Do you think they'd be worried about getting done for ripping off MS?
Well, this was obviously the intention of Microsoft, which became its own great success and the success of many companies that follow Windows Styleguides. Those are really proven best practices on how to use the screen as a human interface.
One can immediately feel if an application follows Windows styleguides or not. There is a certain ease and uniformity on how to use the software that is very pleasing to the way we use keyboard and mouse.
Although there is always room to find and improve the user interface (and the panes introduced in MC9.1 is certainly an excellent example), I get the impression that J River spends a lot of time experimenting with interface features that nobody asks and nobody really wants. The last really bad example was moving control buttons to the center of the screen. Nobody asked for them and in my opinion there was absolutely no necessity for that move.
The same with the new Action Window. Although I welcome the new Action window it seems to me so futile to introduce those new icons (just another set of controls), when the whole thing could have been controlled by toolbar buttons on top of the Action Window in conformity with all other toolbars. They could have simply introduced a 4th customizable toolbar.
It seems that every single window gets its special user interface - a potpourri of controls all over the place.
I am less and less inclined to make my contributions and prefer to stay on the sideboards until something workable and pleasing turns out. There is simply too much zig-zagging lately.