgraded that disallowed the use of a large number of 3rd party RAM sticks. Could this be because Apple isn't making any money selling 128 megs of ram for $ 256.00? (Check the RAM Upgrade prices at the Apple Store)
    The firmware upgrade didn't disable any DIMMs that were actually built and operating to specs. Apple's tech info note #60839 [apple.com] explains this better than I can.

    3: Remember the whole G4 fiasco? I wonder how many people actually bought one of those 350 mhz G4 processors....
    Um, no, I don't remember it. What are you talking about?

    4: Or maybe how they claim PowerPC processors kick the crap out of x86 processors. Remember how they used to say the G4/450 was double the speed of a Pentium III/450? Somebody explain to me how a G4/733 (with an extended pipeline as the P4 has) can be double the speed of Pentium 4 1.5 ghz if that was the case. Do the math people....
    "They" being Apple, I assume. Apple never made claims like that. However, it has been documented that the G4 performs some operations up to twice as fast as a Pentium of the equivalent clock speed.

    5: And now this..... did you honestly expect anything different? As far as Apple and Open Source are concerned - its simply a take and take relationship. They have shown many times that they are completely unwilling donate something to the Open Source community (and dont mention Darwin until you actually try and use it) and this action does nothing but strengthen that resolve in my eyes.
    Is Apple somehow obligated to contribute to the "Open Source community"? BTW, Darwin is available for x86 machines. [apple.com]

    I agree that Apple should fire (or at least muzzle) their law firm, but overall it's not that bad of a company.
    --

  • There will be a copy in the Censored Archive as soon as I'm finished downloading it.

    Link is in my .sig.
    -----
  • if you don't defend your trademark, then it becomes something anyone can use.

    True, but... you can defend your trademark without being an asshole. There was an excellent article in Webtechniqes [webtechniques.com] about this very topic, written by an intellectual property lawyer. A few crucial quotes:

    " While lawyers have an obligation to a court to say things in documents that are reasonably based on the law and fact, they have no such obligation when sending the proverbial nasty letter. "
    " Rather than litigate against your best customers, license them to use your mark in connection with their fan sites. You maintain control of the trademark; your fan uses that mark strictly in conformance with your corporate trademark policy, and you now have an evangelist instead of an enemy. "
    " Every time one of these legal actions backfires against an overreaching lawyer and his or her client or company, I always ask myself, "What were they thinking?" The answer usually turns out to be that they weren't. "
  • Apple is allowing people to "copy" DVDs with their new Macs, and THAT's ok. The minute someone tries to write open source software allowing their users to edit Mac OS X themes, that's suddenly a crime against THEIR copyrights and intellectual property?!?!?!? Apple - BITE ME.

  • Re:Open (Market|Architecture) vs. Closed (Score:5)

    by PerlGeek ( 102857 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:39AM (#285531)
    "Microsoft clobbered Apple -- and the rest of the industry -- with openness."

    That was IBM, not MS. Even IBM didn't want to build an open system, they were forced into because Apple already had such a lead that IBM didn't have time to design a closed system. When clonemakers reverse-engineered the PC, IBM sued them and lost.

    Microsoft was never for openness, and neither was IBM. The US courts and IBM clonemakers were responsible for cheap, open PCs.

    "Linux itself exists only because Microsoft created the modern microcomputer industry, where standardized, fully-documented hardware was available at reasonable prices dictated by a competitive marketplace."

    Intel created the modern microcomputer industry. IBM helped them with the software side. The competitive marketplace, again, existed because of the PC clonemakers and the US courts, in spite of IBM. Microsoft never even entered the picture.

    "It's no coincidence that Linux was first developed for the same hardware platform as DOS."

    Coincidence? That was Linus' personal decision: beacuse the 386 was fairly cheap and fairly capable. Because Intel made a good, cheap chip. Not because of MS.

    "Microsoft has always been open and competitive. They encourage competition and thrive on it."

    MS is an anticompetitive cartel. They use anything from copyright law to patent law to contract law to undocumented features to make sure their competition does not have a chance.

  • Incorrect (Score:4)

    by cloudscout ( 104011 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:35AM (#285537) Homepage
    MacOS X includes a full version of OS 9.1 in the box with it. Users do not need to, as you suggest, spend an extra $100 to upgrade "to OS 9.something in order to run their 'Classic' applications". If they purchase MacOS X, they automatically get the software required for Classic compatibility.

  • Double Barrel (Score:5)

    by cloudscout ( 104011 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:22AM (#285538) Homepage
    The best part of this entire issue is that the amount of publicity generated will have two very negative effects on Apple.

    First, this almost completely unknown software is now making headlines on all of the trade websites. This is going to instantly boost the popularity of the project.

    Second, open source contributors are going to be less likely to develop software for MacOS X if they're going to be expected to clear all of their development plans with Apple's legal department first. It's hard to be creative and "Think Different" under these kinds of restrictions.

    Right foot. *BLAM* Left foot. *BLAM*

  • Why Apple, why? (Score:3)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:32AM (#285539)
    Why do you attack you fans? Why do you embarass us? Why do you make all of us that defend you feel stupid? Why?

    Who cares about lousy Themes? Why must you guys always come across as jerks?

    Put someone in charge of the legal department from PR, ask not if you can win the case, but ask if this action helps Apple.

    Why?

  • Re:Huh? (Score:4)

    by jgerman ( 106518 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:40AM (#285546)
    Yes that's the best part about the world today. You know I don't see other enablers getting sued. Otherwise gun manufacturers would be gone in a week. You cannot prosecute the tool creator. It's the end user who puts it to use in whatever way they see fit(that's from my department of redundancy department). It makes me sick.

  • feed the troll (Score:4)

    by Oztun ( 111934 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:59AM (#285555)
    You missed the point didn't you?

    The editor enables third parties to "improperly copy Apple's copyrighted software code and graphic files.

    So we should stop making word processors because someone might write something that is a copy of something copyrighted?

    unauthorized reverse-engineering of its software.

    This battle has been fought out in court by others and it has been decided its legal to reverse engineer software. It doesn't matter if some group of Nazi's has authorized you.

    Obviously there is a whole lot of history that you are completely blind to. I just thought I'd make these points before other someone starts to agree with you.

  • Re:Incorrect (Score:3)

    by MyopicProwls ( 122482 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:23AM (#285560) Homepage
    Okay. I'll tell you that. I have a rev. A iMac with 96 megs of RAM and OSX works reasonably well. (Note that the RAM requirements will hopefully drop in future releases of the software.) It's not really snappy, of course, and my 96 megs of RAM means I can't really run legacy software but all X software works fine (and there is plenty). I am buying a $110 256 RAM module so I can run legacy software, but it's not required. So your $500 estimate, for me, means $110 in RAM and $130 for OS X. And really, you don't need the RAM necessarily.

    Plus, rev A iMacs were designed to run OS 8.1, not OS X. If you want a superb box for OS X, go buy one. That's what I'll do when I get too frustrated with the speed of my box.

    PS Yes I'm somewhat of a developer (a monor programmer). C++ and Java, mostly, though I'm excited about the possibilities for perl on X. The dev tools work fine on my box.

    MyopicProwls

  • Re:If Apple Were a Person . . . (Score:5)

    by zaytar ( 139318 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:30AM (#285573)

    In other words - Steve Jobs ?

  • Re:For their own (Score:4)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:57AM (#285605)
    So I have no idea what Apple's motivation is.

    Their motivation is this:

    It is not a copyright issue. It is a trademark issue, and as has been said here many times before, trademarks exist on an "enforce it or lose it" basis. If they want to retain the right to spank people in the future for ripping off their trademarks, they must remain agressive about enforcing them agains everybody, all the time.

    That's all that is happening here. Their lawyers are over-reacting a little to protect Apple's trademarks.

    ...And all the blubbering slashbots that are filling this page with "they're shooting themselves in the foot" and "we should shun everything they do" comments are just putting their ignorance on display for all to see. Someday they will grow up and work in the real world, and find out that things don't always break down to "us vs. them".

  • Re:For their own (Score:4)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @12:46PM (#285606)
    Settle down. Apple is not "steamrollering" over anybody's rights. They are protecting their rights, specifically, their trademark rights, from those who they believe are violating them.

    They may be wrong, but that's what we have the courts for.

    Your attitude is exactly what I was talking about. You hear about one company suing one group and start shouting bloody murder at the top of your lungs, instantly insisting that Apple is an evil emprire out to destroy your freedom. I would bet $100 that you never even used Themes... you probably have not even heard of them before today, and more than likely are not even a Mac user... yet you are among those complaining the loudest, because you make the knee-jerk, yes "us vs. them", assumption that any big company that sues a small group must be out to ruin democracy.

    Count to ten, think calmly. You might come to realize that while Apple may be wrong about the extent of their trademark rights, they very well might credibly believe that they needed to press this case in order to protect their trademarks. Things are not always as simple as the Big Bad Corp trying to squish the Little Guy.

  • Re:For their own (Score:5)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @12:29PM (#285607)
    Sound reasonable?

    Sure, except we are talking about two completely different products here.

    The MacOS 8.1 (which is what this lawsuit concerns) is an old product that the probably would rather not spend legal resources licensing out to other people. It's a lot cheaper to just send people letters saying "quit ripping us off" than it is to establish a policy for pricing and distribution of licenses to every tiny shop of GUI hackers that wants to play with it.

    The good news is that Apple eventually treats their old OS releases as Abandonware. You can download System 7.5.3 for free from their website and monkey with it all you want. I suspect that they will eventually do the same with OS 8.0 - 9.1... probably a few months after they have migrated the vast majority of users and apps to OS X.

    OS X, on the other hand, is built on open source code, with open source licensing. You can hack the shit out of "Darwin" all you want. Write a totally new GUI for it, port it to run on a Sparc, whatever trips your trigger. Apple can't open up Aqua, because a lot of the tech involved is owned by another company (Adobe). Nor can they open up Quicktime, which is built on a closed codec that they don't own... but the open kernel and BSD layer is clearly their future direction. Apple is slowly being transformed into the company that NeXT could have been if it didn't lack the resources and market force. As a developer, even if you don't like Apple as a company, this is a Good Thing. NextStep was easy to write for, and if the trickle of new apps already coming in is anything to go by, it looks like developers are having a pretty good time with OS X, too. I suspect that we are going to see some pretty cool ideas emerge out of all this.

    Opening up a company like Apple is like opening up China. Sure you can shout at them and try to freeze them out, but that will just make them shut their doors to all of your ideas. By working with them, you can gradually introduce your philosphies into their worldview. Peaceful transformation is slower than confrontation, but it is also far less painful.

  • On one hand, Apple wishes to leverage the power of open source development, and on the other they want control over their intellectual property. There is no doubt that this causes internal conflicts at Apple. They *should* be very careful on how they handle this situation.

    First off, if they alienate open source developers, they lose a significant portion of their developer support. I'm not sure if they care at this point, because they have a working, published product. This is still dangerous for them though because they are scaring away potential open source help for future projects.

    Second, Darwin/OSX can be viewed as something of a ground breaking experiment in alternative development methodologies. As with many past projects, they are really setting future corporate development trends here. Other companies wishing to apply this development method will doubtless follow the trend Apple has already set. If these companies proceed without any notion of what an open source developer sees as right and wrong, the trend is sure to die quickly.

  • Apple, Apple... (Score:4)

    by update() ( 217397 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:45AM (#285658) Homepage
    As one of the Apple zealots, I have to say this is the sort of antic that creates the love/hate relationship we have with the company. Hopefully, this is another case of lawyers reacting on their own, that will calm down in a few days.

    Meanwhile, I'll comment that Rob's statement:

    [T]hey've tried so hard to make Darwin open and gain acceptance, and then to pull crap like this.

    makes the asumption that's central to the Slashdot mystique: that contributing to free software development and buying into Stallmanesque ideology are necessarily intertwined. The reality is that most of the individuals making significant contributions to free software, including Darwin, have little no to interest in the 2600 wannabe mentality that has come to dominate Slashdot and very few of the IP complainers will ever contribute to any project.

    No, the real problem here is that Apple continues to alienate the early adopters, tweakers and hobbyists who are the core of the companies user base and who are the ones who kept it afloat.

    I'll close by pointing out that it was my favorite tech company that finally _really_ brought Unix to the desktop, while Slashdot's pick turned out a slow, bloated Explorer knockoff, and fired half their workers the day they finished it...

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • Lame, just lame (Score:3)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:28AM (#285662) Homepage Journal
    There's a commercial on the radio about Jekyll and Hyde buying a car, one wants safety and security, the other power and thrills. They see the same car and cheer, for a moment seeing a bit of themselves in each other. A wonderful quote, in one of the best radio commercials I've ever heard. However, I feel it's a bit like Steve Jobs looking in the mirror and seeing Bill Gates. It's hard to cheer on an underdog under such circumstances.

    --

  • Umm... (Score:4)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @11:29AM (#285666)
    Seems Slashdots manta is if its on the internet, it must be true. This project has an activity of 0% with no released files in 6 months and out of the blue Apple tries to shutdown what appears to be an already inactive project. Did you bother verifing this report?

  • Re:i know how to respond (Score:3)

    by grammar fascist ( 239789 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @11:17AM (#285675) Homepage
    They should. Third party developers are the life blood of an operating system - especially an operating system made by a company that doesn't have a monopoly on the applications market.

    Witness Microsoft. It costs a bit to buy VS6, but if a developer can get it, he has all kinds of information and help at his disposal. And he doesn't have to worry about being attacked by Microsoft's lawyers, either. If he's good, Microsoft may even buy his product! What a deal!

    You and I may not like all the stupid shareware and freeware applications - heck, some of them are downright useless. But this is spurring on developer interest and mindshare, and that's what an operating system needs in the long run to survive.

  • It's not just Steve! (Score:3)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:09AM (#285677)
    creative individual with schizophrenic tendancies marked with delusions of grandeur and persecution and a possible self-destructive urge

    I'm platform agnostic, but spent a great while in the company of Mac-users and this is true for just about every one I've ever met.

    The sysadmin at the college where I was a volunteer webmaster? He would constantly go on and on about how great 'his' platform was and how superior it was over Wintel, and then in the next breath complain of all the conspiracies Microsoft was involved in to make sure that he and other Mac users were never able to play the good games or use any of the popular apps. Then he'd turn around and try to see how much warez he could upload to public servers without getting caught.

    The graphic designer I worked with?

    He would spend hours ranting about how our company's PC-using tech support area would abuse him because he was a Mac user, but then go on and on about the hardware superiority of the G3 over the eqivalent Pentium-II's at the time. Then he would fire off incindiary emails to the company president.

    I *could* go on, but I think you get the point.

  • Re:For their own (Score:3)

    by kilgore_47 ( 262118 ) <kilgore_47@y a h o o .com> on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @10:15AM (#285695) Homepage Journal
    Apple has had a modular 'theme' system built into the macos since around system 8.1 (maybe 8.5?) and has never released or even mentioned a theme editor or any themes. In fact, there is only one legit theme file (platinum), so the 'theme' menu in the appearance control panel has only one item in it. All of the themes you can download are unofficial and unsupported, and now I guess they are trying to put a stop to them. You have to wonder why apple wrote in their theme system at all... it has been there for a long time and they have never made any use of it.

  • I am the recipient of the cease and desist order. (Score:5)

    by lunaport ( 305795 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @01:54PM (#285705)

    I was hoping to keep this out of the press until we had more time to prepare, but since someone leaked it already

    Apple has two complaints against the software, Theme Machine, which allows users to create themes for the Mac OS. First:

    Specifically, it appears that the Editor enables third parties to create themes that are identical or confusingly similar to Apple's copyrighted and trademarked themes for Apple's MAC OS programs by improperly copying Apple's copyrighted software code and graphic files. You should be aware that by publishing this Editor that enables third parties to create these infringing themes and allowing the public to access and download the Editor, we believe that you are engaging in contributory infringement of Apple's copyrights, trademarks, and trade dress in violation of the Lanham Act.
    So their complaint is not that we are infringing on Apple's trademarks, but that we contribute to other users ability to do so. I can't imagine that argument holding up in any court.

    Additionally, Apple is greatly concerned by the likelihood that your Editor may be a derivative work resulting from the unauthorized reverse engineering of Apple's software. The specifications for the MAC OS themes have never been released, consequently, we believe that your Editor is derived through reverse engineering of the software. We would like to remind you that reverse engineering of the MAC OS is in violation of the software license agreement you accepted upon purchasing a copy of Apple's software.
    Because I did not help to write the program, I cannot speak authoritatively about the methods used to develop it. However, preliminary research indicated that those methods were appropriate via the fair use doctrine established in Sega v Accolade under the Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals.

    Of course, all of this is moot, because we are just a few random guys who have never met face to face, and have neither the funding nor the desire for a protracted legal battle with Apple. Ironically, we've been doing this for more than two years, and the Editor doesn't even work with Mac OS X. I'll be pulling it shortly, but if you'd like to get involved with the Mac Themes neXt project, please contact me [mailto]

  • Apple don't want their API's published (Score:3)

    by SeaCrazy ( 312000 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @11:14AM (#285710) Homepage
    Well, I don't know a whole lot about OSX or this theme tool. But I believe that this theme tool is open source, right? And it's using some of Apples unpublished API's right?
    I don't think it's the fact that you can make other themes for your mac that they object to but rather that the themes project is, with it's open source, in effect publishing API's that Apple doesn't want published.

  • Re:What amazes me so much.... (Score:3)

    by Zed2K ( 313037 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:58AM (#285711)
    1: They overcharge their customers for what is otherwise standard equipment that you can get for half the price on the PC side.

    You Get what you pay for. Apple hardware is high quality. Not some cheap OEM crap that Dell spits out.

    2: Just a few weeks ago Apple released a firmware upgraded that disallowed the use of a large number of 3rd party RAM sticks. Could this be because Apple isn't making any money selling 128 megs of ram for $ 256.00? (Check the RAM Upgrade prices at the Apple Store)

    The 3rd party memory that now doesn't work under the latest firmware was memory that did not match the specs that the machines should have had in the first place. There is still plenty of 3rd party modules that did work. Those people that got bit by this were the ones who went for the el cheapo sticks.

    4: Or maybe how they claim PowerPC processors kick the crap out of x86 processors. Remember how they used to say the G4/450 was double the speed of a Pentium III/450? Somebody explain to me how a G4/733 (with an extended pipeline as the P4 has) can be double the speed of Pentium 4 1.5 ghz if that was the case. Do the math people....

    Yes please do the math. There is more to the processor than just the Mhz ratings! A 733Mhz G4 will beat a 1.5Ghz P4 in some tests (just like the P4 will beat the G4 for in other specs).

    5: And now this..... did you honestly expect anything different? As far as Apple and Open Source are concerned - its simply a take and take relationship. They have shown many times that they are completely unwilling donate something to the Open Source community (and dont mention Darwin until you actually try and use it) and this action does nothing but strengthen that resolve in my eyes.

    Apple is a company. Heaven forbid they would want to make money and defend themselves...oh my, can't have that. Open source this...open source that. Screw open source! Just give me quality software and I'll pay for it.

    "The Funeral Procession"

    Oh yeah...they've been saying that for years...sing a different tune the repetition is boring.

  • Do you think they'll sue me for copying the iMac? (Score:5)

    by Malaveldt ( 317855 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:23AM (#285718)
    I taped a Tupperware bowl to the back of my monitor.

  • They weren't trying for OSS acceptance. (Score:3)

    by Lethyos ( 408045 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:33AM (#285734) Journal
    Apple was never trying to get the OSS community's acceptance or approval. They're just a big corporation that is using industry buzzwords to draw attention to themselves. It's cool to say, "we're built on open standards", "we use something that came out of CMU." Apple's not interesting in helping OSS and they never were. It's not surprising that Apple would make an attack at something that utilizes their private technologies. They don't want to be open, they just want to say they're open to help improve their profit margin.

    I was quickly becoming an Apple fan when the whole MacOS X thing began. "Yes, Darwin is open source! We're thinking forward. Here, have our source!" It didn't take long to realize that this was all nonsense. Their motivations are the same as any other large corporate entity: they want to have things their way and they are not going to give an inch.

    And here they are, stomping their feet and pouting. "We don't want anyone to change our interface! It's our interface, leave it alone! *pouting* Oh, and themes were our idea!" Is it any surprise?

    This is simply marketing hype. [apple.com]

  • Huh? (Score:3)

    by sllort ( 442574 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @09:29AM (#285756) Homepage Journal
    Here we are again with companies going after the enablers rather than the people committing the crime:

    Apple claims the editor enables third parties to copy its copyrighted trademark themes

    I claim MS paint enables me to copy Apple's copyrighted trademarks. Just as DeCSS is a possible enabler to a crime, this program and thousands of other utilities can "enable" crime.

    How can they possibly hope to have this stand up in court? Or are they hoping someone will just crumble rather than fight?

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