"we've always been shameless about stealing great ideas"--Steve Jobs on developing the Mac

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

Dude, who the hell cares. Books on a shelf. Wow. This is what you're making a big deal about? Nick is just jealous of Apple. Apple just passed Windows Mobile like it was standing still in the cell phone market and he can't stand it. Now he's looking for angles to complain about the iPad. Just admit it you jealous hater, you wish Microsoft thought of it all, but you're bitter they've lost their way.

He's still pretending to be writing "factual" articles.

Maybe someday he'll learn to do basic research. But that's asking a lot of someone so lazy as not to bother checking his "facts".

If he's writing opinions then he or his editors (do they even exist?) need to mark his articles as opinion pieces.

Inquirer is certainly living up to their title of posting "Friction".

I worked for a Danish company like a decade ago which had a Bookcase software application. One part of the user interface was a bookcase with multiple shelf's, one for each publisher, and optional ones for custom combination's of books.

It was mostly used with dictionaries and one or two encyclopedias. Publisher was, among others, OUP, CUP, Bertelsmann...

Here is a list of some titles made by the company http://textware-a-s.software.informer.com/

The idea of a bookcase is so obvious I can't see anyone was copied. But if Delicious insists then I'd say they were not the first with the idea.

FINALLY, somebody who actualy is informed about the past...the idiotic Apple stole from Parc-xerox legend...ugh. It's like the MS fanboy (the company which has stolen every sucessful product they've released...ironically with copies WORSE than what they ripped off)can only come up with this criticsm, as if it makes Apple just as bad as MS...yet the can't even be bothered to verify what actually happened. Kids today....

Well if Apple was trying to copy a nice design they blew it. Delicious Library LOOKS much nicer anyway. Apple's design of all standardized book size & spacing looks very 'artifical' whereas DL's design looks more 'natural' with varying book sizes, tall/short ratios & varied spacings.

As for the whole idea of patenting 'look & feel', I agree with an earlier poster... thank God this silliness wasn't around in the early days of car design.

You guys do realize that Wil Shipley works for Apple now, has for some time now?

And that Shipley gave permission to the author of Classics to copy the DL look and feel?

Sheesh, miss a few details here guys?

I'm so sick of all you Apple and Microsoft fanboys you all are no different, except you are on the opposite side of the fence.

DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ISSUE JUST DON'T THROUGH CRAP BACK AND FORTH!?? ARE YOU ALL 5 GRADERS!? GROW UP!

There, I'm done with my rant.

At all of you defending Apple or putting down the guy with the complaint..

Do NONE of you find it fishy that a number of Apple employees who worked on this worked on the same thing for the guy who made the complaint???

What an attitude to have... "screw the small guy even though he is getting hurt from it. Apple is God and therefore they're right."

How's your mom's basement treating you?

Who cares what this fellow says about being ripped off, the only thing that will get Apple to give a shit about this is to somehow make this cost them money. Good luck with that. End of story.

"... all these interfaces and touchy multi finger things are all common sense and shouldn't have any patents awarded in the first place."

You would think so, but you would be wrong, because you apparently don't remember a software company with a program named As Easy As that was sued by Lotus for copying the 'look and feel' of its 1-2-3 spreadsheet program because the / key dropped down the menu just like in 1-2-3.

Can you imagine what learning to drive would be like today if patent and copyright lawyers had been involved with car design at the beginning of the 20th century? Hey! you can't run the gas pedal with your right foot and clutch with the left foot - that violates the 'look and feel' patent I have on the car I built! You can't have the blinker operated by a stalk moved by the left hand - that's how it's done on the car WE designed!
Or Underwood suing other typewriter makers for using the QWERTY layout. (oh god; if ONLY... then maybe we wouldn't be stuck with it today, 40+ years after the Selectrix obsoleted it!)

that metaphor about the 'walled garden' that is the App Store being comparable to the way china controls and censors their citizens' internet access/content.

I think it's spot-on.

And - sorry - for the same price, I don't see how a giant iPod Touch is better than a refurbished laptop from outlet.dell.com dual-booting Win7-64 Pro and Fedora 12_x64 (simple to add - get.fedoraproject.org), and is not tied to getting its programs and content from pretty-much one location.

Especially if you can't replace the iPad's battery yourself when it dies in a year or so, as is true of the Touch.

Maybe I'll think different when HTML5 is more than vapor/promise ware. I have a feeling we'll see IPv6 in widespread use before that happens, though.

How is the Windows 7 task bar a rip off?

In 1991 the game Myst used similar graphics, with outward-facing books on shelves which opened when clicked. They even had the page-turning effect. And I'm sure someone else did it before them.

"Wouldn't be the first idea Apple has nicked. It won't be the last, either."

For Oliver Jones and any other thick-headed yob who routinely post and perpetuate this canard, please note the following"

"The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product."

Got it? Apple made a deal to look at the PARC work. Apple also hired PARC employees that were disenchanted with the Xerox way of doing things. Also note, PARC = Palo Alto Research Center, which was a division of Xerox. PARC did not implement commercial products. Xerox the commercial company poorly understood its research arm. People at PARC were frustrated with the corporate mentality on the East coast. Xerox did try to sell a GUI computer, the Xerox Star, but could not sell more than 25000 of them. Perhaps the researchers at PARC, felt more of a kinship with Apple not far away in Cupertino, rather than their stodgy masters 3000 miles away? The stock? Pissed away and sold for short term profits. For those who doubt any of this, simple research should show up substantially similar accounts of how Apple acquired the technology.

This virtual Bookshelf thing isn't a new thing. I remember a couple of GAY apps that did it in the past. The point is it is gay. I think coverflow would provide a more useful and pleasant experience. Of course I haven't laid hands on it so this is all in my head.

can't say microsoft ripped it off since linux had it all first. you could say linux is the defacto standard while apple and micky mouse imitate except that all these interfaces and touchy multi finger things are all common sense and shouldn't have any patents awarded in the first place. :P

it's not like microsoft have copied pretty much everything good about OS X. I mean look at the new windows 7 taskbar. that is one of MANY features ripped off.

and yet no-one cares about that. but when it's a few images stacked on a shelf, wow, everyone suddenly thinks apple have gone too far!

it's a bookshelf guys. books are found on a bookshelf. hardly hard to think up of. there are 140,000 apps and there's bound to be one that looks like it.
and really, does it matter?

IT'S A BOOKSHELF FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. that must have taken years of hard work to think of...

and From people who live in glass houses?

It is the age of plastic, for aero's sake, and Video Killed the Radio Star...

I hope this veneer is customizable.

It just goes against the grain that a splinter group insists itself a thorn in the side of
art dekko?

Where is my baggage carousel? Where is my knutty knapsack bookbag with Funky fluorescent colours, reflective band and reflective strap?

I'll tell you. BrightKidz have nicked the concept, and have left Apple to fritter.

Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy! Apples in Stereo! Are you now, or have you ever been, kin to Elijah Wood?

This is the stupidist whine of 2010, but Since it is only January I imagine there will be more to come.

This "interface" is nothing more than the standard icons-in-a-grid arrangement with a background picture of a bookshelf. Steve Jobs made a big deal of announcing that the iPad will let you customize the background. If you don't like the bookshelves, then ditch them.

If anyone should be whining, I figure it should be Whoopi Goldberg. Doesn't she hold the patent on "letting me be me"? Or is that Ellen Degeneres?

Wouldn't be the first idea Apple has nicked. It won't be the last, either.

Who cares. You cant copyright the idea of putting books in a book shelf.

Nickie, Nickie, Nickie ... did the toilet lid fall on you again?

Haven't I seen this screen metaphor before, like in Myst? And the books showed video! Seriously, I also remember the Magic Cap OS having a desk and shelf motif also. Get over it, this is something you can't really steal, as if the idea of showing virtual books on a shelf to mimic real books on a shelf is not an obvious idea.

Soo; their iReadBooksHonest app is nicked?
Their design.
Their name.
Their anti-competetive behaviour.

I like the iPhone; but I hope they just get sued all day every day from herein.
Maybe the fanboys will see them for what they really are.

But then again; they'll just say "iPad is not a tablet so you cannot compare it to a tablet; and its not a Mac so it can steal software that was made for the mac and that's ok. And it's made by apple so it doesnt matter what it's flaws is its just so perdy"

/sigh

Another nail in the coffin for good business ethics.

if you dont have the money to protect your own designs, you didnt really make it.. silly programmers/designers....

some thumbnails on a simulated background, I had hoped that such lame "metaphors" had passed away with M$'s "Bob". Saw this way back in early '90s, and it was lame even then. Just show me the thumbnails *without* the "metaphor", and don't try to pass off ideas that would be the first to occur to *anyone* as brilliant innovation.

When you make enough money and have enough power, it's not considered stealing. In other words if you think we stole it get out your lawyers. Small company's don't have the money to defend themselves.
I bought an Imac and later sold it it. I like the OS but everything else about Apple is rotten.I live within 100 miles of Intel 500 miles of MS and about the same from Apple and don't care for any of them.

Just as greedy an devious as any other company.

The difference between MS customers & Apple customers is that apple customers think they are getting an innovative product, something with prestige.

I think it's time to give the apple marketing team a raise, they are doing a splendid job with rounding up the suckers.

The books interface looks like it was taken directly from Classics by Andrew Kaz & Phill Ryu. They comment on their Facebook fansite that Apple didn't pay them for their design. Andrew worked on Delicious Library.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Classics/47737177377