As someone who just watched the video but hasn't used it yet, that was my thought as well. Are they doing things design-wise and interface-wise that are different than OSX? Or are they simply aiming to re-implement OSX's GUI in Linux? (This is meant as an honest, non-sarcastic question, my curiosity is piqued but I'm genuinely wondering what their goal is)

Yes, absolutely we are doing different things. Examples include our launcher (from the top left hand corner), slingshot[1], our deprecation of the desktop as a place for folders, and our human interface guidelines. As another concrete example, we are very much trying to eliminate menu bars entirely. Instead, our apps use the "AppMenu"[2] -- a cog wheel that works similarly to Google Chrome.

[1] Here's a video I found of someone using a pre-release version of it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYwIQ9HcWZU

[2] (Note: images seem to be broken for the time being as a result of the website relaunch in tandem with Luna): http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines/appm...

Full disclosure: I am an elementary developer and core team member.

If I can make a suggestion, then, since I have your attention. The video on the page that the OP linked to basically shows a very OSX-like interface, especially by showing off the dock, a very (for the six seconds it's on-screen) iTunes-seeming music app, the expose-style window manager, and the multi-desktop. Maybe try highlighting some of these other concepts if possible in the video that most people who are coming to your site with no idea what makes elementary different are watching? Might help stem some of the "this is just Linux that looks like OSX" comments.

I appreciate the suggestion. We (as the elementary team) did not actually create the video -- rather, a (very talented) fan created it of his own accord and sent it to us.

I agree that we would be well served by highlighting the features of elementary OS which are visually dissimilar to OS X, but frankly, Apple doesn't own light color schemes and multi-desktops. The latter has been on Linux long before Apple implemented them in OS X with Leopard in ~2005. Furthermore the "dock" wasn't invented by Apple (RISC OS had it first, iirc).

I hope I'm not coming across as overly defensive. I definitely appreciate the comments and I understand that you are expressing your opinions about what you got out of the video. But, as I've said elsewhere in this thread, we're not embarrassed by our dock and multi-desktop implementation (which, by the way, actually works rather differently than any other implementation we know of, particularly with regard to dragging apps around). We're proud of them, and we want to show them off -- aesthetic parallels to OS X or not.

>We're proud of them, and we want to show them off -- aesthetic parallels to OS X or not.

This is completely understandable. I appreciate taking pride in your work,—we all do—but it's detrimental to adoption. You're sacrificing mindshare because of fondness for your work.

It boils down to a straightforward question: Are you more committed to creating a beautiful design (regardless of similarities to OS X) or are you more committed to bringing elementary to users?

If you're more dedicated to the former, I can respect that 100%, but it's important that this is the question you ask yourselves.

edit: clarity

I understand that you didn't do it with the _intent_ of copying MacOS, as such. However, to someone who has used MacOS, it's probably going to be perceived as a MacOS ripoff, and that tends to lead to negative responses; things which look almost but not entirely like other things really rub people up the wrong way, as we saw with the weird pseudo-native SWING themes and so on.

Slingshot looks pretty much like a non-fullscreen version of Launchpad[1].

[1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3c/Lion_Launchpad...

I assume you were being sarcastic, but in case you weren't:

We don't have folders, you can't move the icons around, you can browse by category[0], and the layout (other than the fact that we have icons in a grid) is completely different.

Because we lay icons out in a grid, we're copying Apple? Come on.

[0] http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/258/8/d/slingshot_col...

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.

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 :-)

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?

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

What is this animation? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LjC...

That is not our dock, and that is not Luna. We didn't make that video. Apparently it was made by a fan who had built his own version of Luna using some of our software. I can assure you that genie animation is nowhere in any code elementary ships with.

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.

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.

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

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

OS X and elementary OS share incredibly similar core design and usability ideals, but elementary is no mere rehash of OS X. They challenge a number of things people take for granted in OS X, such as double-clicking[0] and minimise[1], but they're obviously not afraid to borrow things that OS X does well.

[0] http://elementaryos.org/journal/we-moved-cheese

[1] http://elementaryos.org/journal/whats-still-window-controls

I've seen a lot of interesting tools they're building (e.g. https://launchpad.net/scratch, https://launchpad.net/geary), so I almost want to use it, but the OS X mimicry is a huge deterrent. I haven't used it. I did find this though: http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines

I used the desktop environment for a little bit and they even took the icon bounce from OS X. I hope Elementary succeeds but that was just meh. Especially since the physics of the bounce were off.

As an elementary developer, the feedback is appreciated :)

Can you suggest an alternative to the bounce?

Hey, thanks for being cool about it. I'm not sure a good alternative would be, but I do have this advice. Google often takes ideas from competitors and remixes them to the point of making them original (a good example is the gesture password on the Android lockscreen). You can remix ideas from competitors. So in this case, instead of a bounce, a spin could work.

I'm nowhere near an expert but I thought this could help.

Thanks for the advice, and I definitely see where you're coming from. I tend to be an advocate of the "take good ideas but make them seem different" approach, but I think a core philosophy in elementary (perhaps to its detriment at times) is: "don't change for change's sake". I wrote more about that philosophy, and the general perception of elementary copying OS X in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193676

There is a key difference between making a feature seem different and actually re-engineering it. I assume you meant the latter, so I just thought I'd offer some advice on word choice.

That's my fear. If they become too big, Apple may sue them.

Do you really think this is a legitimate concern? I'm asking this as someone who is intimately (well, less so in recent months) involved in elementary's strategic planning -- I am on the core team.

Can you suggest specific aspects of our OS that would judged to be too similar to Apple's products so as to warrant a claim of infringement, other than a general aesthetic similarity and the color of our window borders?

There probably isn't much. The icon showing a magic mouse might infringe a trademark, though; Apple tends to trademark icons where practical, which is likely why TouchWiz scrapped its very iOS-esque icons a while back.

We aren't using the magic mouse icon. It's a hand-drawn svg, although I agree it looks pretty similar.

Here's the icon at a larger size: http://i.imgur.com/Hnc53Yd.png