Apple vs Microsoft- Who's the Copycat?

torrensmith writes "Paul Thurrott attacks the Apple Mac OS X Leopard Preview. He does have a few kind words for Apple and its leader Steve Jobs ("They do good work. It's too bad they feel the need to exaggerate so much.", but overall, he rips apart Apple for mimicking Vista, even going so far as to call the Apple fascination with Vista "childish." Paul does include a healthy review of the latest Leopard features, but quickly returned to his bashing of Apple. "

Mocking?

[anjin-san 3]

I think the headline should say "mocking" instead of "mimicking"

Who Cares About Copying Useful Features?

[MankyD]

I don't give a damn who's copying who. If the features are useful and functional, then kudos to any developer of any system, (not even limiting myself to software here,) who adds those features to their system.

note: I am not a Mac user nor even a Windows user anymore.

More to come

[Chaos750]

Sure, the features shown at WWDC were a bit underwhelming for us "ordinary folk." Although I do think that Time Machine looks amazing. There's going to be more, just be patient. Apple's not going to give away all the good stuff when there's still half a year until it's released.

Everybody is the copycat

[chriss]

It's stupid to ask if Microsoft or Apple is the one stealing from the other. Most ideas we see successfully implemented today are taken from somewhere else and (hopefully) improved. Take e.g. Spaces. Yes, there have been virtual desktops for Linux for years (and I've been using Desktop Manageron OS X for this purpose for some), but spaces is neatly integrated into Expose and viewing all virtual desktops in miniature versions the way Spaces does might even be new, at least I haven't seen it before.

So is it copied? Or is it invented? None of both, it is evolved. Yes, Windows can already make system snapshots like Time Machine. No, it cannot do it in a way that it can be easily managed by a normal user. Copied? Invented? If Vista brings a nicer interface similar to Time Machine, did they copy it back?

The originator of an idea is less important in a world where evolution is as important as with operating systems and GUIs. So these comparisons try to artificially generate a difference where none exists. My personal reference will be which implementation works best for me, not who came up with the inspiration.

vista vapor

[redfood]

Its hard not to copy features when according to Microsoft vista will do everything but slice bread. Until its released you really can't say its being copied.

But isn't your reputation at stake?

[Petskull]

I'd say that a company being focused intently on its competitors is a staple of business, isn't it? That having been said- I would imagine that a company who is so famous for their ~vision~ would need more than anything that the public accept their products as original and innovative.

Re:Agreed

[0racle]

It's called marketing. Besides it plays into peoples perceptions of MS products. Even people who don't know why they should dislike Windows say they do because it's expected, Apples campaigns simply play into that.

Smashing Apples

[ExE122]

In the very first paragraph, he establishes what a horrible person Jobs is for competing with Microsoft. And I suppose David was an asshole for standing up to Goliath? Needless to say, he doesn't even mention Bill Gates throughout the entire article.

So then he goes on to attack the improvements over the past couple years:

He claimed that Apple shipped five "major" updates to OS X, including Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger, though I'd argue that virtually none of those were major updates at all. (Unless you count the cost. At $129 for each version, that's about $750 on Mac OS X upgrades since 2001. That kind of puts the cost of Windows in perspective.) But he counted Tiger on Intel as a sixth major release, because of the effort in porting the OS X code to a new platform (which, actually, had been in the works for a long time and wasn't the 210 day project Jobs claimed).

By that measure, Microsoft has improved Windows by a far greater degree. In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition in various languages

Am I missing something? XP, XP, XP, XP... the only differences between most being software bundles, hardware compatibility, and driver support. and he fails to mention that pretty much all of those also have a price tag well over $100.

Thanks to the 64-bit Xeon chip that will be shipping in the new Mac Pro systems, Leopard will be fully 64-bit enabled (unlike Tiger, which is only partially 64-bit and then only on certain Power PC systems). That means that OS X will finally do what Windows XP x64 Edition did last year: Run 32-bit and 64-bit applications natively, side-by-side. Good for them.

So Windows released a seperate 64-bit version (which you have to buy seperately as well) before Apple. Again, no big deal. Almost every product on the market is starting to move towards 64-bit support. Is Apple really "copying" Windows here?

It seems to me that all these arguments are really week and that this guy just wants to complain about Apple. I really think he could've used his time more productively.

It's important for you to understand, however, that I don't have Leopard. I'm basing this only on what Apple showed off at WWDC.

Maybe you should try it before you knock it.

--
"A man is asked if he is wise or not. He replies that he is otherwise" ~Mao Zedong

A site specialized on Windows...

[kusanagi374]

A site specialized on Windows and with a strong relationship with Micrsooft bashes a competitor OS to defend Vista and make it look like the one that is truly original... I'm shocked! SHOCKED!

(yeah, I got the karma to burn)

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is a business trying to compete in a market dominated by a single organization with a 95% market share. Of course Apple is going to compare their operating system to Vista. It doesn't even really make sense to do otherwise. And a good way of attracting people is to flaunt your system's superiority. I don't really see it as elitism.

Well, Mr. Thurrott...

[jrothwell97]

...if you look properly, it looks a lot like Microsoft is copying Apple. In the latest beta of Vista, progress meters shimmer. Windows slide into the taskbar when minimised. And practically everything glows when hovered over. Sound familiar, anyone???

The one time Apple followed...

[Magnusite]

...was when they moved the kill button right next to the maximize button. This had to be the dumbest thing anyone ever thought of. How many times have I accidently killed a mail client because I was trying to get to the desktop? Yes, the application is supposed to catch the signal and open an are you sure? dialog, but they don't have to, and some don't!

Please, somebody tell Apple to put the Nuke button back where it belongs... on the other side of the window.

Denial

[spykemail]

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. While it's true that most features of either OS aren't completely new, there's a big difference between the way Microsoft and Apple incorporate them. Apple tends to create innovative new user interfaces (Time Machine) while Microsoft tends to copy features verbatim, even down to icon style and color schemes in some cases (some examples are given in the presentation).

Another key thing to note is WHEN each company incorporates new features. Apple tends to get things first (first in the sense of before Microsoft) and do cool new things with them while Microsoft tends to get them months or years later and does absolutely nothing new or innovative.

As for the Microsoft bashing during the WWDC it was well deserved. Microsoft deserves to be bashed for taking 5 years to develop a new OS and constantly delaying it while dropping many of its biggest features. And no matter how much you want to argue about Microsoft copying off Apple I hope you can at least agree that they're chasing after Apple's iPod and Google's web services like a little dog that got its bone stolen by a bigger one.

Most of the Mac kiddies like myself aren't really claiming that Microsoft is ripping off Apple in the biblical sense, just that Apple is the leader - the one daring to go where Microsoft probably would never have gone otherwise. If you want the latest and the greatest you have to love Apple and wait for Microsoft.

Inverse Perhaps.. Vista took from OSX?

[Foo2rama]

One Spotlight is not a rip off of windows search it is the natural progression from Sherlock released in os 8.0 in about 1998. Windows search is a less well implemented version of what Sherlock originally did for searching.

And what is up with his trashing of sherlock later as a tech destined for the trashheap... Windows and disabilty access to the OS... Ok Apple has been much more proactive through the years on this one, with text to speech support since at least OS7.

Overall I see alot of straw man attacks, yes there is a convergent evolution and you can make the point that Mac OSX has taken some ques from Vista, but How many more cues has Windows Vista taken from Mac OS, or how many things has Windows taken over the years? The start button is just a poorly implemented apple menu in os7 (after you could place the hd folder in the menu.)

read between the lines sure Apple took some things, but Microsost has taken more and after using both systems most people prefer the look, feel and use-ability of the MAC OS. For the record I own only PC's at this point.

Huh?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Back at the CES, wasn't an MS exec hyping a slew of new features in Vista, all of which already existed in commercially available versions of OS X for several years? Someone has even made a video displaying OS X's features in sync with the audio of the supposed new features of Vista which wasn't publically released at the time.

I really don't want to humor the article by following the link because I suspect a Dvorak-ism going on here.

It's possible that they were MS ideas which Apple managed to beat MS to the market on those features by several years, but frankly, many of those ideas are likely from somewhere else.

The "spaces" feature is Apple catching up on the virtual desktop concept (was available as an XP PowerToy, but before then, was an X window feature), but none of the other introduced features seemed to be rips of Vista.

Re:Well, take from both!

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

Microsoft just released the Intel OS X Windows Movie player. Microsoft has had a long relationship making applications for the Macintosh. If they want to fight, that's fine. Just take what you need.

Do you have a link for this "Intel OS X Windows Movie player"? I searched the Microsoft website for Mac Windows Media Player and all I got was a link to download a nearly three year old version 9 player, a note that they are no longer updating or supporting the application for the Mac and a link to a third party media player.

Re:Here We Go Again...

[Golias]

Well known Microsoft supporter has a few bad words to say about Apple.

Ok, so which part of 'News for Nerds' does this come under?

apple.slashdot.com, where all stories are either spiteful media bias by trolls who want to get their hit-count up by groundlessly bashing Apple, or slavish fanboy posts by "Reality Distortion Field" victims who are lining up to drink poisoned Flavorade.

If you try to write a balanced story or comment about Apple, you will be accused of being both.

The facts:

Microsoft has frequently bought, borrowed or stolen all kinds of UI concepts from Apple, but generally doesn't do as good a job at implementing them for some reason. They have some very bright programming minds at Microsoft, but for some reason they are (and pretty much always have been) famously weak on design concepts.

Apple has turned around and taken a few UI tools from Microsoft as well (most notably contextual "right-click" menus, and the schedule integration they are rolling into the next version of Mail.app), mainly for the sake of meeting the expectations of OS "switchers."

My broad generalization of the trend:

When Microsoft takes from Apple, it's because Apple came up with a great idea. When Apple takes from Microsoft, it's because Microsoft has pushed a new industry standard on the market.

world wide DEVELOPERS conference

[conigs]

The end result is that Core Animation will not directly effect end users in Leopard until developers take advantage of it. Clearly, it was thrown out as a bone to the developer-heavy crowd.

Funny how the World Wide Developers Conference was developer-heavy, huh?

Re:But isn't your reputation at stake?

[rainman_bc]

I'd say that a company being focused intently on its competitors is a staple of business, isn't it?

No, a company who copies instead of innovates is problematic.

Look, Apple takes good ideas from Microsoft and vice versa. And while we're at it, anyone seen all the stuff in xgl? Looks like that was copied much of all from Apple.

A good idea is a good idea. Microsoft has had some, Apple's had more, and sometimes the Linux world has them too... It's really silly to finger one as a copy cat when they all do it.

It's just natural evolution

[Skraut]

Some ideas are good and are adopted by both, some fall by the wayside. I don't look in my garage at my Ford and my Toyota and freak out; "OMG! Both Vehicles have 4 wheels, 4 doors, and a steering wheel! The Toyota must be copyng the Ford!" It's just natural evolution. That's the best way to do stuff. Cars have been around for over 100 years and are for lack of a better term, a mature product. Personal compuers roughly 30. There's still a lot of great ideas out there that Mac or Windows or KDE or Gnome, or XFCE, etc etc. will come up with that will end up in the other systems.

That's how you build a product. Grab as many good ideas as you can and make them seamlessly work together.

Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?

[Keith Russell]

I love this little preemptive strike from his conclusion...

I get a lot of flak from the Mac community and no doubt this article will start another round of name-calling. (See how Apple's childish behavior rubs off on its fans?)

Gee, you conclude your column with a passive-aggressive insult. Of course, there's going to be another round of name-calling, Paul! You started it! Yeah, zealots are a fact of life when discussing operating systems, but you don't take the high road by sneering at the other guy's lack of elevation.

Re:Agreed

[NSIM]

Speaking as someone who does marketing for a living, my aim is to make my product appeal to people who don't already use it. Apple's strategy seems to be to patronize and insult the intelligence of anybody who doesn't drink the Cupertino cool-aid. Ask yourself how irritated you are by the smug patronizing Apple adds of late, thye've pretty much cured me of any desire to by a Mac.

Re:Mocking?

[mrxak]

This Paul Thurrott guy is a true genius in getting the ADD-ridden Apple-zealots giddy.

I can't really imagine why. What he said was pretty tame, and even said he was rooting for Leopard. He just didn't like the attitude, which is understandable, although I think he misinterpreted the intent. The rest of the stuff is a fairly complete list of the new stuff shown in the keynote. But considering he wasn't privy to any of the closed door sessions for developers where a lot of other stuff was shown off, he's not all that able to make a complete judgement. The developers I've talked to and information I've heard through 3rd parties leads me to believe that things are better than they seem just from watching the keynote.

Re:Smashing Apples

[admactanium]

At $129 for each version, that's about $750 on Mac OS X upgrades since 2001. Paul's math is ... creative. 5 x $129 = $750? By that standard, it's also "about" $500 on Mac OS upgrades since 2001. I just saved him $250 (or "about" $400).

not to mention it's a stupid argument. not many people have done 5 system upgrades to a machine that shipped with os9. most of them bought a machine pre-loaded with a version of os x within that 5-product cycle.

Re:Bashing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, way to take a totally reasonable statement about Apple's ability to meet timelines and turn it into a fanboi flame opportunity.

Yes, Apple's testing is easier with Apple hardware running Apple software. But consider that Apple hardware is now more than one arch, spanning a couple generations of Intel machines and many many generations of PPC machines, and you realize it is still a hard task, just as it is a hard task for ANY software vendor.

And the comment about Microsoft listening to feedback is simply there to imply that Apple doesn't listen to testers, which is pure, blatant fanboi shilling.

In summary: You added nothing to the thread besides demonstating your need to get into the Football mentality. If the 'other team' is compared favorably to 'your team' (regardless of the statement being fact, false or opinion) then you must do your part as a wanker and chime in.

Life as a convicted monopolist

[Wise Dragon]

When your product dominates the marketplace as Windows does, you can and should expect the underdog to take potshots at you. This is not considered bad behavior for an underdog. Microsoft doesn't publicly bash Apple because that would play in Apple's favor, not because of some odd sense of propriety. If Microsoft's people (Paul Thurrott) feel badly because their one desktop competitor bashes their product they seriously need to get a life and quit taking this personally.

I seem to recall that Apple ripped off Karelia's Watson for their search capability, not Vista. Both companies have a penchant for stealing features from each other and their own third party developers to bundle with their operating system. Anyone remember the Stacker/Doublespace fiasco? Netscape/Internet Explorer. Konfabulator/Dashboard. Watson/Sherlock. And let us not forget the Apple vs. MS look and feel lawsuit of 1988. Surprise! Apple and MS both ripped off Xerox! I'm sure there are many many more I coud add to this list.

In summary: It's perfectly acceptable to mock the incumbent; in addition, idea "theft" is practically a tradition in the operating system business.

Innovation isn't the same as invention

[dpbsmith]

Thurott's column is, IMHO, pretty much on the mark. In fact it seems to me that from about 1996 on, many of the things Apple has done have been, if not copying Wintel, nevertheless moving closer and closer to it. The miserable Dock is functionally very much like the WIndows 95 taskbar, the Finder and OS now handle file extensions about the same way Windows does, and so forth.

And, yes, Jobs' presentations are rather dishonest... starting from the day in 1984 when he pulled a Mac out of a bag and demonstrated things like MacinTalk, never bothering to mention that he was using a prototype Mac with 512K of RAM and that of his demos would run on the shipping Mac (which had 128K).

Still, it is important to recognize that what Apple has been good at is innovation, which is not the same as invention. Most of Apple's innovations were not invented by Apple, but Apple wrapped them up, made them work, gave them fit and finish, made sure they would work for your mom and not some geek in a lab.

To use an old-fashioned word, Apple is great at perfecting things.

This shows up particularly in the world of .mp3 players. I must have read two dozen reviews that all begin the same way: This could be the iPod killer. The reviewer always says that it has, you know, twice the storage, more features, longer battery life, a lower price, whatever. Then as the review goes on it becomes painfully obvious that the reviewer encountered a number of serious problems--invariably dismissed as "glitches." It wouldn't play, or it crashed, or it wouldn't sync properly to the PC, or it wouldn't play music that the reviewer had paid for. Invariably the reviewer mentions that despite having just as many knobs and buttons as an iPod, the menu system was difficult to use, and so forth.

To put it bluntly, the iPod was an Apple innovation. It didn't actually do anything that Creative and other companies hadn't been doing for years... but it worked, and people liked it, and for an awful lot of people it was the first .mp3 player they'd ever seen... because it was the first one that had been "perfected."

"Major releases" - haha, good one Paul.

[Almahtar]

From TFA:
"In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition"

That's great. Not only are the 64 bit editions very unstable to this day (and shouldn't be counted as "released" until they are), the difference between all of these "releases" of Windows XP is which features were #ifdef'ed out of the pro version, which service pack they shipped with, and which drivers they shipped with. That's not a "release." I don't know anyone that would look at XP Starter Edition and say "Yes! What a great new release! A true engineering marvel!"

Besides, until we really see Vista as a released product, I'm not ready to compare it to the very first version of OSX, much less Leopard. Maybe it'll fall short of what OSX has always been, maybe it'll eclipse Leopard - I'll decide when it's released, but comparing a few tweaks for XP to the OSX releases is hillariously ignorant.

Re:XP64

[nxtw]

Nonsense. Driver availbility has grown significantly over the past year. Even then I was able to get drivers for everything except my printer, and they've released 64-bit drivers recently. I've found the x64 versions of Windows 2003/XP to be more stable than the 32-bit versions. I have never had a XP/2003 64-bit bluescreen (but I can't say the same about the 32-bit versions).

64-bit costs less probably because of the much lower demand. This will change with the launch of Vista and later Longhorn Server 64-bit.

It's necessary to have separate application/system paths because separate copies of libraries are needed for 32- and 64-bit applications. Some applications have/will have 32- and 64- bit versions because 64-bit apps cannot host 32-bit plugins directly.

Re:Agreed

[0racle]

Well as someone who is not so damn sensitive about things and looks at everything as some sort of personal insult, the latest Apple ads have made me laugh.

Actually they both are copy cats

[portwojc]

Both are copy cats in my book cause of the Amiga.

Yeah you thought it wouldn't be brought up.

Re:They were probably intended to.

[masklinn]

Time Machine will be a huge aid to developers.

No it won't, developers use versioning systems already and Time Machine is centralized single machine. Not enough for development needs, especially since it automagically commits and doesn't allow commit messages, or blames, or anything.

It's a "Joe Six Pack" end user feature, but of no use whatsoever to a good developer, because there are already existing and much better tools for that job.

A good Mac OS X solution for virtual desktops are all but lusted after by many developers.

Not really, there are at least two already, and they're fairly good. While having it nicely integrated in the OS with Apple's UI polish will be a very nice progress, anyone lusting for virtual desktops on OSX can get that already.

Re:terrorists?

[Mortice]

That's as absurdly over the top as calling linux a "cancer." Has Microsoft ever labeled anyone a terrorist? Realize that the Gates's foundation (started in 2000) has helped the world more than any linux user. You sound ridiculous.

Note that I don't really care whether or not anyone from Microsoft has ever labelled anyone a terrorist. Nonetheless:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a separate entity from Microsoft. Its activities, while they are financed, in large part, by Microsoft's success, have no bearing on the merit of Windows as an operating system or Microsoft as a company. To use its activities as a counter-argument to anything related to Microsoft is truly ridiculous.

Re:"OK, Paul"

[yaphadam097]

Except for the fact that by all available accounts Vista is way behind schedule and full of bugs, just like every Windows release ever. I am not a typical Windows detractor. I use it at work every day and at home (Although I also use Linux and OS X.) But, the fact remains that Windows is always behind schedule, above and beyond what is typical for the industry, and Apple is usually far more punctual. I wouldn't be surprised if 10.5 beats Vista to market. I also wouldn't be surprised if 10.5 is actually *finished* when it does come to market. I would be *extremely* surprised if Vista is finished when it comes to market (It would be unprecedented in Microsoft history.) Or, if it comes out anywhere near the (currently) projected date (There would be no precedent for that either.)

Promoting The Copying Ideas

[buckhead_buddy]

Back in 1997, Steve Jobs got on stage at MacWorld and told the Mac faithful to get over it, the desktop war is over and Microsoft won. So why does Apple seem to want to promote the idea that Windows is copying a lot of things from OS X?

1. Perfection Required

If anything in Windows isn't up to snuff when released, the pundits and reviewers will say that the Mac did it better. William Lloyd George said "The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps." People will be less likely to wait for Microsoft to wait for a Service Pack to fix their issues if they know what they want has been done before and done right.

2. Provocation Means Attention

If Apple provokes Microsoft in addressing their provocations, then Apple wins. Microsoft may point out that they have features that are better (windows you can write sticky notes on the back of) but the fact that they need to respond will drag Apple into the media spotlight that even though the features may differ slightly, Apple already has all of this. Some people ONLY pay attention to what Microsoft does; if Microsoft starts making messages that draw comparisons or attention to Leopard then Apple wins something. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

3. Developer Motivation

WWDC is the for the most elite of the Macintosh fan boys: the developers. Right now at least, no one is making any noise about Leopard in public media. The longer and louder people anticipate Windows, then the more Mac developers have to question if they really have chosen the right horse. If there's a selected venue to target the motivation of the developers, it's clearly WWDC. You won't see many articles or TV spots anticipating Leopard before it's close to release, but Mac developers are key to it's success so make sure they have a message they'll remember every time they see a Vista ad or promo.

4. Justifying Reverse Copying

Whether one considers the desktop search feature or window management to be copying from OS X is a bit subjective, but when one sees all of these things including the Aero bubble with Microsoft logo it really starts to seem that Microsoft is trying to borrow liberally from the Mac. If Windows is perceived as the one playing catchup through copying, then it does distract if there are any features that the Mac is copying from Windows. Off hand there are very few that fall into this basket (and they were pointed out by Paul), but if there are others it looks more like Microsoft is copying an unreleased Mac feature than Apple incorporating a good idea from Microsoft.

5. The Next Wave

If Apple waits until after Windows goes gold, and then release their "secret" features then they may have a compelling argument that Windows is "behind". When the public learned about windowed operating systems the Mac was the lagger. Now when Microsoft starts making big news about their release Apple is in a very nice position to steal their thunder. "Yeah, we've had all that debugged and working for a while, but here's the shimmering new features and candy on the Mac right now."

All of these reasons add up to some very compelling reasons to do a little ribbing at Microsoft's expense. It's doubtful that any of this will stop before Leopard goes live, but it most certainly won't get worse. Apple isn't likely to venture into territories of slander or libel.

Re:XP64

[Tadrith]

That's funny... my current rig is an XP x64 system... and everything works just fine. I don't have a single device lacking drivers, from my digital camera to my scanner, and Belkin was even nice enough to provide me with the in-development drivers for the Nostromo n52 I have.

It's perfectly stable, I do all my development work on it, as well as my gaming. I've also yet to see it crash.

In my experience, people who claim that operating systems are buggy generally need to either figure out how to diagnose bad hardware, or buy better hardware from vendors that know how to write proper drivers.

Re:Mocking?

[SpecTheIntro]

wake me up when windos or macos can boot into a command line and be administered from that... As for windos... heh... what a piece of shit... add all the features you want, it may shine like a pearl, but at its very core it is pure shit. it works for laptops and home lusers, sure, but who cares? not me.

I don't know what's more terrifying: your grammar, or your grasp of the computer industry. Either way, congratulations on excluding 95% of all computer users from your utopia. Good thinking.

Re:Bashing?

[apflwr3]

The problem is using the word "steal." It implies illicit, underhanded or even criminal activity. Apple and MS (and Linux) don't steal from each other outright-- they're influenced by and react to each other's innovations. That's just good business, and it goes on everywhere-- for example when Buick first introduced turn signals to cars, don't you think Ford did the same one year later? And can you really call it "stealing" when they did so?

Re:Mocking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try again, windows can boot to the command line. It's not even hard to do.

Re:Here We Go Again...

[SpecTheIntro]

When Microsoft takes from Apple, it's because Apple came up with a great idea. When Apple takes from Microsoft, it's because Microsoft has pushed a new industry standard on the market.

You make it sound like Microsoft has never had a good idea in its life, and that Apple only borrows from Microsoft when it has no other choice. This is not the case. "Time Machine," for example, is Volume Shadow Copy, except probably easier to implement. (Although this depends on how MS integrates it into Vista.) I'm not an expert in Apple's OS (I stick to Windows and Linux myself) but I'm sure if I did a little digging I could find plenty of genuinely insightful concepts created at Microsoft that Apple copied.

Everyone steals from everyone. The only real concern should be who presents the most user-friendly package without compromising security or reliability. If that package is also pretty, hey, all the better. Apple's done a much better job at this than Microsoft, although to be fair (from a security standpoint), Microsoft's user base is much larger, so those holes that are found receive much greater publicity and affect a lot more people--which has greatly aided the conception that Windows is not a secure OS.

Re:Mocking?

[SScorpio]

As a matter of fact they do [apple.com]. And it's even GUI driven.

Re:Smashing Apples

[Cyberllama]

No offense, but the article was fairly even-handed. It went after Microsoft as much as Apple. If he went after Apple more, it was for claiming Microsoft copied from them (which they did) while they themselves borrow freely. And also for making fun of Microsoft for only releasing one OS in the last 5 years, while both OS's have had roughly the same level of feature changes in the past 5 years -- Apple has just charged for ugprades 5 times.

It's not as if he tried to pretend that Microsoft wasn't equally guilty of these crimes -- merely slap Apple on the wrist for trying to pretend THEY WEREN'T.

This isn't some frothing at the mouth anti-apple bashing lunatic raving his anti-apple rants just someone tired of Apple pretending that their farts smell like delicious fruit pie. On the one hand, its' a bit silly to be mad at Apple for that -- its' their whole marketting strategy. It's what appeals to the people who buy Apple. On the other hand, it is a bit tiresome.

Re:They were probably intended to.

[sickofthisshit]

I think the main reason Apple showed Time Machine is to encourage developers to support the relevant APIs to enable the "Time Travel experience" for their apps as well.

The keynote was vague; it is possible that every single file revision gets backed up. However, I think it is more likely the OS hook (used by Spotlight to notice changes to index) is the tool used by Time Machine to efficiently find what is needed for scheduled incremental backups. (I.e., every 12 or 24 hours, or whenever the backup volume gets plugged in, Time Machine can quickly retrieve files needing backup.)

Re:world wide DEVELOPERS conference

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Snide remarks agains MS throughout the keynote? Why is that kind of stuff at a DEVELOPERS conference? You don't hear crap like that at MS dev conferences."

MS dev conferences consist largely of MS trying to mollify developers who are pissed that the new OS has slipped again, and/or mad that they wasted a lot of time preparing to use a technology which has been dropped from the OS.

Their audience probably isn't in the mood, and Microsoft wouldn't want to draw attention to a competitor which managed to ship OS'es.

Re:They were probably intended to.

[Cid Highwind]

Core Animation is bigger than big.

How so? I mean it's very cool as a technology, but I don't see an immediate application beyond screensavers. (OK, maybe an updated iPhoto slideshow mode and some new Keynote transitions, too...)

Does it really matter??!

[Jahz]

Paul Thurrott makes a good argument, but I think his point is just as childish as chastizing Jobs for poking fun at Microsoft.

If this were a patent case, we would look at who had each idea first. This isnt about patents... it is about implementation. I don't care if Microsoft came up with the "Windows Search" idea in 2000... or 1995... or 1985. The bottom line is that while Microsoft has been talking about desktop search for years, Apple went and actually did it a few (two?) years ago.

Lets look at another example. The Microsoft PowerToy for virtual desktop's dates back a decade (all the way to NT 4). I've used it a few times over the years and I have to say that it sucks. It works... but it sucks. If the MS people had just updated and integrated it into Windows with XP, Apple would not have been able to make such a big deal. What was stopping them? Its an excellent bussiness tool. Frankly I am annoyed that Apple too SO long to come out with virtual desktops. Linux has had them for what seems like forever, and there are already several (free) third-party virtual desktop solutions for the Mac.

Aqua vs. Aero?? Who cares. Maybe Aero was "thought of" first... Aqua has been in production for half a decade (something like that). If Aero was first, them congradulation to Apple on a great preemptive marketing strike.

Widgets and Gadgets. This is pure evil on both sides. Apple ripped the Widgets from Konfabulator. That program was GREAT, I even purchased a license. I was pretty annoyed that Apple did'nt even compensate the original innovator. Microsoft ripped it off of Apple... so I guess Apple deserved that.

The point I am trying to make is that in the end it doesnt really matter who came up with what idea first. The credit goes to the first to market. Welcome to economics... companies release NEW products, or BETTER products. Anything else is just market saturation. On another note, maybe Microsoft will wise up and stop discussing new enchancements 5-10 years before they go to market. Any other company would go out of bussiness by laying their cards face up on the table like that!

Re:A good idea and a good implementation

[Jeremy Erwin]

It looks very similar to the fancy animations the accompany "fast user switching".

Let us presume that as a typical multitasker, you've got 9 or 10 terminals, a web browser, a hexeditor, a tex viewer, a pdf viewer, xchat, a debugger, and email open. I don't know why-- perhaps you like to write Latex documentation and code at the same time. The email is open because it's email. The web browser and acrobat-- for consulting API manuals. Xchat for collaboration. Even though you have a large monitor, some of those windows are going to obscure others.

You could categorize the apps to together by task, and assign a virtual desktop to each task, if you were running linux or freebsd. But on the mac, all the windows are on one screen. Expose allows you to temporarily shrink all the windows to fit on one screen without overlaps.This doesn't help much with terminal or xterm windows (at a distance bash shells all look alike), but it will allow you to pick out the emacs window, or the mail window, or safari quite quickly.

Job's philosophy seems to be that housekeeping is best left up to the computer. Virtual desktops force you to think "this is how I want to arrange my workspace". Sometimes virtual desktops are optimal, but sometimes they just get in the way.

Re:Mocking?

[Overly Critical Guy]

What Jobs was trying to accomplish was demonstrate features that developers will need to interface with or test for. Time Machine has APIs to interface with. iChat's Theater feature allows developers to let users display documents and even play online games. Mail has stationary which developers can create templates for, and the Todo list accesses a new system-wide Todo cache that any application can interface with.

Thurrott is just a shill with a short attention span. He has no access to a Developer Preview of Leopard, and thinks all that will be new in Leopard is what was shown in the keynote. I've gotten into email argument with him that exposed his technical ignorance. He claimed OS X Tiger was less of an update than Windows XP SP2, and actually dismissed the famous 20-page review of OS X Tiger that explained every change, from the new memory manager to entire new API frameworks like CoreData (he completely dismissed all the new Tiger APIs as "non-user features," as if SP2 was some incredible visual revamp of XP).

Thurrott just hates when Apple points out the 100% truth that Microsoft has cloned a lot of Apple-isms. Where does he think the search field in the upper-right of every Explorer window with the magnifying glass came from? Hell, where does he think the Recycle Bin came from? Or the new system tray icons that are blatant clones of OS X's? Etc. etc. etc.

Re:Here We Go Again...

[drsmithy]

When Microsoft takes from Apple, it's because Apple came up with a great idea. When Apple takes from Microsoft, it's because Microsoft has pushed a new industry standard on the market.

My broad generalisation:

When Apple "steals from Microsoft", they're just reimplementing ideas that either a) already exist in multiple alternative products, or b) are blatantly obvious improvements to existing technology.

When Microsoft "steals from Apple", they're just reimplementing ideas that either a) already exist in multiple alternative products, or b) are blatantly obvious improvements to existing technology.

His argument wasn't entirely factual either.

[catwh0re]

The problem in having someone like Paul talk about Mac features, is that it's like having a mac zealot talk about Windows features. Paul is too preoccupied with Windows to know the history behind many of apple's OS X features. For example things like Dashboard are not a direct rip off of Konfabulator. (A point which has been proven endlessly on /. and other forums.) Apple actually had a lot of the features they've REintroduced into OS X from prior Mac OS versions. Including what has now been transformed into Dashboard. The closest way it comes to Konfabulator is that they both use HTML+Javascript..which is hardly a stretch of the engineerings imagination to come to, it's a trivially obvious choice. I won't go into detail, but even b&w versions of Mac OS had bundles of desk tools.. and unsurprisingly these were the exact tools that were shipped in 10.3, plus a few others which were logical steps since then: weather, travel. etc.

As for other items such as the search being stolen entirely from MS. Well I'm not sure how any one can own the idea of a "quick search" using methods that we're accustomed to on the internet. The difference being that MS has rattled on that they'll have the feature for 10 years now and never delivered it. So it's hardly "copying" MS on a feature that has not only never been delivered, but cancelled for the foreseeable future.

Ideas like spaces have been around for a while, it's how it's implemented in OS X which is clever, you only need as much memory as to support the applications, the application windows move, not the desktop.

As for other features like stationery, I wouldn't rattle on too much about the use of themes on internet mediums, as the concept of templating is hardly an original one.

My point here is that a lot of the added features are obvious or a natural evolution of their existing products. It is easy to compare these to MS, but it's hardly copying. The keynote presentation held by apple which highlighted the similarities between vista and 10.3+10.4 etc took only the most blatant examples where MS has been a tad bit unoriginal and directly copied the visual interface, down to the colour scheme used and program nomenclature.

Overall I think Paul just needs to be a bit more like MS and take it on the chin, everyone gets haggled in this industry, it's pointless trying to refute points which only show his lack of research and his genuinely blinded zeal for MS products. Paul only throws in the occassional lucid counter argument merely to appear less biased than what he is, unfortunately the giant scope difference between his pro-apple and pro-ms remarks show his lack of genuineness. That and his logo & style guide are a rip-off of Microsoft graphic design circa 1998.

Re:Smashing Apples

[1trickymicky]

".....Am I missing something? XP, XP, XP, XP... the only differences between most being software bundles, hardware compatibility, and driver support. and he fails to mention that pretty much all of those also have a price tag well over $100....."

What would apple know about hardware compatibility?

Re:Agreed

[happyemoticon]

Speaking as someone makes a living by understanding and interpreting precise meanings in words and images, I must inform you that you missed the boat with those commercials.

You could make a convincing argument that commercials were in some cases insulting to the users. Even though I don't agree with it in most cases, I'll admit that that's a defensible interpretation. However, I don't see how you could take those commercial as an insult to any computer user. Every ad starts like this:

Mac: "Hi. I'm a Mac." PC: "And I'm a PC."

They are not computer users, but anthropomorphizations of computers - basically, what those machines would look like if they turned into a human beings. PC is bookish, formal, and slightly high maintenance. Mac is an easygoing, modest person, but who nonetheless has the smugness around the edges that is often unavoidable in a true genius.

Basically, as the typical PC user in the audience, you're engaged in a conversation with two people - someone you barely know, and someone you both know pretty well. In this kind of situation most of the time you naturally focus on something you have in common (PC) and start to banter about their foibles and shortcomings. They're banking on the fact that most people have a love/hate relationship with their PCs - that while these people like them, they get viruses, they're needlessly complicated to put together, they have compatibility problems with some digital cameras, etc.

The remainder of the audience is people who hate PCs (who are either Mac users already, Unix users or luddites) and people who love. Among these are informed users who've used Macs and have good reasons to not use them. Then there are those who love them so blindly that they cannot see their problems, and among these are those who have spent so much money on a purchase they're unsatisfied with that they are defensive about it and get vicariously insulted whenever anyone points out that it has flaws. Example:

Man buys shoes for incredible amount of money. Man wears shoes for a while and discovers they're slightly too small, but it's too late to take them back. Rather than simply giving up, man sets out to prove that shoes are, in fact, perfect, and ends up blistering his feet horribly in the process. After this, any suggestion that the shoes are, in fact, too small, is met with bitter disagreement and vain argument that they're just the right size and will loosen up in a few weeks.

I would wager that you fall into that category.

Re:Mocking?

[Morky]

I'm a big Apple fan, but c'mon, did you even read the article? It was totally fair. He said explicity that he knows MS borrows from Apple. And it's not as if he's a Microsoft worshipper. He's been writing some pretty damning articles about Vista. I would in fact say he is one of the best informed level-headed industry pundits out there.

Spotlight vs. Windows Search (was: Rebuttal)

[LionMage]

Spotlight is not like Windows Search. Spotlight uses metadata much more extensively, and is actually more similar in concept to the database filesystem that BeOS had 10 years ago and that Microsoft has been trying (and failing) to implement since about the same time. So yes, Apple "copied" it -- but from BeOS, not Windows.

Actually, Apple did more than just copy BeFS and its "DB-like" filesystem metadata facility. They hired the former Be, Inc., engineer who designed BeFS and the cool system of "live queries" that would update in real time as the file system changed. The engineer's name is Dominic Giampolo. As I understand it, Dominic has contributed extensively to HFS+, including the journaling support. He's written a book on file system design too, so this guy can be fairly described as knowing the problem domain pretty well.

Since BeOS is now defunct, I'm glad that Apple absorbed one of the cooler technologies from that OS (which I was an early developer for -- my BeBox is now living in Tucson with a friend). I hate to see good ideas wither and die for lack of a platform. The implementation might not be identical to that in BeOS, but it certainly behaves in much the same way for the end user. I should also point out that both BeFS and HFS+ with Spotlight do pretty much what WinFS promised to do -- except that WinFS now is no longer slated to be included in Vista, and in fact may only ever live in future releases of MS SQL Server.

Even if Apple hadn't absorbed the engineering talent to make this feature possible, Paul Thurrott would still be off-base in claiming that Apple "stole" spotlight from Vista. After all, Vista is still unreleased software, and is still in a state of flux (e.g., features are still being adjusted and, just recently, some were dropped, such as WinFS). It takes a lot of chutzpah to claim that a shipping product "stole" features from a product that still isn't available for sale. (I guess there's room to argue here, but to me, it seems clear that Vista is still vapor for most rank-and-file users.)

I'm writing this as someone who briefly worked for Metrowerks on their BeOS suite of compiler tools, and I met Dominic twice -- once while working for Metrowerks, and once at Comdex at Be's booth. He's a great guy.

Re:Mocking?

[Macka]

Speaking as a mac user, I too, was unimpressed

In case you missed it, WWDC is meant for developers. Also speaking as a Mac user, I thought there was a lot for developers to be excited about. You and I. as users will get our chance our chance to dribble over Leopard next spring.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

common misconceptions

[m874t232]

There are few ideas that are original to either Microsoft's or Apple's products. Most of their software features have either been acquired, copied from other products, or are based on academic work. And that's perfectly OK, that's the way things are supposed to work.

OS X, in particular, is, from the ground up, a copy of other people's ideas, technologies and software: the Mach kernel, the Cocoa GUI, Objective-C, gcc, vector graphics GUIs, hardware desktop graphics acceleration, the BSD userland, RSS, tabbing, smart folders, mouse sensitive corners, virtual desktops, translucency, shadows, desktop search, mail reader spam filtering, desktop widgets--you name it, it almost certainly was invented and implemented somewhere other than at Apple first. But that's OK: Apple makes good choices in what they copy and they implement it well.

In some sense, part of Microsoft's problem is that they aren't copying enough. When Microsoft copies stuff from other people, they are usually successful with it. When Microsoft comes up with something original, they often fail. The reason why a lot of their "innovations" aren't widely used in the market is not because nobody thought of them before, it's because they didn't work well when other people tried them before.

It doesn't bother me that Apple is not innovative; I think their focus on design and copying proven technologies actually makes their systems better. What bothers me is that Apple isn't doing their share to fund innovation. Microsoft is investing heavily in research, both in their own research labs and grants to universities. Those investments don't necessarily lead directly to Microsoft products, but they make sure that 10-20 years from now, there will still be innovations for people to use. Apple is a bunch of cheapskates; they don't have a research lab and they don't support research or education at universities. Apple should be ashamed when they try to pass themselves off as "innovative".

Whoa, ease up on the business people!

[Infonaut]

What does it matter if businessmen use Apple solutions or not? Why hold them up as paragons of taste and class?

I think the parent was simply referring to the fact that people use computers every day in their workplaces, but we don't see Apple ads featuring Macs in the workplace.

As for businessmen as a class of humans not worthy of any respect, your examples seem to be pulling almost exclusively from the excesses of the worst Fortune 500 size companies. Small business fuels the economy [state.gov]:

From a two-person software start-up to a fleet of trucks helping to build cities, the small-business sector catalyzes economic expansion by:

• making up 99.7 percent of all U.S. employers, meaning that only 17,000 companies, or 0.3 percent of all employers, have 500 or more employees;
• generating half the nonfarm output of the U.S. economy, and employing about half of all Americans not working for government, while adding 60 to 80 percent of net new (nongovernmental) jobs annually;
• comprising 97 percent of exporters and producing 29 percent of all export value--key points when we consider that exports have accounted for about 25 percent of U.S. economic growth over the past decade and support an estimated 12 million jobs;
• winning nearly 24 percent of all government contracts, ranging from ship construction to printing brochures.

I have a hard time believing that the people who run most of the businesses in the United States are worthy of such scorn. Painting all businesspeople as vile creatures is akin to saying that all athletes take steroids, all programmers crack DoD systems, and all (pick an ethnic background) are criminals.

Re:Mocking?

[Overly Critical Guy]

The magnifying glass came from "Find" in Windows 95 (also in Win95's Start Menu), "Search" in Windows 2000, and "Search" in Windows XP.

No, it didn't. The magnifying glasses in those shots are of a different style and don't appear in a search field in the same way they do in OS X and now in Vista. Only XP is closest, but iTunes was already out by then.

The search field in the upper-right of Vista Explorer windows might have been adopted from Windows Address Book, which has had a search field in that general area since Windows 98. OS X probably adopted it from iTunes.

Microsoft adopted it from iTunes as well. Come on, you and I both know they didn't get the idea for the upper-right search field from friggin' Windows Address Book in Windows 98.

From Xerox Star (1981), where it was called the "Wastebasket." I know, Apple copied Xerox first. But the Wastebasket/Trash/Recycle Bin is not an "Apple-ism," it's a Xerox-ism.

The Waste Basket appeared in Viewpoint in 1985. You're linking to an early design document. An early design did have a waste basket, but it was removed.

Can you be more specific? Which icons? Are the "blatant clones" not obvious choices for what they represent (like a magnifying glass for "Search")? Who had a "tray" first?

Certainly, I can be more specific. OS X uses monochrome icons to represent things like WiFi and volume control. Windows has used a yellow speaker since Windows 95 to represent volume, for instance. OS X uses a sideways speaker with sound waves coming out the right side. In Vista, Microsoft switched to using monochrome system tray icons, and the speaker icon is an exact replica of the OS X volume control icon. In Vista, the battery/plugged-in icon looks and behaves exactly like OS X's. It goes on and on.

However, many people incorrectly give Apple credit for things cloned from other companies (e.g. desktop metaphor).

Apple was the first to market with a consumer GUI desktop with a style of desktop metaphor that everyone else has copied since. Interestingly, a lot of those Xerox Star guys were hired by Apple and ended up working on the Macintosh (something that's never mentioned when this debate comes up). Where did the phrase "cut-and-paste" come from? Apple. Where did "File Edit View Window Help" come from? Apple. And on and on. Microsoft took the Trash can from Apple, along with all the other Apple-isms in Windows, via the infamous technology licensing deal that was originally intended to allow Microsoft to develop a Mac-like interface in Office but was used instead to make Windows. It's not an exaggeration to say that Apple started that revolution, and Microsoft cloned it. You can see the MacOS-isms all over Windows, even to this day. It's so obvious to the objective viewer.

What utter bollocks!

[Dagmar d'Surreal]

I'm downright startled by the volume of pure, unadulterated asshattery evidenced in Thurrot's article. Some of his strongest "points" are just dead wrong.

His comments that Windows had simultaneous 32-bit and 64-bit support "last year" in XP x64 Edition is just laughable. Anyone who actually attempted the upgrade to find missing drivers, and then that their 32-bit licence had been invalidated by the attempted upgrade, will be heartily rolling their eyes at that one.

When he talks about "Spaces" he mentions that Microsoft at one point put this into a version of NT long before to support his claims that Microsoft did all this stuff first, and then he mentions Linux. Linux has had a multiple-desktop pager solution available for pretty much as long as I can remember (which is a long ways back). Microsoft invented what again?

He repeatedly attempts to imply that OSX's GUI widgets are rip-offs of Vista's "glass" theme, somehow without noticing that Apple has had Aqua just about forever now.

Is this guy campaigning to work for the Bush administration or what?

Re:A site specialized on Windows...

[jimmy jimmy james]

(yeah, I got the karma to burn)

Dude, being sarcastic, bagging Microsoft, and defending Apple is hardly karma-burning material around here.

Re:They were probably intended to.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's a "Joe Six Pack" end user feature, but of no use whatsoever to a good developer, because there are already existing and much better tools for that job.

You completely missed the previous poster's point. Time machine is a technology and API that can be integrated into any application. Thus, developers writing programs that want to manage versioning or just tie into it the filesystem versioning generally, can integrate their applications with the feature. In photoshop you can use "undo" to walk backwards through your document, even to a point before you last saved the file. Developers will be quite happy to be able to easily implement this same feature in a plethora of other applications.

As for developers using time machine directly with the filesystem, well some will find it easier than running a local CVS server. Also, Leopard includes subversion and we have no idea yet as to the integration between time machine and other versioning systems, or even if time machine will allow commit messages and the other traditional features of versioning systems.