Weekly Poll: Is Apple Stealing Features from Developers?

With all the new features that are popping up in both Lion and iOS 5, there’s a lot of speculation as to exactly where Apple got these ideas. A company that’s known for its innovation is suddenly being accused of being completely unoriginal and building off of the work of others without giving credit.

For instance, some say the new Notifications Center is a derivative of Teehan+Lax’s famous home screen concept. TUAW takes this conversation even further with a recent article that points out several new official features that Apple owes to jailbreak developers.

One of the most shocking stories published in this arena is a recent Cult of Mac article where a Cydia developer claims that Apple not only stole his idea for Wifi Sync, but even ripped off his icon!

The interesting counterargument to all this is that we see all these ideas and demand that Apple give them to us, then we they do, we fault them for it! After all, is adding a unified notification screen really such a unique idea that Apple shouldn’t try it because others have done so? That argument simply doesn’t seem sound and is definitely no way to keep your users happy.

So what do you think? Is Apple shamelessly stealing the ideas of others or are they doing an admirable job of giving users exactly what they’re asking for? Where is the line between the two?