事情是这样的:
故事梗概
今天早晨,微信群组里的冒志鸿(Robert Mao)抱怨说:
老牌公司Adobe居然赤裸裸“学习”了我们多项设计,包括其中一个独特设计会导致的一个bug。同学们,Startup的idea在哪里都会面对喵星人啊!
他提到的“喵星人”应该是指 copycat ,抄袭者。
冒志鸿开发的Pixotale是一个苹果手机上和iPad上的故事创作软件,可以在手机上很方便地把图片和文字整理成一篇文章,得到杂志一样的阅读体验。Pixotale在2014年3月作出beta版,7月在App Store上线。而Adobe Slate是在2015年的4月2号上线,比Pixotale晚了9个月。
我打开他的文章《Adobe Slate: An App inspired By Pixotale》看到他提到Adobe在5个抄袭的地方:
- 故事封面设计雷同;
- 点击按钮添加多媒体素材章节的方式雷同;
- Pixotale的文字的处理方式是独特的,Adobe Slate使用了几乎一样的文字处理方式;
- 点击图片显示编辑工具,章节上下移动设计也是Pixotale的独特设计,Slate借鉴了这个设计;
- 自动调整照片集,Adobe Slate又用了和Pixotale一样的设计。
抄袭证据
下面我做的的截图证明Adobe Slate抄袭Pixotale:
- 故事封面设计雷同,左边黑背景的是是Slate,右边棕背景是Pixotale:
- 点击按钮添加多媒体素材章节的方式雷同,左边是Slate,右图是Pixotale;
- Pixotale的文字的处理方式是独特的,Adobe Slate使用了几乎一样的文字处理方式,不过Pixotale回车没产生新的章节段落,左边是Slate,右图是Pixotale;;
- 点击图片显示编辑工具,章节上下移动设计也是Pixotale的独特设计,Slate借鉴了这个设计,左边是Slate,右图是Pixotale;;
- 自动对齐调整照片集,Adobe Slate又用了和Pixotale一样的设计,但Pixotale用的方法更简单,一次添加多张图片自动生成图片集,而是为了生成图片集要特意选photo grid按钮。左边是Slate,右图是Pixotale。
抄袭背景
据冒志鸿介绍,去年11月也就是2014年11月,图话(Pixotale)作为Adobe MAX上的 Adobe Creative Cloud 的首发合作伙伴,Adobe有图话(Pixotale)的beta测试版本, Adobe这么干非常低级。另一家可视化故事创作应用 Storehouse 也出现在首发合作伙伴墙上。
冒志鸿是谁
冒志鸿是谁?我认识冒志鸿有十年了,他是中国国内早期的web2.0创业者,2005年的时候他就是国内社交网站uuzone的创始人,后来去了微软在爱尔兰的分部,后来又调到美国微软,现在又在美国创业做故事创作手机应用Pixotale,想不到逃得过Tencent逃不过Adobe。
以下介绍来自 http://pixotale.com/story/2957037/ :
图话(Pixotale)是一个新一代的移动社交网络,她让用户能方便地通过手机阅读或发表图文并茂的富媒体内容, 用每个人生活中的点滴故事来构建一个更真实、更直观的社交网络。Pixotale一经发布就引起了社交媒体的强烈反响,被科技媒体Techcrunch,Mashable,Geekwire等广泛报道,在用户成长、内容创建和社区育成各方面均发展迅速。Pixotale被App Store编辑推荐为最佳新app(Best New Apps)和创意app (Get Creative Apps)。
PixoMobile于2013年创建于美国西雅图,致力于建设新一代移动社交网络Pixotale 。创办PixoMobile前,冒志鸿工作于美国微软研究院未来社交体验实验室(Microsoft Research FUSE Labs),并在中国创建两家科技创业企业。
Adobe Slate apparently learned and replicated a bunch of detail designs from @pixotale https://pixotale.com/story/4771512/
— Robert Mao (@mave99a) 2015 4月 5日
Adobe Slate的公关力量还是蛮强的,2号上线,3号就在36kr上有一篇稿件介绍:
《Adobe 推出教育产品 Slate,以Storytelling的形式呈现知识》 http://36kr.com/p/531449.html
4月2号推出就上了Apple Store的Editor’s Choice推荐。
官方网站也蛮漂亮 : https://standout.adobe.com/slate/
冒志鸿的给Adobe的公开信:
To whom it may concern,
I am Robert Mao, cofounder of PixoMobile. We created Pixotale, a visual storytelling iPhone/iPad app to help users quickly create beautiful long form stories directly from their mobile devices. We are a bootstrapped startup, but we have a big vision on mobile visual storytelling, and our app is among one of the first few apps in this category.
Adobe released a new visual storytelling app “Slate” last week, it not only provides same/similar features, but also has high similarity in design and workflow with our app. Pixotale was released 9 months earlier and was one of Adobe’s Creative SDK launching partners, which was announced in Adobe MAX conference 2014 in LA.
Competition is everywhere; as a startup we never feared any competition, and we respect our competitors fully. Adobe approached us to be partners of Creative SDK last August, we believed in them, spend valuable time to work with them, helped them squash beta bugs and provided valuable feedback to help them improve. It’s quite disappointing to see this partner end up creating a similar product to compete with us, it’s even more disappointing to see they even “borrowed” many of our original designs. This especially vexing, when it’s from a giant industry leader – Adobe.
I have side-by-side screenshots attached below, if you tried both apps yourself, you may feel the same as I do. I randomly tested with around 10 different people, 100% of them agreed with me.
Originality and creativity is the key to success in a software and mobile world. As an industry leader, Adobe’s behavior and attitude not only hurt us but also hurts the whole ecosystem in the long term.
I will provide more details for this story if you are interested. Please feel free to call me or email me to learn about the details.
Best, Robert Mao
Cofounder PixoMobile http://pixotale.com/
425 442 5101 (cell)
rob at pixomobile.com