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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."
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.
Not for everything though. Maybe it follows that path for the parts people see on their desktop. Then again, that's more GNOME/KDE than Linux. However, for areas like security I think it's OSX/Linux --> Windows.
Since the heart of OSX is BSD, they don't have to keep ripping their system apart to search for major security issues because it's probably been done many times previously by others. And KDE is catching up to windows with respect to "plug it in and it works" with kioslaves. When I plugged in a firewire drive and saw the little icon on my desktop, my reaction was "finally!"
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!
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.