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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."
I think that this is a lot of hot air. Apple is so far ahead of anything anyone else in the techn sector that someone copying them is only natural.
Even with the amount of development power available to Microsoft, they have never been able to catch up to Apple, the industry leader. This is not to say that Microsoft is somehow bound by their develpment skill, but rather their creativity.
Apple, in contrast to Microsoft, has taken the bold step of basing their operating system on Unix, which allows them to tap into the vast stores of development resources latent in the IBM/Solaris camps. Microsoft, unyielding, relies on their own developers who are slowly (but rapidly gaining speed) migrating to the more stable Unix-based systems.
I love Steve Jobs, but I think he's a little paranoid here. Losers always copy the winners. It'd be better to take comfort in the comfortable lead that Apple's got, rather than complain about parrots.
I believe it was Voltaire who said that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.
That's how the flowdown goes. Let's not throw stones in glass houses here, folks.
Linux and most OSS software is not exactly an innovator in any sense, it's mostly just a reimplementation of proprietary software already in existence.
But anyways, isn't all progress built on the success of others? Why should we deride Microsoft for implementing things that are good?
He claimed 'They are shamelessly copying us',
And killing you in the market. Still. More focus on winning on less on being beaten please.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Longhorn does copy some features of Tiger. Even their "It Just Works" mantra is ripped from OS X Switch campaign that Apple launched years ago. One of the main criticisms I had with Gates and Co is that for years they tout all these "innovations" that Windows brings but in reality many of the innovations were either copied or bought from others.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If by steal you mean legally came to an agreement with xerox. Then yes.
All progress is made from bits and pieces of previous experience which lead up to current progress. That's why there's never any giant leaps, that's why we didn't have some guy 10 years ago miraculously come up with a 3ghz processor. It's why we didn't have rock and roll in the 1600s. All past innovation leads up to current achievements.
Pointing fingers and complaining about who's copying who is not only non-productive but it is the same mindset which leads to all this IP mess that we're currently in.
So to you Mr.Jobs, get off your high horse. They didn't copy the wheel just because your latest car has one. It took that wheel to get you there, do not disrespect that wheel.
I'm not trying to defend microsoft or apple. I hate everything equally.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
the magic word here is System wide System wide search through all your data - seach string in all txt/word/PDF documents, in your mail, in your adress book. The same with scripting, the system needs internal support to use system fucntions in scripting.
I'm not an Mac owner, but Tiger's search doesn't sound anything like locate. Locate has no knowledge of file type, file contents or metadata. It couldn't show you "all Openoffice files written by John Smith last tuesday", for example. It wouldn't index you emails etc.
It also requires a complete database scan to update AFAIK, whereas spotlight updates its database in the background as it is integrated into the OS, so Spotlight will generally be up to date.
Free software that will be quite similar to Spotlight is Beagle, which looks pretty impressive.
You are missing something. The parent poster isn't claiming Apple invented scripting languages, or local search or RSS. Nope. What he is saying is that Tiger includes improvements to search (it is system wide, content wide search which makes use of all the metadata it can find), instant messaging, etc and Longhorn happens to include very similar improvements. There could be any number of reasons, really. Parallel evolution or drawing from the same outside inspiration are possibilities as well.
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Crudely Drawn Games
Yes, you're missing some things.
re: Search --> We're not talking about searching for file names with some matching string, or partially matching string. This is metadata search, AND filename search. I'm probably missing something here, but there's a particular /. user getting a lot of press lately whose comments you might want to read.
re: Scripting --> It's not that the OS will have scripting, it's that there'll be a user interface to make it easy for the masses.
Some of the things you do have a point about, but you need to consider that a lot of these features are being touted as they're either just being brought to the masses, or being brought in an easier to use way.
Using your reasoning, BMW hasn't "won" (ever!) either. They're quite happy to let others sell cheap, commodity cars.
Apple doesn't have to dominate the desktop market. Aside from the fact that they've been going out of business for 30 years, they're doing very well financially lately. (Oh, if I only bought Apple stock 5 years ago.)
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
I'm not sure why Apple often gets the wrath on SlashDot from the Linux community. My only explanation is that Linux users are more often than not also Windows users. They dual boot. They have other PCs laying around running Windows. Why not use MacOS X and be able to run mainstream apps and have a unix core without dual booting? Why not run Yellow Dog Linux and truly thumb your nose at the MS/Intel duopoly? Apple is is the same boat as Linux. Trying to tell the world that they have a viable OS platform other than Windows. Apple is succeeding and putting a unix machine on millions of desktops. Be Happy!
I was recently helping a friend of mine shop for a new system. He had been using PCs with Windows for the longest time, and I never heard the end of the complaints about how Windows screwed this up and how Windows screwed that up. So finally, after trying to convince him for years, I helped him buy a new Mac. He had some money to spend (he's rollin' in dough) so he bought a Mac Mini with the faster processor and all the options, and got the wireless Apple keyboard. He already had a really nice Samsung display and a Logitech wireless trackball, along with a Firewire/USB hub with plenty of ports.
When he realized that he could plug in his digital camera and his digital video camera, the hard disk almost instantly filled up with stuff. So the next day, we went back to the store and picked up a Maxtor Firewire hard drive with a 250 gig capacity. He copied tons of digital photos and videos from his other computers. I introduced him to iTunes, so he just had to import all of his MP3s from two PCs, which were bursting at the seams with MP3s. The 250 gig drive filled up quite fast, so the day after that, he bought a second one; luckily there is an "available" firewire port on the Maxtor drive, so you can "daisy chain" them.
But that's not all! With the Mac Mini, the two external drives, the USB/Firewire hub, the display, keyboard, and mouse, his desk actually looked quite clean. (He's good at organizing cables.) It's amazing how much stuff fits into small boxes nowadays. So he had to go "shopping"... Picked up a new iPod, Final Cut Studio or whatever it's called, and Adobe Creative Suite for the Mac... I swear he dropped almost four grand on stuff for this Mac in a few days. This from a guy who thought Macs suck.
He was quite amazed when he found out that Final Cut is made by Apple. He knew it was a serious program, but he never thought about who made it. When I explained that Apple makes the computers, the operating system, and software that does just about every function you can dream of, he was amazed that one company can do all of these things, and do each one of them much better than any other company out there. Specifically, he was shocked and amazed that Microsoft, with thousands of times the resources that Apple has, can't even get their operating system working properly.
We came to the conclusion that the problem facing Microsoft and many other companies is simply that Microsoft is mediocre. It's an easy problem to fall into. Microsoft is simply mediocre because the quality of their work is not important to them. They are simply greedy for money. Now they'll tell you that they care, and they're working to fix the security flaws, etc., but only because they realized that those security flaws are impacting their bottom line. As long as those flaws did not affect Microsoft in any significant way, they would have continued to ignore them.
Personally, I believe that if security flaws did not impact the sales of Microsoft software at all, Microsoft would simply ignore them and not care that your data, your identity, your finances, etc., are at risk. Because they're mediocre.
Apple, on the other hand, is a first-class company. Say what you will about their stuff being more expensive, but believe me, you get what you pay for. Someone has to get paid for making true innovations. Even though some things in their OS existed in other OSes before them (Spotlight - Query in BeOS). I think they're constantly improving.
The whole who's copying who debate is silly. It doesn't really matter, and if competitors are incorporating the best ideas from the industry, we all win, regardless of platform. There is nothing worse than the "not invented here" syndrome. But there is something worth noting with Longhorn: there doesn't seem to be any fresh thinking. The fact that we are having this debate and not one person has defended Microsoft by pointing out a feature that is totally unique and ground breaking is telling. Very telling. Not one single feature that someone can point out as unique and innovative to Microsoft for others to copy. Not a single one. And that, I think is the problem with Microsoft and their role in the industry.
Microsoft announces, then develops.
Apple develops, then announces.
Just because Microsoft issues a press release or throws a press conference and says that the next version of Windows is going to have [feature], that doesn't mean that Apple hasn't already had [feature] under development/running in a lab somewhere for a year.
For example, the search capability in Tiger known as "Spotlight." Apple applied for a patent on the technology behind Spotlight (a patent that was granted in January of this year, BTW) when OS X 10.0* was still a year and two months away from public release. Which means they started working on it in 1999 if not sooner. Years before the name "Longhorn" was ever uttered by anyone at Microsoft.
~Philly
*OS X 10.0 release date: 3/24/2001
The NT security model itself is quite sophisticated, it derives directly from the old VMS model. Butler Lampson et.al., who designed it, are some of the computer security gurus.
The main problem with NT's security is not the model itself, it's the various ways how it gets circumvented to either have some nifty feature which looks nice at a demonstration without a real use (ActiveX) or because the ways how NT is used by application designers and users is contradictionary to the model. Applications that need administrator priviledges to run are inherently flawed. They are applications, something that is applied on top of the inner workings and shouldn't know about any priviledges necessary for system administration.
NT is a good example how OS design itself doesn't create computer security. It is the way how an OS is used, procedures, usage patterns, deployment, applications, which create an environment for computers which is more or less secure. OS security is a single aspect of overall computer security.
Your first example is not really a Linux/Unix vulnerability (in fact the vulnerability is the same on WinNT), it is an application vulnerability. If it propagates through to the operating system (as it does if the user has far reaching OS priviledges), then it may point out an OS problem. Under Unix/Linux it should normally not affect OS integrity.
The second is indeed an OS problem, because it is a driver problem, and most drivers need OS priviledges to run. It would be possible to have drivers run in a sandbox like environment with a protection layer against the kernel and other drivers which helps to keep driver vulnerabilities local to the driver and the hardware the driver is operating. Sadly neither the Linux kernel nor the WinNT kernel are well prepared for such security layers. There are experiments with minimalistic kernels (microkernels) which provide such layering, but they didn't have much impact into mainstream computing yet. You might be interested in the L3/L4 series which allow userland drivers.