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Apple vs. the skin trade

Does Apple have better things to do than go after Aqua skins? TalkBack readers face off.
Written by Matthew Rothenberg, Contributor
Apple Computer's friends call it "stylish" and its foes call it "superficial," but both camps tend to agree that under Steve Jobs' aegis, the Mac maker has imbued the PC market with a new consciousness of aesthetic issues and vigorously promoted the look of its products as a key feature.

Complementary to this creative impulse, Jobs' Apple has been equally energetic about warding off imitators great and small, from makers of Windows-based iMac look-alikes to Web sites featuring electronic greeting cards bearing Mac themes.

Last week was Stardock Corp.'s turn under Apple's legal microscope. Stardock develops DesktopX, a graphical user interface-customization tool for Windows, and its Web site features a gallery of freely distributed, user-contributed interfaces, including a number of skins inspired by the Aqua look of Mac OS X. Now Apple's lawyers have waggled their collective wig, and Stardock has agreed to remove the GUI pretenders.

True to form, ZDNet News' TalkBack readers seized upon the episode with partisan glee. Whether these correspondents bashed or lauded Apple's willingness to fight for the sanctity of its candy coating depended entirely on their pre-existing conditions of pomophobia or -philia.

"Apple is behaving childishly (once again) by demonstrating a paranoid desire to stomp out any OS X knockoffs," wrote "Foo Fighter," a Web designer and TalkBack regular.

"Intellectual property or not, you can't stop private individuals and graphic designers from creating Aqua skins, especially with the advent of peer-to-peer networking. It's like trying to fill the holes in Swiss cheese. Does Apple really believe that I will buy a Mac because I can no longer download a skin for Windows?

"Besides, as the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Grow up, Apple (or should I say Jobs?)."

"Apple is getting very desperate when they have to pick out skins as an intellectual-property violation," chimed in TalkBack correspondent and tech-support pro "DJ." "I know that the Mac OS design is pretty nifty-looking. What's to stop someone from designing something that looks similar? Shouldn't Apple take that as a compliment? 'Hey, I like your OS design! I think I'll mimic it.'

"Instead of sending out threats, Apple should greet these and encourage them by saying, 'Well, if you like the design, why not try the real thing?'

"I have thought of getting a G4 Cube or tower recently, merely because of the OS X power and design being similar to the Linux/Unix systems I currently run. However, Apple's complaining on stupid topics such as this makes me wonder whether I should put my money into a company that does such things. It seems as though Apple is getting desperate to stay in the media."

Copyright: Use it or lose it
Other readers took a more generous view of the proceedings. "Although I am no Apple fan, I do think that there is something else going on here than fear of Stardock stealing the OS X interface," wrote Mike Walsh, a Chicago MSCE and MCT. "In copyright law, if you don't defend your intellectual property, you can lose your rights to it.

"To this end, trademark lawyers jump on any possible violation with both feet, no matter how tenuous the relationship. For example, if a newspaper writer makes some reference to 'kitty litter,' he gets a letter from the Kitty Litter company reminding him that that is a trademarked name and not a generic name for cat-box gravel. Lawyers employ people who do nothing but scan the press and TV for improper uses of trademarked names. It seems silly, but there are precedents in law.

"When you add on lawyers' usual tendency to threaten you with the electric chair in the first paragraph and then to get more reasonable, these things can get a bit scary."

Meanwhile, plenty of Mac fans took a more vigorously Apple-centric line. "The vast majority of people in this forum have obviously never created anything that they consider valuable enough to be patented or copyrighted," opined Los Angeles artist Michael Clarke. "If they did, they would not be giving Apple a hard time for trying to protect its artwork.

"Macintosh users understand because we are the artists and musicians. We recognize Apple as one of our own, as the only consistently creative computer manufacturer in the world. Apple is the only computer company that realizes that beauty and form are as important as function, and it shows, both in their hardware (iMac, iBook, Cube, G4 tower, Titanium) and in their software (iMovie, OS X).

"There is nothing original or artistic about duplicating Apple's considerable efforts to create a beautiful and innovative user interface. Taking the beauty that is Aqua and wrapping it around the ugliness that is Windows is a degrading insult, no matter how much the uncreative try to convince you that it is the sincerest form of flattery."

What do you think? Are skinners expressing their own creativity with Aqua themes, or are they sucking the juice from Apple? Sound off in the TalkBack space below!


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