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

who cares?

[locnar42]

Does anybody really care if one of them copied the other?
Maybe Apple/Microsoft because they want to fight out patents. Personally, all I care about is which one does a better job of implementing the features I want.

Pundits, Copycats, and Asshattery

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps not all Thurrott's points were invalid.

Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.

Re:Pundits, Copycats, and Asshattery

[mblase]

Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.

Not anymore. Mine keeps reading "88:88" (and 88 seconds) ever since the LCD display got clobbered.

Three Skills Come To Mind

[buckhead_buddy]

Seeing the itemized list of who's providing what, made me think about why everyone thinks their "allegiance" is the one to do it right and to do it first. In general I think the trend is:

• Unix needs a bulletproof implementation
• Apple needs a bulletproof interface
• Microsoft needs a bullet point

That probably sounds negative to any of the three groups, but I think it explains more about why users don't "remember" that someone else perhaps did it first. An Apple aficionado who appreciates good user interfaces will never acknowledge anyone else as coming "first" after seeing the demo of Time Machine; there's just never been anything like it. But a Unix user will guffaw at the crash they had during the demo and state that they're the ones with the "first" version since they really see reliability as their cornerstone. As for adamant Microsoft users, it just seems to matter about when something was released rather than the quality. The next version may completely drop the interface or re-engineer the back end. But often these users can quote feature lists and continuity better than most Trekkies or Whovians.

In a lot of ways, I think there's a lot to be improved from all three camps. Make it work. Make it usable. And make it known. I think there are things each developer group can learn from the other, but advocacy will be self-selecting.

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.

Re:Apple vs. Microsoft

[Senjutsu]

Well, if we're going to be pedantic: Thurrott's "point" was that Apple shipped features that Microsoft had previously announced but not shipped. The implication apparently being that Apple needed zero planning time for their features and can clone Microsoft features out of thin air faster than Microsoft can implement them.

In other words, it was classic Microsoft "our vapour tomorrow will be better than their shipping product today" FUD from the Internet's #1 Microsoft toady.

Re:but it's all the same

[masklinn]

Last time I checked, service packs were more or less major security patch bundles, every release of OSX introduces new tools, refinements to the core OS itself and new technologies.

Sure they come often, but upgrade W2k from SP3 to SP4 (hell, upgrade W2k from original version to SP4) and you still have Windows 2k, nothing new under the sun, maybe your calculator's been updated if you're lucky.

Update OSX from 10.3 (Panther) to 10.4 (Tiger) and you're in for major changes, upgrade OSX from 10.1 to 10.4 and you've basically got a different OS. Which is why Ars manages to do 15+ pages full text reviews for each new iteration of OSX. There's just no way to do that with service packs.