No Comment: Windows Phone Dictionary app icon seems eerily familiar

Who really thinks about designing a dictionary icon? They all look alike, after all, so what would be the point of creating a brand new one for your Windows Phone third-party app? Better just to pick up the one everyone likes so well and use that.

Yes, as Craig Hockenberry pointed out this morning, the Windows Phone Featured Apps page is sporting a Dictionary app icon (for what appears to be a third-party app, not a Microsoft published app) that is a pixel-for-pixel copy of the Mac OS X Dictionary icon. Who remembers 'Redmond, start your photocopiers' from WWDC in 2006? For something like this (no doubt unauthorized by Microsoft, but still hilarious), we've got to award it a solid No Comment.

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Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/apps/featured-ap…

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Who really thinks about designing a dictionary icon? They all look alike, after all, so what would be the point of creating a brand new one for Windows Phone?

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nybdotcom

Hmm... it seems to me that this Windows developer did what the developer of the WiFi-Sync app for iPhone did. That is rip off prior art with no thought to the originator of that work.

Unless the art is under a Creative Commons license [of which I'm not sure, but doubt it], then BOTH developers were wrong to use any of the art. As a designer I'd get monumentally pi**ed off if someone had stolen my art.

June 20 2011 at 1:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to nybdotcom's comment

nybdotcom

Oh, and one more thing. This issue has nothing whatsoever to do with an Apple cult, or TUAW [who're right to point this out], or any other fatuous remark made here. It is solely about copyright. Not mine, not yours, but the originator of that piece of art... and in this instance it would seem to belong to Apple's own design studio.

Too many people want something for nothing and that mindset has gone way beyond stealing music or wanting all apps to be free, it extends to ripping off someone else's design too. Grrr.

June 20 2011 at 1:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I iz a ninja

Well done, TUAW! You pick a 3rd party app on a competitors marketplace that uses an icon because you cannot find anything bad to say about the actual OS. Firstly, the app was created not by Microsoft, but instead a private developer. Apparently all of the apps on iOS contain their own, custom icons that lacks any copyright issues. Secondly, did you notice how iOS 5 stole a plethora of features from Android and Windows Phone? That should be the real story. But, instead, this blog is nearsighted and focuses only on the Apple cult. iOS 5 did not introduce anything revolutionary. All of the announced features have been baked into Android and Windows Phone for years, and they were not stolen from their respective developers. Please focus on real journalism.

June 20 2011 at 12:50 PM Report abuse Permalink -4 rate up rate down Reply

5 replies to I iz a ninja's comment

Jacob Hulmston

Familiar? It's an exact replicate.

June 20 2011 at 12:46 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

Richard

Turnabout's fair play, I guess - Wifi Sync icon ripoff by Apple?

June 20 2011 at 12:44 PM Report abuse Permalink -5 rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Richard's comment

Shannon Doherty

Actually, that's a terrible comment to make seeing as how there's virtually no other way to represent wifi and sync as icons, they are standard across the tech industry, and especially when Apple has previously been using both anyhow. A better comment would be notification pull-down from Android.

June 20 2011 at 12:52 PM Report abuse Permalink +4 rate up rate down Reply

Celycynd

Considering i can probably point out about 100 apps in the iPhone store that use copyrighted images from movies, TV Shows and other games, I don't see how this is even a story... Just the other day while browsing games, I came across straight lifted artwork from Kung-Fu Panda as someones game icon (which had nothing to do with the movie). It happens. Short of the people running the app store actually having knowledge of the offending artwork, the only way to even be aware that this occurred, is to have someone report it so they can remove it and request it be changed. The headline that makes it sound like its an official icon that did it is a bit sensationalistic.

June 20 2011 at 12:37 PM Report abuse Permalink +2 rate up rate down Reply

Nini

A third-party app? Then why bill it as a Windows (as in Microsoft developed) Phone app when the only connection is that it runs on their mobile devices?

Pretty weak, TUAW.

June 20 2011 at 12:36 PM Report abuse Permalink -1 rate up rate down Reply

3 replies to Nini's comment