Is Apple ripping off Bumptop?
Apple filed a patent on multisized icon interface; allowing users to make important icons larger and less important icons smaller. Here’s the patent diagram from Mac Rumours:
But this idea isn’t new. Bumptop is an interface that simulates paper and desk organization. You can throw icons around, like you would on your real desk. Resize them and crumple them up if they annoy you.
Check out the demo video - especially the section at 5:41: “We can enlarge icons to make them larger and heavier.”
I first saw Bumptop at work at DemoCamp 2 here in Montreal last month. I remember thinking, what’s to stop Apple from pulling another Konfabulator and rolling bits of this out with the next iteration of OS X?
Nothing, I guess.
Related stuff:
Malcolm Gladwell: “The Social Life of Paper” - Why humans still prefer working with paper.
Comments (3 comments)
Shame on Apple for stepping on the toes of young innovators.
Kino Kid / April 8th, 2007, 7:14 pm / #
I personally don’t see enough of a similarity between the Apple patent and the Bumptop desktop. Bumptop icon size relates to the file’s size or “weight” whereas the icon sizes referred to in the patent is more of an organizational tool… A preference of the user (I’ll make my main project folder big and set it over here, and I’ll shrink my reference and client document folders and set them in a line over here.)
There has been a few hacks that have allowed this in the past (like http://blog.kung-foo.tv/archives/000466.php).
Also—although the release of the Konfabulator-killing Dashboard and all its “Widgets” had a definite air of shadyness (One could argue that Konfab was just an updated version of the Mac’s Desk Accessories from the old days, however)—Apple doesn’t always pirate from innovators. Often, they employ them.
Ben Kazez (http://www.benkazez.com), author of one of my favorite Widgets, iCal Events, has been working on staff in Cupertino, adding his iCal integration into the upcoming Leopard Calendar widget.
Word is, too, that the elusive Blacktree, Inc. (http://www.blacktree.com) has been working with Apple re: Quicksilver integration. Imagine a world with a QS app even MORE integrated into the system. It would, like, DO things for you before you even DO them!
-Joe
Joe / April 27th, 2007, 11:21 am / #
kino
cool site
kino / February 1st, 2008, 8:36 pm / #
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