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Yep, and Apple does this too. The Spotlight feature in macOS (OS-wide search, it's the little magnifying glass in the top right) was a feature that Apple blatantly ripped off from a popular early-2000s third party extension. Adding this to the OS killed that company overnight. Forget their name, but someone else might remember.

All platform vendors seem to do this, which is unfortunate.



It's an easy thing to find, the name even became a verb. Sherlock was the program: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sherlocked


Twice: The usage of a giant text input box as a launcher or command palette was pioneered on the Mac by LaunchBar and Quicksilver and later Alfred, etc. Spotlight for a long time was only a menu extra.




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