Apple patents Mac OS dock; can have long term impact
October 9, 2008
Mac OS, arguably the world’s most user friendly operating system, has long been regarded as the final word on design and ease-of-use. One of its best features was the dock and it very quickly became an identifying feature of Apple systems as a whole.
Of course the dock has a lot of animations in it that makes it more fun for the user.
Apple has now won a patent for this dock. This patent can have a lot of impact in the future design of user interfaces in operating systems. There are existing software like Object Dock and Rocket Dock that lets a user have a Mac OS like dock on Windows based operating systems. The recently released KDE 4 platform offers plasmoids that look and behave like the Mac OS docks. Also, very recently, Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth said that his company is putting in more effort on the GUI aspect of Ubuntu to make it more like the Mac OS. Chances are high that such an effort would also involve developing a dock for Ubuntu.
The question is would all these attempts and implementations be in violation of this patent? If so future UI development efforts would need to make a shift in their design paradigms. A bigger question is how would Apple deal with such potential violators? In a nutshell, this patent can have grave ramifications on the future of desktop computing.
Entry Filed under: Linux, Ubuntu, apple, mac os, operating system. Tags: apple, apple mac os dock patent, apple macos dock patent, apple patent, mac os, mac os dock, macos, new apple patent, patent.
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1. John Campbell Rees | October 9, 2008 at 6:09 pm
How can Apple possibly have been awarded a patent for the Dock, when in a poor copy of the RISC OS Iconbar. THe Iconbar was developed by Acorn Computers back in the 1980’s, so there is at least 20 years worth of prior art that would block the awarding of this absurd patent.
2. icecalibre | October 18, 2008 at 10:30 am
But somehow they did so…
As an avid user of rocketdock on windows, I’ll be sad to see these kinds of projects shut down. Docks really are the easiest way to navigate quickly to things quickly.
Shame.
I guess now we’re just going to have to invent something even more efficient. Like Blender 3D style menus…
I am still waiting for pie menu support for all OS’s, it seems like a logical step in efficient file browsing. (Brings me back to the Blender middle mouse button menu idea)