Sherlock did not rip off Watson. The ideas and interfaces were similar, but the execution was very different.
Panther did not rip off LiteSwitch. Aside from the idea being by no means original to LS, the fact that Proteron followed the existing Apple UI guidelines very closely is not Apple's problem. Indeed, it stands testament to Apple's UI guidelines that someone could have so closely predicted what Apple might do in its own interface.
These things are to be expected. When you write a product to fix a deficiency in an OS, you have no right to complain when that deficiency is eventually fixed.
But what we have here with Dashboard/Konfabulator is markedly different. As with LiteSwitch, the idea is far from original, though Apple has a better claim to the concept (from a UI perspective) than Konfabulator does. However, Apple appears to have gone out of its way to copy Konfabulator's execution right down to the flaws (such as being tied to a single language) and even picked the same language to which it would be tied, namely JavaScript. This is cause for alarm.
Panther did not rip off LiteSwitch. Aside from the idea being by no means original to LS, the fact that Proteron followed the existing Apple UI guidelines very closely is not Apple's problem. Indeed, it stands testament to Apple's UI guidelines that someone could have so closely predicted what Apple might do in its own interface.
These things are to be expected. When you write a product to fix a deficiency in an OS, you have no right to complain when that deficiency is eventually fixed.
But what we have here with Dashboard/Konfabulator is markedly different. As with LiteSwitch, the idea is far from original, though Apple has a better claim to the concept (from a UI perspective) than Konfabulator does. However, Apple appears to have gone out of its way to copy Konfabulator's execution right down to the flaws (such as being tied to a single language) and even picked the same language to which it would be tied, namely JavaScript. This is cause for alarm.