nomacuserbar: Sfatiamo un altro mito AKA No Mac zealots, Apple didn't invent the dock

martedì 28 aprile 2009

Sfatiamo un altro mito AKA No Mac zealots, Apple didn't invent the dock

With Dell taking the Windows experience to the next level with the introduction of the Dell Dock, I've seen a lot of online buzz about it. Most agree that the Dell Dock is really good but intermixed are a lot of Mac fans who use terms like "Mac rip off" or how it's a copy of the Mac dock.

Mac zealots have a long and glorious history of retroactively claiming pre-existing concepts as being invented by Apple. For example, the modern "widget" (end user created applets that use Javascript) was not invented by Apple. They also didn't first appear in Konfabulator either. They appeared in Stardock DesktopX years earlier. Apple zealots usually counter by arguing that things like desktop accessories from 1981 "invented" the concept (as if the average user was going to whip out small assembly language programs).

I think most rational people agree that the modern widget is a mini application that can be created by end users that are tied together with a high level scripting language (i.e. Yahoo Widgets, Dashboard, Sidebar Gadgets, DesktopX). And DesktopX borrowed the concept from IBM's worksplace shell which in turn was inspired by prior art as well.

But the controversy over widgets is nothing compared to the claim that Apple somehow invented the concept of docks. Even allowing for the history of NeXT with its side dock, the dock concept is ancient.

Stardock, for example, has been doing "docks" since 1994. Object Desktop for OS/2 included things like Tab LaunchPad and Control Center. You don't see Stardock fans complaining that every sidebar is a "rip off" of Control Center. And Control Center certainly didn't invent the concept of a side-based bar or dock either.

You would be hard pressed to find many companies that have been continuously producing a dock and a sidebar as long as Stardock has -- 14 consecutive years of development. I think it's fair to say that we weren't "inspired" by an Apple OS that wouldn't exist for 7 more years from the time we started doing this sort of thing.