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wickedchap | 12 years ago

If you know anything of design, Elementary is not a clone nor is mimicking OSX. Or, put differently; everybody is copying everybody. If you have good enough eye sight, then you can see that the difference between OSX and Elementary is huge. Dock was used before OSX, so you can't say that's copying from OSX. The light-gray colors and clinically clean interface was also used before OSX.

discuss

silverlight|12 years ago

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be insulting or anything, as an OSX user, it just looks very similar to me, and I was hoping someone would point out a difference in philosophy or implementation, not that the dock was used pre-OSX (which I'm sure it was).

There was no reason to insult my eye-sight :-)

minor_nitwit|12 years ago

They use the genie animation to minimize apps, and the full screen button is identical to the one in OSX. If they're not mimicking OSX then why are things like that in there?

aroman|12 years ago

We absolutely do not use the genie to minimize apps (nor is such functionality even available in the program we use for our dock, Plank), and in fact we came up with our full screen button months before Apple made that design change public. For proof (or at least evidence coupled with my personal assurance) of the latter claim, see this mockup[1] which was submitted July 10, 2010. That's 1 year and 10 days before OS X Lion (the first release to feature similar maximize buttons) was released -- even before the betas.

Also, it should be noted: that window control control does not behave the way OS X's similar one does. Fills the screen but does not take the application full screen.

[1]: http://danrabbit.deviantart.com/art/Postler-170793979

nsmartt|12 years ago

I doubt anyone thinks this is technically copying OS X but the design is similar enough that it's clearly meant to be reminiscent of OS X.

RussianCow|12 years ago

Yeah, but with Elementary OS, everything from the colors to the buttons to the layout of apps is almost identical to that of OS X. There's no innovation here--it's just Linux with the GUI of OS X. If I wanted that, I'd just use OS X.

nileshtrivedi|12 years ago

But what if you wanted "Linux with the GUI of OS X", not just "GUI of OS X"?

tuananh|12 years ago

let an OS X user uses Elementary OS for awhile. Probably 99% of them would say, "yup, very similar to OS X".