with this ….
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/XHIGIntro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000894-TP6

and you’ll see that microsoft copied apple

we’re comparing ms windows based products to OSX based products. there’s a vast difference in quality that still exists to this day. microsoft recently released an operating system that finally works the way it was designed in principal. many of these technologies have been used by osx users like myself for close to a decade.

i’m biased and perhaps a bit simplistic. i use osx at home and i work in an office that uses ms windows. my computing issues happen at work. my wife runs a business that uses mac based products. they have little to no operating system issues in their office. her tech support is on a per call basis whereas in my office, we require a fully committed IT contract that is substantially more expensive than the arrangement my wife has in her office.

i don’t know how you can truly remain objective with regards to ms based products when apple based products to this day clearly outpace them in every aspect. it’s not even close. all things considered, i think the guys here at the appleblog do a great job.

It’s not easy to reverse the mistake made. They should move forward now and really make the products better. That’s the only way to success. There is no benefit and labeling things and calling sheep a cow, etc.

Tell this to the people at MS who designed and marketed the Zune.

Most sales people and designers would say…The marketplace does encourages most of the evolution!

30 years of real evolution would result in much more OS diversification — to exploit the needs of different niches, not the homogenization we see now. Despite the protestations of the fanboys; there’s not really all that much different between OSX and Windows. If there was, it wouldn’t be so easy to switch.

We haven’t had 30 years of OS evolution, we’ve had 30 years of refinement of the same WIMP model (window/icon/menu/mouse). The marketplace doesn’t encourage real evolution, short term focus encourages climbing local maxima rather than exploring the space of what’s possible.

For real OS experiments you have to look outside the paradigm; OLPC’s Sugar, Squeak, Amiga, Be, Plan 9, Jazz, Lifestreams, Jeff Raskin’s HUI, even Emacs– for different ways of interacting with a computer environment.

I’m not saying all these are radically different; but each offer different metaphors, and that’s where you’ll find evolution.

Trust me, I’m a journalist.

Just wanted to clarify that *I* didn’t claim Windows was drab, I said it was a long-held criticism of Windows design. Not *my* long-held criticism.

OS X has gotten increasingly better at keeping the geek-ish stuff well hidden from those who don’t want to see it. You can steadily see improvement as OS X has iterated. And they’ve had 6 major releases and a buttload of point releases in the time its taken Windows to do 3 Major releases and 5 services packs.

Apple has also been proactively deprecating, replacing, and updating CORE functionality, rather than just continually building on top of existing crap, Apple says “As of this version , , and won’t work any more. Deal with it” and more often than not, software developers keep pace with this (except for Adobe, another software Giant we’re going to see collapse in the next 5 years).

If Windows tried this, developers would revolt and the platform would collapse and the OS would be a bigger failure than ME and Vista combined. Hell look at the problems that were caused by the changes Vista brought. There is STILL hardware being produced that doesn’t have certified Vista drivers. And I know of at least 4 software packages whose authors have stated they have no current plans for versions that support Windows Vista or Windows 7 (one is a client/server app, yeah, no plans to support Server 2008 either, let alone Server 2008 R2). The same developer went as far to say that until Dell stops shipping XP downgrades, they’re not planning on releasing anything except updates for the XP/Server2k3 version. And if/when they DO decide to do it, when their customer base finally forces them to, do you really think they’re actually going to rewrite their entire apps to take advantage of all the new features Windows 7 offers? Pfffft.

I mean one minute the poster is saying that Gunship grey is ‘drab’ in relation to a Windows OS and then claiming it as ‘elegant’ only a few sentences later in relation to OSX. It’s tedious.

Ironically, Ubuntu looks more like OS X than what Windows 7 does, but unsurprisingly this doesn’t get covered by the blogs here. Fair journalism?

Nonetheless I myself use both OS’, OSX more than Windows & i actually think Windows 7 is a good operating system, the best so far from their camp. As a consumer this can only mean a good thing as both companies will strive to achieve better & better operating systems. Which ultimately, is the main concern for the consumer, not the squabbles of whether a colour scheme is ‘vomit-enducingly-colourful’ or whether inspiration has been drawn from its competitors.

Certainly their _official_ position is that they did not copy. And regardless of whether they did or not internally, I’m certain they didn’t want this guy stating the official company line. D’oh!