It also asks, 'Why wait until the first half of 2005, when you can get the original Dashboard now?' 'Cupertino: Start your photocopiers,' reads a newly erected Konfabulator home page. Rose is trying to make the best of the situation, taking advantage of the fact that Tiger won't ship until next year.

Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., previously expanded its Sherlock search tool to add features such as movie times and yellow pages in a format that closely paralleled a third-party tool called Watson. It is not the first time Mac OS X has stepped on what some see as other's turf.

Slogans include 'Redmond, start your photocopiers.'

The controversy comes as Apple is itself showing a series of posters at the conference here that assume Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., will copy Apple's features for Longhorn, the next version of Windows. Jobs displays 30-inch flat panel Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Computer