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Apple iPad's iBook rips off indie dev's creation
- mr_eel 17y agoYet, in the same article the author mentions Delicious Library's influence on the design of Classics. Rip off, my behind. It's an _obvious_ metaphor. Commenters on the article even point out other examples like Shelfari.
- krtl 17y agoYah, its not a huge deal. But something I thought I would share with the community here.
- DougBTX 17y agoIt reminded me of Delicious too, but yes... books on a bookshelf and pages which turn like pages.
- kylec 17y agoI wonder if there will be a way to turn off the animation. When looking at the promo video there was way too much movement for the simplest of things like selecting a book, turning a page, etc. For me, it would get old very fast.
- jotto 17y agoLet us not forget that one of the originals behind Delicious Library now works (or did work) at Apple - http://www.mikematas.com/ http://www.mikematas.com/
- arfrank 17y agoHe left in july 2009 I believe. Cant pull up dead link to the blog post, cache wont work, but here is the link to the google search http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mike+matas+leaves+apple&aq=f&oq=&aqi= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mike+matas+leaves+a...
- jstevens85 17y agoYou're a bit off there. He joined Apple in 2005.
- pyre 17y agoHow do you figure? If he joined Apple in 2005 and left in July 2009, what's the issue? What's 'a bit off?'
- jstevens85 17y agoSorry, I read your post as he joined in July 2009, which would make Apple's use of the bookshelf more suspicious.
- pavs 17y agoWired editor rips off sensational title.
- peyton 17y agoWow, I'm surprised Apple didn't just buy Delicious Library outright, like they bought SoundJam MP for iTunes, or Cover Flow for Cover Flow, or plenty of other small developers for features.
- tlrobinson 17y agoNo, they went for not buying it just like they didn't buy Konfabulator for Dashboard, and probably dozens of other examples.
- hexley 17y agoWhy should they have paid Konfabulator for Dashboard? They invented Desk Accessories back in System 1.0
- tlrobinson 17y agoAny why should they pay for a product which uses the same obvious bookshelf metaphor?
- dcurtis 17y agoWil Shipley responded to this very eloquently: "As a creator, part of what I seek is recognition, immortality. I don’t work for Apple or Google (I’ve been offered jobs & buyouts) because I want the fame myself. It’s my shot at immortality. My designs are my children. So it stinks when I feel like Steve might get the fame for my innovation. I lose my children, as it were. But your children aren’t really yours. They have lives of their own. So when your designs do change the world, you have to accept it. You have to say, ‘Ok, this was such a good idea, other people took it and ran with it. I win.’" WIL SHIPLEY, DELICIOUS MONSTER
- Zev 17y agoTheres also this quote that he tweeted earlier today, that I'm becoming partial to: If Delicious Library were just a pretty set of shelves, I’d be really pissed. But it’s a lot more, and very different from iBooks. - http://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/8290423381 http://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/8290423381
- KC8ZKF 17y agoTherefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn't possess, acts but doesn't expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever. -- Lao Tzu
- JunkDNA 17y agoI think this is the right idea to have. Take the design of the modern laptop. Apple was the first to pioneer the idea that you could put a touchpad at the bottom of the keyboard and give the user a place to rest his/her hands in the process. Now everyone does it because it's such a head-slappingly good design idea you would be crazy to do anything else. I'd venture to guess most average computer users have no idea Apple is the origin of this design. But I'm sure it irks Jobs a little bit now and again when he sees cheapo netbooks using it.
- earl 17y agoYes. Who would possibly think of a bookshelf as a metaphor for your collection of books.
- dcurtis 17y agoTo be fair, there are two other things at play here. * 1. No app had ever displayed books on a bookshelf in this way until Delicious Monster did. * 2. The designer who designed the bookshelf UI at Delicious Monster was poached by Apple to work on the iPad team. (And because I'm irritated by comments on Hacker News lately, I just want to point out that sarcasm is the simplest form of humor.)
- jstevens85 17y ago"The designer who designed the bookshelf UI at Delicious Monster was poached by Apple to work on the iPad team." If you're referring to Mike Matas, the co-founder of Delicious Monster, he left DM to join Apple back in 2005. While I imagine he's probably working on the iPad, he wasn't poached specifically to work on the device.
- krtl 17y agoHow do you know the iPad wasn't 5 years in the making?
- nudist 17y agoHe mentioned somewhere that he designed elements of the iPad's Maps UI.
- jstevens85 17y agoYeah, according to this twitter post http://twitter.com/mike_matas/status/8292208676 http://twitter.com/mike_matas/status/8292208676 he also worked on the Photos app.
- tlrobinson 17y agoA book reader using books on a bookshelf as a metaphor? Phil Ryu is a master of marketing. Making a fuss about this is just another press opportunity.
- phillryu 17y agoI just want to note that I am listed as co-creator of this app for a reason, and marketing was an afterthought with Classics after creating a really great reading experience. That having been said, I sympathize with your disbelief. Yeah, what we did was obviously a direct port of reading real books. But you have no idea how much crap we took for doing exactly that – what I considered the obvious. To a lot of people apparently things like a page flip port seemed completely idiotic. To me it was an integral part of the enjoyment of reading books that had been lacking in most ereader experiences. We did reap the rewards too, so ultimately I can't really complain, and we always joked that Apple would eventually rip off the page flip since it just makes sense. All those TV ads Apple featured Classics in now seem strange in retrospect though, presuming iBooks was designed and under developed before our app's release.
- Towle_ 17y ago"[I]ts similarities ... are beyond the realm of coincidence." Though certainly far from their most avid reader, I must say I generally enjoy reading Wired's content quite a bit. That gem right there, however, made me want to throw up. Is anyone familiar enough with Wired's writers to declare this an isolated incident? Maybe then the nasty taste in my throat would go away, and I wouldn't have to worry about coming across this level of obvious dickishness in their articles were I to start reading them more regularly. "The 3D page-flipping effect looks almost exactly the same." How many ways are there to animate a flipping book page? It's not like we're talking about tons of different moving parts. There's like...one.
- ghshephard 17y agoI was just inspired to go download the (free) instance of Classics. It had an odd page-turning automation graphic (both pulling up too much of the screen, distracting, as well as not being very controllable - hard to turn a page a bit without moving it all the way). For the _life_ of me I couldn't figure out where to find the options on how to change the font size - obviously it's there some place (nobody makes an ereader without the ability to change font size ) - but no amount of clicking, checking in settings, or otherwise scanning could reveal it. Regardless, I feel reassured in my $9.99 investment in Eucalyptus - which has all of the above (page turning, font size) nailed - better than the Kindle App, actually.
- chaostheory 17y ago"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal" - Pablo Picasso
- tlrobinson 17y agoIt's "good artists copy, great artists steal": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
- zandorg 17y agoIf it doesn't have the barcode/iCam feature (where you swipe a book under the camera and it reads the ISBN) then it's a pale shadow of Delicious Library.