Songbird vs. iTunes

UI designer for Songbird (a cross-platform desktop music player) responds to critics who claim it borrows heavily from iTunes (i.e. the entire basic layout of the main player window) using silly lingo like “VisDe” and “UED” (both terms apparently Yahoo shorthand for “visual design” and “user experience design”, respectively), concluding:

Sure, a media player’s desktop feature set (e.g., rip, mix, burn, play, sync, etc.) is essentially complete, but the concomitant UED and VisDe of that set is still resolving. Moreover, a media player’s network feature set and concomitant UED and VisDe is nascent at best. We’re confident that Apple and other media player developers are going to recognize — and “steal” — Songbird’s UED innovations. Catch us if you can. ;)

I’m sure Apple will put someone on this right away.

Saturday, 3 December 2005