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Mac OS X Lion Features Are Ubuntu Rip-Off

Posted by RAVI Mac OSX 10/23/2010 04:39:00 PM

During Apple's "Back to the Mac" keynote in which Steve Jobs and crew introduced their new iLife suite and their upcoming release of Mac OS X Lion. During the keynote (yes, I followed along out of curiosity) they highlighted many "brand new innovations" for OS X Lion. I couldn't help but notice most of these items are not brand new at all; in fact, most of them are recent improvements seen first in Ubuntu.

Multitouch is UTouch

Let's look at Mac OS X Lion's first "innovation" they introduced: multitouch gestures. This is curious because while Mac trackpads and "magical" mice support multitouch, not much work had been done with multitouch at the OS level. With Lion, Apple's introducing system-wide gestures that command both applications and the OS. But wait, where have we seen this before? That's right, Ubuntu.

Ubuntu developers recently worked at developing a multitouch gesture library and included it in the latest release of Ubuntu, 10.10. This gesture library, called UTouch, allows users to use multitouch gestures which command both applications and the OS itself. You can scroll in applications using a multitouch trackpad, or you can swipe a gesture to bring up a preview of all your open windows. You can find a great tech demo article and video of it in action on the Canonical blog.

App Store is Ubuntu Software Center

Next, Jobs introduced the brand new App Store for OS X. Developers will be able distribute their free and paid apps direct to desktops using this store. Apps are available for download and are installed right to the user's Applications folder. Using the App Store, the OS will now keep all of your applications up to date. All of this sound familiar?

With Ubuntu 10.04, Canonical introduced the Ubuntu Software Center. Often referred to as a sort of "App Store" for Ubuntu, it allowed users to easily find and install thousands of free applications. With the latest version of Ubuntu, Canonical introduced a paid apps section of the store, offering developers a direct-to-desktop channel for their paid software. When a user clicks install, the app is immediately downloaded and installed and placed in the user's standard Applications menu. As with all applications on Ubuntu, the standard system Update Manager keeps both the OS and any downloaded apps up to date.

Launchpad is Unity

Perhaps this next item Jobs introduced is totally unique. He introduced an apps homescreen called "Launchpad" where, similarly to iOS devices, the user can see all applications on their computer in a nice grid layout. They can organize the applications into categories for easier browsing. Totally unique, right?

Oh, that's right, Canonical's had a nice interface like this for a while called Unity. Unity is a sort of homescreen interface that displays all of the users' apps in a grid layout. The apps are organized into categories. You can read more about the origins of Unity here. Interesting.

Mission Control is Gnome Shell

Jobs then introduced a new interface dubbed "Mission Control." From Mission Control the user can view all of their workspaces and running apps along with the dock to launch new applications. Similar to Expose, the windows and workspaces "zoom out" to view everything at once.

While there is nothing exactly like this in Ubuntu by default, Gnome Shell has been in development for some time now and offers nearly identical functionality. With Gnome Shell, Ubuntu users can easily "zoom out" and see all their workspaces at once, along with all the open windows on each workspace. Along the side of the screen there's an area to launch new apps as well. Gnome Shell takes things a step further than Mission Control by allowing users to move windows between workspaces and even add or remove workspaces. It looks different than Mission Control, but it's main idea and functionality has been nearly photocopied by Mission Control.

Why I'm Concerned

While these are all great implementations by Apple, I fear users will assume Apple came up with all of these ideas all by themselves. I feel that Apple will be seen as innovative and creative because they're more well-known, then when someone hears about the innovations made by Canonical, the person will assume they straight-up ripped off Apple. In reality, it's quite the opposite; all of these features have distinct roots in research and brainstorming done by Canonical, developers, and the open source community. Apple has taken (directly or indirectly) these ideas and claimed them as their own.

What other features have you seen originate in open source applications that have been claimed by big developers such as Apple? Do you think Apple really did invent all of these items on their own and Canonical doing so first is merely a case of convergent evolution? Share your thoughts in the comments!

-- Cassidy James is the young supporter of open source and software freedom who wrote and maintains the Ubuntu Guide. He's used Linux in general since 2006, but specifically Ubuntu since 7.04. When he's not writing or taking classes, Cassidy programs websites for a small web development company in the US.