Jobs Claims Microsoft Is Shamelessly Copying

Nicholas Roussos writes "Steve Jobs was outspoken at a recent annual shareholder meeting. He claimed 'They are shamelessly copying us', referring to Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft has done its share of pointing fingers as well." From the article: "Most telling, Jobs said is that Tiger, the next version of Mac OS X, will go on sale later this month, while Longhorn is still more than a year away."

Comments

Dear computer industry.

[Seumas]

Welcome to 1982-1984.

Re:Dear computer industry.

[ggvaidya]

Crap. Here I was just about to buy a PowerBook ...

Maybe by the time I buy it, the instructions will ask me to drop it from 3 inches in the air. :|

Oh, and does this mean Apple will have to fire Jobs again? Bummer.

Re:Who's copying whom

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

In tomorrow's news, Flexible Typhoon swipes at Grey Ninja for shamelessly copying him

The only solution

[Alzheimers]

The only solution to such rampant disregard for originality is obvious: we need stronger intellectual property laws and more protection for software patents. Obviously, the current laws provide no incentive for Microsoft to innovate at all, and therefore we must protect Apple's ideas and creations by giving them a guaranteed mononpoly for a limited time - perhaps as long as 70 years - to force competitors to develop new and alterantive solutions.

Oh, I almost forgot to close my /sarcasm tag.

But of course.

[Colin Smith]

Isn't Apple Microsoft's market research department?

Re:Who's copying whom

[ggvaidya]

Windows Messenger (a sister to MSN Messenger)

No, it's not. Windows Messenger is MSN Messenger's bastard, mutant son with ugly flecky skin, an abhorrant fear of the sun and a hellish need to eat raw fish.

Me: "I want to log into MSN, please"
WM: "No ... nobody gets past, gollum! Nasssty userses, we must be upgraded first! Thisss version won't work, preciouses! Not thiss one!"
Me: "Err, it's okay, I'll just run MSN messenger .."
WM: "Ha! The parent is well hidden, gollum! Nasssty users will never find it without getting deep into Program Files! Never!"
Me: "No, here it is ..." (double-click) Another instance of WM launches, fails to log in and cackles horribly. Much searching finally reveals the MSN messenger hiding somewhere.

Honestly, I'm just waiting for it to creep out and bite off my finger one of these days ...

Re:Who's copying whom

[Tim Browse]

Integrated Instant Messaging/Video Chat: Tiger will feature a souped-up version of iChat. Microsoft will embed Windows Messenger (a sister to MSN Messenger), which also will likely feature video-chat.

Woah, I'd better tell my friend to stop showing me pictures of his new baby over MSN Messenger. We didn't realise you couldn't do video chat in MSN Messenger yet.

Please tell me when Messenger gets the video chat feature, and we can start doing that again.

oops

[Heisenbug]

Oh, I almost forgot to close my /sarcasm tag.

That would suck. Then the whole rest of this page would be sarcastic too ...

Yeah, close call.

Re:OSX - Windows - Linux

[Chops]

Precisely. The Windows -> Linux flowdown is quite well established, as you'll see by the following examples:

IIS -> apache, ftpd
COMMAND.COM -> Unix shell
Exchange -> sendmail
poorly-implemented third-party "virtual desktops" -> multiple X11 desktops
Visual SourceSafe -> rcs, CVS, now subversion
Internet Explorer -> Mosiac and Netscape
Remote Desktop -> X11

Expect to see more shameless copying in the future:

• The Linux community will probably create imitations of popular Microsoft languages such as Visual Basic and Cobol.NET to replace outdated perl and python.
  
• The confusing package management systems (particularly in Debian-based distributions) will be replaced with Microsoft's obviously superior "every app's installer does whatever it feels like" approach to shared libraries.
  
• The next version of Firefox will look just about exactly like IE, with popup blocking and tabs, for example.
  
• Vendor-provided security support for third party applications (e.g. Redhat's updated Mozilla, postfix, and mysql packages to replace vulnerable versions) will give way to the familiar, consistent "Fuck off" Microsoft users are accustomed to receiving when using third party products.
  
• The Linux shell will be reinvented after its increasing deprecation in recent years, with scripting features copied (poorly) from Microsoft's offerings.
  

I could go on, but I think Microsoft's role as an innovator is quite well-established.

Re:Who's copying whom

[CSMastermind]

And in other news Jobs also called gates, "a big meanie" and asked him to stop being a "copy cat", while the linux people chimed in that he needed to "learn how to share". Mr. Gates couldn't be reached for comment he was busy coloring.