Steve Jobs replied my email!

I believe that by now everyone has seen Apple Tiger. Well I wrote Steve Jobs a (regretfully rude) email about Dashboard and how much it resembled another program called Konfabulator.

The amazing thing is that he actually replied! (He basically defended Dashboard saying it uses some of Apple’s ideas from Mac OS 9).

Here’s what I sent him:

To: leadership@apple.com
Message-Id:
Cc: steve@mac.com,
phil@mac.com,
phil1@mac.com,
sjobs@apple.com,
steve@apple.com,
schiller@mac.com,
pschiller@apple.com
Subject: Shame on you, Apple!
From: l. prieto
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 20:33:27 -0400

Apple,
You said it yourself:

STEALING IS BAD KARMA!

If Dashboard isn’t a rip-off of Konfabulator then what is? I don’t care
that much about Sherlock/Watson as both are equally useless to me, but
this it too much.

And what Phil said is embarrasing:
In response Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller told CNET: “The
goal of Dashboard isn’t to be like anything else. It’s not his stuff.
What we’ve done is ours.”

Of course, you did it from the ground up. But it’s stealing directly
from Arlo Rose’s Konfabulator. Arlo Rose is a very famous Mac
developer. You should just buy the thing from him!

Remember, it’s GOOD KARMA!

I’m a huge Mac fan and have been for the past 15 years, and I believe
this is the first time I’m so angry at Apple.

And I know I’m not the only one.

leo prieto

———– —- — — –
http://www.spoon.cl/
———– —- — — –
+56-9-9992475 – Santiago

Here’s his reply:

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 17:50:29 -0700
From: Steve Jobs
Subject: Re: Shame on you, Apple!
In-reply-to:
To: “l. prieto”
Message-id:
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.613)

Excuse me, but Mac OS 9 had desktop Widgets long before Konfabulator
did. Apple was the first to use the term Widgets as well. We never
complained when the Konfabulator guys “ripped off Apple” and I think
its a bit unfair for them to be claiming we ripped them off now.

Steve