macOS Couple of questions

[cruzrojas]

Hi, I'm new to this Forum but have been reading MacRumors since I switch to Mac a year ago.

I have a couple of questions I hope you can help me out with.

1: If you develop an application ie. VirtueDesktops, and you want to make some money out of it, and you are sure that there is no other application out there able to do the same. Is any way to protect it so other person/company won't make their own implementation for a period of time?

2: In the current seed of Leopard for developers is it possible to make use of core animation for your own applications or that will be available once Leopard becomes available?

Thanks a lot for the responses.

 

[caveman_uk]

1. No. That's why there are any number of apps that do much the same thing - for example text editors. If someone blatantly rips off the look and feel of your app then you could try suing them but lawyers are expensive and to be honest it depends if it's worth the effort to you to do so.

2. Yes you can use core animation (or indeed any of the new stuff in Leopard) in your own apps (that's the whole point of the dev seed) but you'll need Leopard to run them so the market would be kinda small right now.

 

[Eric5h5]

Yeah, you can't copyright an idea. Just try to make the best app you can and deal with competition as it comes.

--Eric

 

[cruzrojas]

Thnx for the responses.
The reason I use VirtueDesktops as a reference is because I would like to develop an application that will run on top of the other applications as an ad-on to mac os x, and make some effects similar to those by expose. I would be targeting Leopard since I have no experience developing UI so far, and it will take me at least half a year to come with an stable build.

Do you know of any good resource for getting an insight of this sort of applications. I think I will try to make sense of the Virtue Desktops source code, but I would like something easier to start with. My only experience with graphical interfaces so far, is working with the Java with the swing library. And VB witch I would call a real programming experience.

As far as I know Core animation will make this sort of tasks easier, does it make sense to get the ADC membership to start inmersing myself on it, or should I start working with Tiger and see how far can I get before Leopard is released.

Best Regards