Apple vs Microsoft Both Copycats

jdbartlett writes "Yesterday, we read Paul Thurrott's response to Apple's Leopard preview. In his TechBlog, Jim Thompson trims Thurrott's bloated opinion piece and presents an alternative take on four major new features, admitting that each may have been inspired but certainly not by Microsoft. Thompson ignores 6 features; some (Core Animation, Accessibility improvements) needed no defense, but perhaps not all Thurrott's points were invalid."

Comments

I'm Visually Impaired

[TheZorch]

Text to Voice support in Windows XP is dismal to say the least. The built-in text-to-speech softrware is a joke. It works yes, but only in Microsoft applications.

There is a 3rd party software package called "JAWS" which costs around $400 - $500, is locked down with DRM so if you have to reinstall your system or upgrade you have to reactivate it. Also, the software is very picky as to what kind of video card and sound card you have, and its prome to crashing. The software had also been none to deactivate itself for no reason, thus requiring you to reinstall it and reactivate it.

I looked at VoiceOver in Mac OS X and I was very impressed. Someone with no vision at all (I have some, I just need an extra large monitor) would have little trouble navigating the system using it. I know a few people with no vision at all and they were also extremely impressed with Voice Over, and I know at least one person who will benefit from Mac OS X Leopard's support for Braille displays. Also, the APIs and tools needed to make Mac OS X apps work with Voice Over are freely available to developers so any Mac app can be made Voice Over compatible with minimal effort. For JAWS its much harder.

Re:Comprimise

[scolen2]

Thanks for that NOVA Ep recap i saw 15 years ago. Apple didn't copy btw, they purchaced it along with the mouse that Xerox didn't feel was viable. The OS has matured a long way, and just like music its all about building upon the shoulders of giants. Apple did it better on the surface, and under the hood while Microsoft did it better in the engine.

Apple is just another Unix vendor

[Foerstner]

the debate here is between Windows and OS X, not Unix.

OS X is just a peculiar Unix distro.

I find it fascinating that Linux can borrow BSD features, and AIX can mimic Solaris features, but when Apple steals a feature for its particular Unixling, it's a big event.