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Well, perhaps compiler writers shouldn't be so harsh in their error messages. Maybe something a bit more fun...

Here's some facts for you dimwit

http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html [mackido.com]

Your link conveniently ignores Visi On.

Here's some facts for you dimwit

http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html [mackido.com]

The best is:

MacKenzie, I. Scott, Sellen, Abigail and Buxton, Bill (1991): A Comparison of Input Devices in Elemental Pointing and Dragging Tasks. In: Robertson, Scott P., Olson, Gary M. and Olson, Judith S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 91 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 28 - June 5, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana. pp. 161-166.

Unfortunately it's not available online.

http://www.umich.edu/~bcalab/documents/MeyerSmithKornblumAW1990.pdf is freely available and somewhat related, as are:
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/menu_target.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/08/fitts-law-and-infinite-width.html

Macs actually started off with a menu-per-window but moved to the current model after doing such studies; you can see images of the earlier implementation here:
http://folklore.org/projects/Macintosh/images/polaroids/polaroids.14.jpg

Please read up first.

Apple paid Xerox $1M in stock for the right to use the ideas of the Star system and for 2 meetings with Xerox engineers. Apple did not copy the Star system but they did borrow ideas from it like the desktop concept and windows. If you actually looked at the two, there are differences. The Star system was a very good prototype; Apple refined many of the ideas but added their own ideas to it. Apple implemented the Mac using assembly whereas Xerox implemented the Star using their own internal languages.

My understanding of the history goes like this:

• Apple got permission from Xerox corporate for a private meeting with PARC engineers.
• Apple paid for two meetings and use of Xerox ideas with $1M of Apple stock.
• PARC engineers didn't like the idea but complied.
• Apple engineers were shown the Star and got to ask detailed questions about how it worked and concepts.
• Apple would take the ideas and later build the Mac on it.

  The Mac was not an exact copy of the Star. The Xerox Star system however was far from complete. It didn't have drag-and-drop, windows could not overlap, etc. Apple did use the idea of menus, using a mouse as a pointer, etc.

• Apple did not steal the source code from Xerox.

  Part of the deal worked out with Xerox was that Apple was shown Smalltalk. However, Xerox built the Star using another own language called Mesa. Even if Apple got the source code and an emulator, it would be useless as the Mac OS was written in assembly.

Apple did not steal the GUI from Xerox. They got to tour PARC with permission from Xerox's upper management and compensated Xerox with pre-IPO shares. What the Mac did with the ideas from PARC was very different from what Xerox did with the ideas out of PARC. This is also very different from Microsoft sending an employee to copy implementation details from Apple. Do go waving some out of context quote around without knowing the actual history of the situation.

"I think Apple licensed it from Xerox. But yeah, I share your opinion of Jobs"

No, they just stole the gui before MS did.

Not exactly.

Okay, the iPhone may be lacking in functionality, but it's a good-looking and user-friendly interface. Now, I admit, I was thinking mainly of Mac OS when I said that. And "near perfect" may be a bit of a stretch, but it certainly is is a better design than any other system I've tried.

"That's just an opinion, back it up with facts", you may say. Others have already done it. A rather deep analysis can be found at MacKiDo. Now, that's an old site, mostly talking about the "classic" Mac OS versus Windows 9x, but many points are still valid. Another site worth checking is Mac vs. Windows.

But my comment had nothing to do with the system's innards. I know Macs used to crash hard and all. But still, it was the best, interface-wise; that is, the way the interactive elements are arranged on the screen. Menu bar fixed on top, buttons in a window, etc. Here is a nice explanation about all that stuff.

And, frankly... interface-wise, OS8 is often better than OSX. Not that I'd ever move back, but there were some advantages in the old HIG.

It's all one liners until someone puts an eye out.

This seems to relate quite similarly.

The quest for ring 0:

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/402

http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/402/33600#33600

(^replaces a broken link^)

http://www.mackido.com/EasterEggs/CD-System70.html

Researchers: Rootkits headed for BIOS:
(comments especially)

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11372

http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11372/33017/threaded#33017

http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11372/34206/threaded#34206

http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11372/33500/threaded#33500

http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11372/34207/threaded#34207

http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=articlecomments&op=display_comments&ArticleID=11372&expand_all=true&mode=threaded

http://www.spywareinfoforum.com/index.php?s=3a3ce02c4055e269a0220c239560f3f9&showtopic=6056

Nancy:

https://tagmeme.com/exmachina/a/002450.html

This possible variant is out of "beta" (12 years old) it seems and truly roams "at will", those with the coding chops will understand what even a partial AI engine is capable of (SOAR).

On Macintoshes it leaves strings:

http://www.google.com/search?q=NuNV+N%5ENuNV&btnG=Search&hl=en&sa=2

PCs become junk as well:

http://www.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/microsoft.public.security.virus/2005-09/0230.html

This Gal has a handle on it:

Joanna Rutkowska, Invisible Things Lab:

http://invisiblethingslab.com/itl/About.html

"LOL" indeed comes to mind when you regard the single menu bar as an error, althought it clearly is the superior design.

Up to around 1997, companies including Power Computing were given the rights to license Mac technology from Apple. However, when Jobs returned to the company, he attempted at first to renegotiate the licences but eventually opted to cancel them.

Apple has consistently rejected opportunities to adjust its innovation strategy to another model. Licensing its operating system to hardware manufacturers would have been an obvious choice. Yet when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he terminated the first and last licensing program, championed by former chief executive Gilbert Amelio. Jobs is reported to have told Apple managers that he feared "Mac knockoffs" would dilute the Apple brand.

Further rumors indicate that Jobs is pushing for the end of MacOS cloners altogether. He apparently has called them "leeches", and who can blame him? None of the cloners -- PowerComputing, Motorola, Umax, etc. -- have ligitimately tried to grow the MacOS market. As far as I can tell, they have only advertised in Macintosh publications.

It makes no difference that you see more than one menu bar at a time, since no system lets you manipulate more than one application at any given time. The Mac's "global" menu bar, despite the distance issue you mention, is superior because it has better targeting and predictability.

Macintosh System 7.1.x [?] - Simpletext

I've never seen this one published and I haven't been able to trigger it since.
I was learning how to use Simpletext (on a Mac IIsi), (a simple editing application distributed with the early Macintoshes) I think I was using the "Help" feature - I was (am) painfully slow at times :-), step by laborious step I completed the "Help" task (a formatted letter) and felt like I understood how to use the menu, save, etc. better. Then "Help" pops up a font listing - "Pick a font and sign your work" (or something like that), so I pick one of them and type my name:

MY NAME ... but the "font" was a scrawl type font, like writing with the wrong hand - when you were 12. No matter which font you used it was 15-18 pt. and was awful looking.

I've never laughed so hard in my life. I was truly ROTFL.
Since then that little egg has fueled my lust for eggs and what ultimately became disk forensics study.

System 7.0 CD - Greg Marriot/Sheila Brady

http://www.mackido.com/EasterEggs/CD-System70.html

I'm not as old as those Apple // guys.

MacKido has a great big list.

The ones I remember off of the top of my head:
Iguana Flag
Hidden Breakout Game
Rosetta Rosetta Rosetta

I'm not as old as those Apple // guys.

MacKido has a great big list.

The ones I remember off of the top of my head:
Iguana Flag
Hidden Breakout Game
Rosetta Rosetta Rosetta

I'm not as old as those Apple // guys.

MacKido has a great big list.

The ones I remember off of the top of my head:
Iguana Flag
Hidden Breakout Game
Rosetta Rosetta Rosetta

I'm not as old as those Apple // guys.

MacKido has a great big list.

The ones I remember off of the top of my head:
Iguana Flag
Hidden Breakout Game
Rosetta Rosetta Rosetta

If you would point me to your source of information, I will consider as well on this matter.

Well, it's mostly right there in the paragraph you quoted. Xerox invited Apple in and showed them what they had. Their lawsuit was intended to get them something in the event Apple won. Nothing about Apple stealing anything.

Here's one link. looks to have a fairly high degree of Apple zealotry, but the facts are correct to the best of my knowledge.

Here's another which hopefully won't be replaced with goatse before you get a chance to look at it ;-)

Relevant quote: "Xerox granted Apple engineers 3 days of access to the PARC facilities in return for selling them one million dollars in pre-IPO Apple stock (approximately $18 million net)."

So, my point was just that giving MS a pass while claiming Apple was ganking things doesn't make any sense.
If those were "stealable" things, then MS absolutely stole them. Apple paid *and* developed something very different. MS didn't pay and directly copied Apple's work. That's why the "Windows 95=Mac 88 (or whatever the year)" phrase got so much play. MS went out of their way to make it look as much like a Mac as they could and it was still an abysmal piece of crap.

Personally I'm not a fan of the whole patenting/copyrighting "look and feel" or any related crap, so I think it was stupid all around. If you feel the need to place blame though, at least do it in a way that it's possible to argue for.

Apple also sued nearly everybody over supposedly copying their GUI -- in nearly every case, it was pretty obvious that the real source was Xerox, but Apple's motto seemed to be "it's our's; we stole it first.",

Even more accurately, Apple didn't rip off the Xerox Parc, but were certainly inspired by it.

Usability is something that can be measured and quantified. Where has anybody ever demonstrated that the Mac is actually easier to use than Windows, KDE, or Gnome?

Quartz is actually a marriage of several different technologies from Apple itself, Adobe PDF, and stuff from NeXT (which had a license for PDF). I'm not sure of the legal details, but as MacKido calls it, Quartz is actually an "uber PDF," and not just PDF itself. Think of it as an implementation of PDF. This allows them to get around PDF licensing, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some money paid to Adobe to keep them at bay.

For a lot of heavy detail, see MacKido's explanation and history of Apple's imaging technologies.

http://www.mackido.com/Software/Quartz.html

here: http://www.mackido.com/History/History_DrDos.html here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/600488.stm

and elsewhere.

I can't find the link but back in the early browser wars days, I'm pretty sure they actually got sprung with a rigged video showing performance that just wasn't there for either IE or Windows 98 (i forget, so long ago).

smash.

Intel? Don'tcha just love 'em? Conroe is wiping the floor with AMD's aging Athlon 64 Chips right now at 2.6Ghz. Intel will really put the MEGAHURTS (Geddit?) on AMD with the 3Ghz Core Extreme. And Woodcrest and Merom should be 20% faster.

Intel? Don'tcha just hate them. Faced with the failure of the Netburst, they've dug out the aging Pentium 3, and revamped it a bit. Now they're releasing benchmarks for unreleased chips, claiming they'll be faster than a high end AMD64. Doesn't anyone remember Intel leaking outrageously exaggerated benchmarks long before a chip release to limit sales of a competitor's faster chip that's actually available now.

Apple ads have always had a sense of humor that's made them worth viewing again, but we're not supposed to take them too seriously. They're cheeky fun. Look at the little jabs Apple has made at IBM with "1984" and "Welcome IBM, Seriously", or Microsoft with "C:\NGRTLNS.W95".

PC vendors went from being serious and boring to overexcited and a bit melodramatic. At least HP added some quirkiness to their commercials. Dell's "Dude, you're getting a Dell" ads were just annoying. My favorite PC ads however came from Gateway and Midwest Micro during the original Computer Shopper magazines days.

The only slightly off-putting Apple ads I have ever seen were the "Switch" ads that featured Jeff Goldblum. I am a fan, and I accept that he is personally capable of porting a virus over to an alien spacecraft from a Mac, but still.

Even the older Apple ][ ads were entertaining. PCs fans shouldn't get offended. Look at it this way, PC vendors get far more advertising in during a day of television with all those Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA ads than does You have the Dell goth chick. We have Ellen Feiss. :)

Ellen Feiss commercial (warning, opens to Google's streaming video service)

A short history of Apple ads

Two different versions of history you be the judge:

http://www.mackido.com/History/Gates_a_Genius.html

Bill Gates (after dropping out of college) and a friend (Paul Allen) started making software (Mid 70's). The first thing they did was steal (uh, borrow?) some computer time from a college and they implemented Basic (a Language) for the Altair Computer (made by MITS). Basic had been around for many years before Bill implemented a version of it . They did provide a service, but it is not that impressive technically to take public domain code from one machine and port it to another. Yawn. It was also very questionable (ethically) to sell a language who's definition was in public domain, and develop it on computer time borrowed from a school. But I don't think ethics bother Bill Gates too much -- and in the over all scheme of things, this was one of the lesser of the "moral gray areas".

http://www.freedomware.us/microsoft/whyhate/

After Gates sold the new BASIC interpreter to MITS he left Harvard University, and went into business for himself with Allen as a partner. Allen was also an MITS employee at the time, which made his position rather interesting. Gates' departure from Harvard is shrouded in controversy: some say he dropped out, others say he was expelled for stealing computer time. Whatever the case may be, the fact is that Gates did most of the work on his BASIC version in a Harvard computer lab without having been authorized to use the (expensive) computer time needed for the project. Perhaps he did not really steal unauthorized computer capacity (which was a valuable commodity in those days) to develop his first commercially successful product. Yet he has never offered another explanation. He did however send his now-infamous "Open Letter To Hobbyists" to every major computer publication in February 1976, in which he decried the copying of Microsoft software by home computer hobbyists as simple theft.

In either case Bill Gates was on a computer system that he was not authorized to use when he implemented Altair Basic.

In my middle school days, I decided to open up the Mac OS "System" file with a text editor one day (not even a hex editor), and saw, after a bunch of binary code misinterpreted as ASCII, the hidden message:

"Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!"

A Google search verifies that plenty of other people remember this too.

mov ecx,b
shr ecx,2
loop:
add eax,[ebx]
add eax,[ebx+4]
add eax,[ebx+8]
add eax,[ebx+12]
add ebx,16
dec ecx
jnz loop

With SIMD instructions, you can execute all four of those adds in one instruction. I wish I knew SSE a bit better, then I could rewrite the above. Sadly, I haven't gotten around to learning the precise syntax. :-(

However, there's a fairly good (if not a bit dated) explanation of SIMD here.

You mean the one they initially didn't want to fix unless you could somehow prove that it might affect you? I'd be hard pressed to think of a worse example of this magical Intel warranty support you're so proud of.

They may indeed be better now; if so, then you should have picked a case that didn't make people hate them.

Apparently so.

from http://www.mackido.com/History/AppleTimeline.html

November 22: Sculley signs agreement to let Bill Gates use Mac technology in Windows, if Microsoft continues to produce products for the Mac.

Apple paid to be "inspired" by the xerox GUI

The first I remember works only on the Mac SE.

1. Push the interrupt button to enter the mini-debugger.
2. Type "g 41d89a"
3. Enjoy the slideshow pictures of the Mac SE team.
4. ???
5. Profit!

The easter egg you describe is described here in detail. (It works on any 1st generation PCI-PowerMac)

Links? It's really strange, all of the official web sites that I had that showed this stuff seem to have up and vanished.

Here are some second-source things:
Apple's letters to VfW devopers:
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~hamlin/facts/1stltr.html
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~hamlin/facts/2ndltr.html

A tiny snippet that tells how the case actually came out, courtesy of the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/19970206203623/http://w ww.macworld.com/pages/may.95/News.705.html (Scroll down some)

The only reference I can find to the rumor about this issue forcing the investment in Apple and the patent swap and the agreement to keep developing Mac software is from here:
http://www.mackido.com/History/History_VfW.html
However, I saw quite a few references to that rumor in the circles I was traveling in at time, and I know for a fact that there was still a lawsuit that was settled and disappeared without a trace right around that time, so...

Another one where Apple won one:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,16141, 00.html

As for why QuickTime works so badly now, I can only surmise that one of the following is true:
- Apple has stopped really trying.
- Microsoft succeeded in making it impossible to do within QT's budget.
- Microsoft has gotten a lot better at what they do, and thus make the QT group look worse.

Given how often MS has been convicted of sabotaging rivals, I'd have to say that the second sounds like the most likely. Real has mentioned in a lot of interviews that if they didn't rely on undocumented Windows calls that they reverse-engineered, they wouldn't be able to get their product working acceptably.

Ah, Microsoft... to know you is to know just how much I'm being known by you.

In the biblical sense, of course.

-fred

More importantly, here's a rather more complete history of what actually happened actually happened. Not vaguaries about who settled out of court or who lost on technicalities. What actually happened.

Xerox! If you are going to accuse Apple of 'stealing' their GUI from Xerox, spell it correctly!

Obligatory Apple GUI history.

There are two different links up there.

You are wrong. Apple didn't steal anything. They licensed part of the GUI idea from Xerox and added many of their own ideas in the creation of the Mac OS.

See: http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html

Or you could actually look up more information about the matter on your own (for example here ) instead of perpetuating one of Silicon Valley's biggest myths.

Well, not exactly true. Actually, not true at all. First off, Apple traded a few million dollars in stock for the right to bring their programmers -- already well versed in graphical user interfaces, having done work on them in college -- to the Xerox PARC, where he saw a prototype system with NO relation to the Star. In fact, this system didn't even have a file management UI. Apple invented that, and it was Xerox who stole quite a bit of the UI that eventually showed up on the Star, thanks to the close ties between Apple and Xerox. Besides the concept of visual file management, Apple also invented the concept of icons that WERE things and could have actions performed on them...in the Xerox model, icons DID things, like physical buttons. Windowing existed solely to permit multiple command lines.

Apple "won" the Xerox case because what Xerox was doing -- moving a cursor around on a screen and manipulate windows and buttons -- they didn't invent, anyway. It had been done in colleges for years.

Apple vs. Microsoft, on the other hand, was a big deal. Apple HAD invented something new. They HAD created a new interface. But, in hopes of getting Microsoft as an application developer for their new OS, they accidentally licensed them core technologies and were vague enough to infer that they'd licensed the whole system. A more vitriolic and pro-mac argument can be found here.

BMW and Apple working together is not entirely new, they did a commercial together a while back which featured the then new Z3.

This page on MacKiDo mentions the ad, but I can't seem to dig up a working link to the video.

~Lake

So, in closing. Downloading software is illegal. Fucking consumers is immoral.


Correction: Downloading illegally available software is illegal.

Case in point: I have a free, free-to-download test program available at my site (see sig) that checks if the PC you run it on is capable of running my retail program that is available for purchase there.

zerocool complains about high-priced (overpriced) software as is his/her right in the USA under the First Amendment to the Constitution Of America.

The reality: Software development costs MONEY and should be compensated for if desired by the creators of said software.

The facts....

The computer(s) the software is developed on costs money (unless said computer(s) were donated for free).

The electricity powering the computer costs money (unless it is being generated from a free and/or donated source).

The programmer(s) who programmed the software cost money (unless they are donating their time and skills for free).

The advertising for the software costs money (unless it is being done for free somehow).

The distribution expenses to distribute the software to the recipients cost money (unless it is being done for free somehow).

Companies and individuals have invested lots of time and money in the software they create and sell. They found needs/markets for certain kinds of software and wrote the software to fill those needs/markets. Big companies have to sell software for big bucks to recoup the expenses in creating, maintaining, and distributing said software. They also are entitled to profit from their software which should be reinvested back into the company--not wasted.

For example, look at the 'gross profit margin' on a retail CD copy of Windows: $179.00 or so for a round thin sandwich of plastics and metal that has an intrinsic value of maybe $1.00. That $179.00 Windows CD allowed everybody, from the end user/customer up to Microsoft itself, to profit and benefit from the manpower and technology invested in it to create it and to benefit from its power as a computer operating system.

Ok, let's cut to the chase....

Windows is a kludge, based on code dating back to the dawn of the PC era.

Microsoft is a monopoly.

Even in this environment, the customer STILL has alternatives such as Apple and Linux -- SCO problems with commercial Linux use aside (which can be resolved.

If you want to avoid paying for high-priced software, use cheaper/free software or buy/legally get for free the necessary software tools to write your own custom programmed software solutions.

To address the second part of zerocool's comment, I offer the the following as some of the societal results of 'people as consumers -- not customers'. This has created a desparate, adversarial environment in which commerce and 'consumers' meet in an inevitable clusterfsck....

Wal-Mart, their business practices and its consequenses.

Ad creep. Even on the Internet. a technique coined and first implemented in 1996.

Email spam.

Neither I nor anyone else have argued Apple invented the mouse -- Xerox didn't do that either.

You quoted icons -- but didn't mention that they weren't used at all in the same way. There was no desktop at all, no copy/paste, they had to give numerical X,Y-arguments to move a window(!), etc, etc.

The GUI was a very, very different thing after Apple -- Microsoft didn't steal anything directly from Xerox but from Apple -- who did buy a license from Xerox. (And that without even mentioning APIs, etc.)

I wrote "Apple more or less invented most of what you think of as the GUI". The Anon argued:

Your claim that Apple "invented" the GUI and it is their "property" is ludicrous.

Talk about intellectually dishonest straw arguments!

You give Anonymous Cowards a bad name! :-)

Apple intended for quite awhile to own the GUI market and be it's only vendor. They sued various entities and ran some of them out of the market. Because that's just how Apple does things.

Apple more or less invented most of what you think of as the GUI. It was their property. The world might be a better place if ownership of lots of property was moved around, but without general respect for ownership rights, the world doesn't work.

Microsoft plowed that ground for us. In fact the legal precedent that Microsoft set by fighting that fight for us is what allows people to 'clone' Windows GUI concepts and incorporate them into Linux/Free Software projects.

In short (from the reference above):
Microsoft got a license from Apple to port their applications to other platforms and managed to get a judge to allow them to copy the GUI. So this was original work from Apple that Microsoft managed to steal.

Well, low business morals are something that you could admire Microsoft for... (You're a big fan of the mob, too?)

It is really strange that this is not written in articles. It probably have something to do with the large Microsoft ad budget -- and helped along historically that companies with large ad budgets was dependent on the Msoft monopoly for their survival...

I don't know how this can be debatable.

Everything that I have heard and read show that Macs are cheaper when factoring in TCO. In addition to less support (how many times have heard "...my company has 1000 PCs with 100 PC support techs and 2000 Macs with 3 Mac support techs...") and longer lasting hardware ("...we have a SE/30 that we still use as a mail server...") to increased productivity ("...virus? What stinking virus?...It just works!)

Here's a few examples I found when googling for info on Mac vs. Windows TOC:

Macs Shine In Total Cost Of Ownership
"The TOC (total operating cost) for the Wintel machines amounts to $253.86 per year, every year until it is retired," Canterbury told Sellers. "The Macs run us $53.25 per year. Quite a difference and one our board and parents heard loud and clear."

Return On Investments between the Macintosh and Windows platforms.
[NOTE: of course this is where the Mac shines but I think that it translates to other areas of general productivity]
"This benchmark supersedes a common but misleading bench-mark: cost-of-ownership. An ROI benchmark correlates the cost of ownership and productivity of media producers to revenue and profit. Detailed ROI analysis reveals that a Macintosh-using creative professional produces $26,441 more annual revenue and $14,488 more net profit (per person) than a Windows user of comparable skill engaged in similar work."

Why most people should buy a Macintosh rather than a Windows PC
A study from technology research company, Gartner has found Apple Macintosh computers to be up to 36 percent cheaper to own and run than competing PC products. The study utilised Gartner's Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) methodology, which takes into account the direct and indirect costs of owning IT infrastructure.

And there are just so many other ones that I grow tired of providing the information

Here's a collection of various Mac startup sounds. They do serve a diagnostic purpose-- if the internal tests fail, an alternate sound, such as a car crash will be played.

Here's a collection of various Mac startup sounds. They do serve a diagnostic purpose-- if the internal tests fail, an alternate sound, such as a car crash will be played.

Apple thieved it from Xerox

Actually, no. Apple bought it from Xerox.

And Apple included significant, significant additions, both to the conceptual development of the GUI and to the art of implementations of those concepts. I would say, from looking at screenshots of PARC vs early Macintosh, that Apple advanced the GUI at least as far again as Xerox did. Meanwhile it would be hard, even today, to argue that Microsoft has ever advanced the state of the GUI in any way that is not mere packaging and window dressing.

Too bad the people at PARC did't patent the idea of a graphic windowing operating system.

They did. They waited too long to enforce the patents. Xerox totally bungled their chance to become Microsoft.

Jobs was so hot on the concepts of UI, and the living Demos he say, that he, later, negotiated a deal with Xerox. He gave Xerox a large sum of stock in Apple (worth Millions) if he could come back, and bring some programmers -- to inspire them more on the concepts of GUI. This was like a one-day tour. This was agreed to by Xerox, and so by no stretch of the imagination could this be called "ripping-off".

Windows 3.0 ran just fine on DR-DOS. Windows 3.1 didn't, until Novell changed some internal bits/structures in DR-DOS to match MS-DOS (they released a fixed version 6 weeks after 3.1 came out).

AFAICR, there was no warning message when running Win3.0 under DR-DOS6. Win3.1 refused so start but this could be circumvented, as you wrote, by a patch that was released very soon after the Win3.1 launch. However, at that time Novell was not yet the owner of DR-DOS, it was still with Digital Research. Check it out here