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

Re:Apple vs. Microsoft

[rolfwind]

I believe that Thurrot advanced that Apple copies MS too (and not just the other way around), which implies that MS invented those features originally - otherwise Apple would be copying Unix as there is no way to know if they were copying a feature just because it was on Windows.

For instance, he said that MS had something like "Spaces" originally in some obscure version of NT which was never officially released, however anybody with any familiarity with Unix will have recognized that Apple probably got the idea for multiple desktops there rather than from MS. It's an insincere point.

The $150Mil settlement

[Shawn Parr]

Conveniently most people don't remember, or never realized at the time that there was a patent dispute. Part of the $150 million deal was a patent cross licensing deal.

So let's look at facts:

1. Microsoft buys $150 million in non-voting stock
2. Apple had way more money in cash at the time (thus rumors of their demise were...)
3. Apple gets access to Microsoft Patents and Microsoft gets access to Apple patents (which is one reason why Microsoft can make their new apps look a lot like Apple's I would guess)

This is what I think most people would refer to as an out of court settlement, politically twisted to look like a political gesture.

All the talk about copying ignores innovation

[DECS]

Rather than trying to establish who came up with an idea, I'd like to see more attention given to new, innovative ideas. I'd like to see Microsoft, Apple, and open source groups copy each other's good ideas as much as possible. Good ideas deserved to be copied!

RoughlyDrafted Magazine has articles on what's really new in Time Machine in The Time Machine Rip-off Myth,

explained what new stuff Thurrott overlooked in WWDC Secrets Paul Thurrott Hopes You Miss,

and gave Three Reasons Why Microsoft Can't Ship (and Apple can).

The RDM Paul Thurrott story was dugg 1300+ times today!

Re:who cares?

[larry bagina]

Copland. Pink. Taligent. Hell, the entire 90s. They're still delaying/cancelling features with OS X. The difference is, they're not pre-announcing them, and they're releasing minor updates.