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Microsoft Bites Apple, Apple Bites Back
hype7 writes "The NYT (free reg reqd etc) is running an interesting article on where MS seems to be getting all the ideas for its next big OS release, Longhorn. It's only a quickie, but they look at MS's big news from WinHEC, and their possible sources for inspiration. They also pull out that fantastic Bill Gates quote: 'The one thing Apple's providing now is leadership in colors'; and that Apple execs are now having a laugh of their own over how Longhorn, 'Microsoft's 2005 version of its Windows operating system, apes features that have been in Apple's OS X operating system since 2001.'"
I recall, years back, an avi making the rounds with Bill Gates speaking (at a MacWorld?) and sheepishly admitting that the Mac was the best or had the best desktop or something along those lines. As if Win95 didn't cement clearly the view that Microsoft indeed was impressed with, at least the look and feel, we get more of this, "Gee, Apple is visionary, so we'll just copy what they do", from the big innovator. Well, no surprise, but I do wonder whether there's an agreement where Microsoft pays Apple for some of this, or is it just payment 'in-kind' (meaning Microsoft products which run on Macs)?
"As a matter of fact we do have a Research and Development department, we call it, 'Apple Computer, Inc.'"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Apple copies Microsoft, and Microsoft copies Apple.
Apple coppied the WinXP feature that lets users switch who's logged in without losing state. And Microsoft copies features from Apple. Its the Kettle calling the Pot black...
Honestly, you'd think the Internet would have spread information to the four corners of the Earth, but all it does it perpetuate the myths.
--- Ban humanity.
Heck, it reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon where an "InstalSHIELD" type program displays the message "Install Wizard is now placing orders for products you will probably need... Found your credit card number..."
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Yeah, after they check out Apple's latest OSX version "Panther" in July :)
They only need a few months to emulate what they see there, right?!
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Am I the only one who remembers the "Look and Feel" lawsuit Apple lost after MS first released Windows? MS already knows they can steal anything they like without any significant retribution from either the government or other corporations, which is exactly what they do. The only real innovation coming from Redmond is new and better ways to take other people's technology, add it to their own, then put the original creators out of business.
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
OSX is a dream OS ..
.. play Warcraft3 .. run Adobe Photoshop .. and use Cron .. all on the same machine in the same OS -natively- without dualbooting .. and you can actually watch fullmotion video (ie DVD's) behind a transparent terminal window thanks to a true OpenGL rendered desktop.
..
I can compile GNU fileutils
Apple has done in a few years what many in the Linux community have been trying to do for ages
Really... Windows 2005 will have things that have been in MacOSX since 2001, huh?
Windows 95 copied things that had been in MacOS since... 1986 or so?
The way I count things, MS is getting better, right? They went from 9 years behind to 4 years behind, in only 10 years.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Wrong. The Apple Lisa had a pre-emptive multi-tasking OS with protected memory, but the hardware cost too much (the Motorola 68k in particular had a paging bug at the time that required them to use their own MMU). The Lisa was $10K in 1983. The Mac didn't have those features (and a lot more), and was $3K in 1984. The Mac won in the marketplace over the Lisa, therefore it can be argued that co-operative multi-tasking and a simple memory model are better.
After all, if pre-emptive multi-tasking and protected memory are so important, everyone would have used OS/2 instead of Windows 3.1.
dork.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
If you invested in Apple 15 years ago, they still honor your investment. I can't say that the same is true of MS where different versions of Office don't even like to talk to each other and they are constantly pushing for their customers to spend more money.
Its NOT about churning out a first rate product. First rate products are hard to build take time and don't make you very rich very quickly.
GM, Ford and AMC don't churn out great cars. No Lamborghini's, no Roll's Royces, not even a Beamer. But they churn out a lot of crappy ones and make some money on each one.
Its all about the Benjamins. M$ would churn out Goethes, Bachs, Rembrants and Piranene's if anybody figured out a way to make a buck doing that.
But that's not likely is it? So you get "wanna-be" "rip-off" crap that doesn't work well, look good or last long because there's more money in churning crap.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The Linux community has recently been rabid in its desire to get rid of such things. The "choose your environemnt" philosophy has been sacrificed in favor of the KDE/GNOME wars, and
The current Linux community hates innovation. They wouldn't know innovation if it rose up and bit them in the ass. Anything new and different is seen as a kind of dangerous superceding of Windows, which is apparently what users REALLY WANT and Linux is talked about as being WAAAAAAY "behind" (aside from X-hating, KDE/GNOME-hating posts, witness the diatribes the other day against Unix in general in the Gobo story).
Linux began as almost pure innovation, an OS written from the ground up by GNU and Linus Torvalds. It is network-centric, runs on devices ranging from tiny to supercomputer, supported SMP, software RAID, IPV6, and a million other features before any of the other consumer operating systems. It's still one of the only free pieces of "major" software in the world. The marriage of Unix, new ideas, new technologies and new languages in Linux has created probably the single most productive large-scale computing environment in history, and at one of the lowest price points, too.
And yet Linux users (especially the converts over the last 3-5 years) can't stop moaning about how Linux will never be successful until it apes Windows and MacOS. And then they complain about a lack of innovation...
Methinks Linux users are confused. Or maybe they can't see the forest for the trees. Or something.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Consider:
Would anyone be surprised if Longhorn turns out to be BETTER than OS X?
Would anyone be shocked if, alternatively, by 2005, OS X had progressed to a further point than Longhorn then?
And which of you would switch just because of that? As for me, I'm sticking to the Mac anyway.
"... I don't think." -- Bill Gates
Exacly what features of the Nextstep does win95 offer? "windowblinds"? Sure, if you download a serious modification. 95 shipped with the clumsy three button junk from win3.1 plus an extra button and a pannel. A root menue anywhere on the screen? Nope. The way it resizes windows? Nope. Menues that you can leave up on the screen? Nope. Can you name one feature that is not simply part of any GUI? I'm not going to go into the tremendous difference in the unerlying systems but just look at the apearances alone.
Nextstep was made from MacOS and was better. Windoze never did much more than follow along the GUI path, never evolving much from the first one they made. The evolution and lines of influence are clear when you look at screen shots from each.
For those of you not familiar with Next, check out this 1993 screen shot of the first web browser. The client was developed in 1990. There are many free implementations of the Nextstep such as Window Maker today. It still kicks any GUI Microsoft has ever made. After using a reasonable window manager on X, few people can go back to the M$ GUI confines.
For those of you fortunate enough to have missed Windoze 3.1, here is a little screen shot from 1993 or so when Netscape became one of the first available browsers for Windoze. 95 added the X button on the top right, so I suppose you could say it coppied Nextstep in one way. Here is a typical Win95/98 desktop. Windoze XP (screen shot to compare), is more of the same and annoying as all hell.
Please don't compare reasonable software, such as Nextstep or Sun's Common Desktop Environemnt, to junk from Microsoft. People might get the idea that one was better than it is or that the other sucks in ways it never did.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
From an MS press release:
Apple demanded $1.2 billion from Microsoft for alleged patent infringements...
The negotiations that resulted led to a strategic agreement between the two companies in August 1997, one part of which called for Microsoft to invest $150 million in Apple and for Apple to install Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the default Web browser for its customers... As part of his videotaped deposition, however, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates testified repeatedly that his primary goal was to resolve the patent issues with Apple and obtain a patent cross license.