Is Apple’s iChat Theatre a Rip Off of Script Software’s ChatFX?
Isaac Newton had a famous remark to Hooke when they were both rivals
“If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
Since we are the developers of ChatFX which does special effects like bluescreen in iChat many people have asked how we respond to Apple’s new technology in iChat for Leopard which has bluescreen, distortion and other effects surprisingly identical to our ChatFX. We have been contacted by many people and press who are bitter against Apple about what they see as this copying. That is why we created this response. First if you have not seen it check out ChatFX here.
Is it another case of Watson/Sherlock or Konfabulator/Dashboard or Windows/Mac?
Naw, we don’t think so. These aren’t the days of Doug Engelbart inventing the mouse and desktop metaphors totally on his own. We are all connected by the net, articles, journals, sample code, and chat. Lots of brilliant minds all exchanging concepts. Like the independent creation of similar songs at the same time it is often hard to say where an idea originated. We are all connected, we stand on each others shoulders. In our case we had a leg up in creating what we did through the use of numerous Apple technologies that we put together in a creative way. ChatFX relies on Quartz Composer which is brilliant and created by Pierre-Olivier Latour, Apple gives it out free to developers. Also iChat was necessary and is free from Apple and part of the OS. We may have inspired Apple but Apple definitely inspired us.
Leopard from Apple is a good thing. We are Mac developers. We think the development and advancement of iChat and OS X is great for developers and users. We hope this note will clarify things from our point of view.
Leopard is not available till sometime next year but people can get ChatFX and use it right now. Apple’s future iChat Theatre will only work in iChat but we are working on making ChatFX work in Skype, Yahoo Messenger and any video app for more versatility then iChat Theatre which only works in iChat. More is coming, some things we can’t mention yet. Download and try it here: ChatFX
Apple’s attention on this area verifies and validates the usefulness of ChatFX to the future of video conferencing. We thank Apple and all the developers who are pushing back the frontier of knowledge in the area of telepresence.
Its funny to look back and realize that ChatFX was not the first, that Script Software authors have a history of breaking new ground. Peter Hoerster created the worlds first multiple clipboard tool CopyPaste based on the creation of the clipboard by Apple. The clipboard was one of the incredible Mac innovations (by Bruce Horn and others) when it was first released in 1984. CopyPaste extends the power of the clipboard and has been incredibly popular. Users have written to us for the past ten years asking when is Apple/Microsoft going to buy us out and put it in the OS? That hasn’t happened but we think multiple clipboards are destined for inclusion in the OS. Its just a mattter of time, they are just to useful to leave out.
iStar Composer is another unique program that adds back to downloadable music, lyrics. Not just lyrics but synchronized lyrics like in karaoke. Instead of just seeing the title and artist on an iPod see the lyrics as they are sung and in iTunes don’t just see some abstract psychedelic visualizations but see full screen the lyrics as they are sung or the text of a profs. podcast.
KnowledgeMiner does knowledge discovery through data mining. It is the briliant child of Frank Lemke and has a potential that rivals all the others. Use it to model global warming, to find oil, to fight cancer or stop terrorism. We advocate its use to radically reduce the number of animals used to test chemicals (See this poster). It is totally a Mac program and is going through a major revision that will make it easier to apply in more fields and to more problems.
In other news we have two developers at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference. Both Frank Lemke (creator of KnowledgeMiner) and Ben Dunton (creator of iStar Composer) are at WWDC. If you are press, a developer or a company and want to interview or meet with them to discuss anything then contact them direct:
ben@scriptsoftware.com or frank@knowledgeminer.com
