Funny how Windows somehow has them too, but no Engineering team to document their work.

Macintosh Team:

Andy Hertzfeld
Chris Espinosa
Joanna Hoffman
George Crow
Bill Atkinson
Burrell Smith
Jerry Manock
Jef Raskin

Typical lemming response. Unable to accept the facts and truth. Like I said you wouldn’t credit the guy who invented the wheel, since he saw a rock rolling down the hill. Works for your Windows eh. Good for you. Unable to understand real innovations. Pathetic.

Yes, Apple does copy good ideas and improve on it. No one is denying that.

Just like the Mac GUI is an improvement over XeroxPARC’s stuff, and the OSX GUI is an improvement over a base BSD OS.

But of course, everything Windows does is just a straight copy and ripoff with no innovation and improvement, right? Of course there were full macro languages and tabbed interfaces and pivot tables in VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3! And of course Internet Explorer was a blatant ripoff of Safari, isn’t it? Wait a sec… which browser came first again?

You can pile on all the Microsoft hate you want – that is your prerogative. Just don’t let the Church of Apple (TM) delude you into thinking that Apple is any different from Microsoft, Google, or any other tech behemoth that is out there to make profits for their shareholders. If you have worked in the industry before, you will know that it’s not about having great original ideas, but who can execute the best.

Leave the church. I have faith in you. I think you still can be saved… :)

Another clueless windows users who believes in that Apple copied Xerox urban legend. Here are few things that Apple had to invent.

Just a few things Apple had to invent that Xerox was not even close to achieving with their experimental OS. Things that Microsoft copied for their own OS. You haven’t even researched what Xerox/Parc had shown to Apple. It looks nothing like the Macintosh… Clueless Windows Lemming.

- Progress dialogs
- Confirmation dialogs (Star had one line at the top of the screen where you clicked Yes or No.)
- Drag and Drop on desktop — In Star the user selected the icon, pressed a keyboard key for Copy or Move, then clicked at the destination. Macintosh Drag and Drop feels more natural.
- Macintosh icons have much better labels. It’s a small thing, but in Star the label is part of the icon, so more than about 8 characters gets chopped off.
- Tool palettes — Star didn’t use these. The first instance I’m aware of is in MacPaint.
- Menus — Macintosh had a menubar, Star didn’t. Star had a few menus that popped up from buttons in windows headers or dialog boxes, but it didn’t use a menubar. In fact it used very few menu commands — relying instead on a few keys on the keyboard and property sheets (dialogs). See http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/1/p6-lg.jpg
– Better designs for Radio Buttons, Checkboxes — Star’s dialog box widgets really weren’t as well designed as those in Macintosh. Nore were there as many different kinds of widets.
- Setting properties via menus — Macintosh used menus like Font, Size to set properties on content. In Star you had to use the property sheet.
- Keyboard Equivalents (aka Command-Keys) — Star didn’t use these, but they had been used earlier in SmallTalk-80 at PARC.
- Color — Star didn’t have color until much later than Macintosh, and it wasn’t done nearly as well.
-Smalltalk has no Finder
-resources and dual-fork files for storing layout and international information apart from code
-definition procedures
- drag-and-drop system extension and configuration
-types and creators for files
-direct manipulation editing of document
-disk, and application names
-redundant typed data for the clipboard
-multiple views of the file system
-desk accessories
-control panels, among others
-pull down menus
-imaging and windowing models based on QuickDraw
-the clipboard
-cleanly internationalizable software.

Thank you for your rendition of War and Peace. It was certainly an entertaining read.

Just a couple additional points to highlight:

1. Market share is a relative measure comparing one company to its competitors. It is true that the PC market dropped 6.5%, however the “PC market” in this case is an all-up number which includes Macs as well. The fact is still indisputable – There are less people percentage wise using Macs in the first quarter of 2009 versus the same quarter in 2008.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=939015

2. Of course Apple will never rip off other peoples’ ideas! That’s just blasphemous!

Wait a sec… Did you say the original Mac GUI was stolen from XeroxPARC? No way! You mean the iPod was not the first-ever portable MP3 player? Hey, that can’t be right… Are you telling me that the guts of OS X was not created by Apple, but ripped entirely from FreeBSD and NetBSD? What?

Corporations are what they are. Apple is no different than Microsoft in the sense that they will stop at nothing to bring profits and returns for their shareholders. If you think there are any nice guys here, you are very naive and sadly mistaken.

If you think OS X does not have any security holes you are sadly mistaken. All you have to do is look at their patch notes to see that. You sir are why there is a “fanboy” term.

Wrong. Second Mac users do not need assurance for their choice, its more like educating Windows users. Second PC market has dropped 6.5 percent, you left that out.

“Windows users are secure in the fact that their OS is the most widely-used OS in the world.”

Not an earned right to be the most widely used OS. This is how they got there. Now with the world is screwed with Windows being so full of holes, problems like Conficker has cost tens of billions for companies and consumers. Why wold Windows users feel secure at all????

“Mary Gates (Bill’s Mom) and a high level Executive at IBM (Akers) were chatting (they were both involved in the United Way), and it became known that IBM was looking at getting into the Microcomputer business. Well one thing lead to another, and Bill got a visit from IBM. And IBM chose a product that Bill didn’t even have, and gave him an awesome contract. This is another big secret to success — be born into the right family, and get the right contacts. Some call it genius — I guess it takes a smart kid to pick the right parents.

IBM left their brains back in Boca Raton Florida when negotiating a deal with Bill Gates for their Disk Operating System (DOS). Bill Gates didn’t even have a DOS, but he convinced IBM he was almost finished with one. (Another element of business Genius seems to be being a pathological liar). Perhaps it had something to do with the President of IBM telling the small team creating the PC to “see Mary Gates son Bill” that influenced them to be blind. Or that IBM had just gotten out of a huge lawsuit with the Department of Justice about being a monopoly, and so they wanted to outsource something. Or that IBM didn’t think that Microcomputers were going anywhere, and they wanted to make a lame one to try to sell more mainframes. But for whatever reasons, they made a deal where they’d license DOS
from Bill, but Bill got to keep the rights to everything and sell it to anyone else he wanted. So another secret to success if find a rich (but dumb) sugar Daddy that’s willing to finance you, pay you to develop a product for yourself, and let you borrow the biggest name in the business (IBM’s) for your own success.

Microsoft then bought DOS off someone else (Seattle Computings’ Quick-and-Dirty OS, QDOS). This product was actually a cheap rip-off (clone) product of a friend of Gates (Gary Kildalls’ CP/M), and Bill knew it. They had actually had a gentlemen’s agreement; that Bill Gates wouldn’t do Operating Systems, and Gary Kildall wouldn’t do languages. Also Seattle Computing was mislead on the value of the contract, and the intent of it’s usage, and sold cheap for $50,000 (a fraction of what it was worth). But therein lies another part of Genius; the lack of integrity/scruples, and stumbling on multiple opportunities. Gary Kildall was quite offended by the whole ordeal. Imagine Gary’s surprise when Gates not only did an OS, but it was really a poorly ripped-off copy of his own OS. Once again, Microsoft lacked the imagination to write their own OS or think of anything new. Why should
they, when they could just steal someone else’s code? Then, Microsoft continually evolved things to be different and incompatible with the standard they’d borrowed from; just like they had with BASIC. Do you notice a patterns?
There were better Operating Systems out there for micros before DOS, and IBM ignored that.

I still think they wanted the “lame” thing to not compete with their big iron. And there were better Operating Systems while IBM was selling DOS on their PC’s. But IBM really only leant their name (enthusiasm) to PC-DOS (Microsoft IBM labeled version), which starved out all the competition except Microsoft (since they were the only one compatible); and guaranteed Bill’s success. Then IBM continued to pay Microsoft for improvements, that Microsoft repeatedly delivered late, if at all, and most were buggy; but Microsoft got to sell in their own product.
As they used to say, “no one ever got fired for buying IBM”.

Around the same time as IBM was getting into the microcomputer business, a guy, named Dan Bricklin, created VisiCalc; the world’s first “Killer App”. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet for computers. Basically a spreadsheet allowed for business people to lay out numbers into columns and make the computer add them up for you, enabling it to do all sorts of wonderful things (for accountants and business people). It was just a common sense version of an electronic ledger or columnar sheet. But VisiCalc was so popular, that it not only sold itself by the tons, but people bought computers (Apple][‘s) just to run VisiCalc on. VisiCalc
revolutionized Microcomputers and brought them from hobby devices into many more businesses and far more homes — and seriously contributed to the success of
Apple.

Not only did Bill Gates not invent this revolution, but Dan Bricklin went to Microsoft (Bill Gates), as well as Apple Computers, and asked them to sell the package for him. Gates didn’t think it would sell. At least Apple had a lame excuse; they were in the hardware business; but Bill sold software. You seldom hear that Bill Gates turned down what was the most revolutionary Application in the history of Microcomputers.

Why innovate when you can steal? Later Microsoft ripped off the design and undercut the VisiCalc (and the copies of it), using the profits from DOS and Languages to subsidize himself and starve out everyone else. Sadly, they did this because Apple asked them to, and gave them computers and help to break into the Application market. Apple did this because they wanted support for their new computer (the Macintosh), and Apple didn’t want to compete with
their software developers. Microsoft had a big name, and it leant credibility, and seemed like a good idea at the time. (Did I mention silly partners seems to be a secret of Microsoft success? ).

Eventually, Microsofts rip-off of VisiCalc (first named Multiplan, and later renamed to Excel) became the only man left standing. Oh, and at first, Multiplan was compatible with everything else. Over time, it became more proprietary and non-standard. (Think of patterns). Also Microsoft started a new pattern, tying. They had started tying sales of DOS to licensing their BASIC, both to the sale of new hardware (to get DOS you had to sell it on every computer you made), and their version of Multiplan (or Excel) to their Word Processor, and so on. They
would use their proven products in one market to wedge their new products into the market and drive everyone else. This is not a new trick, it was one of the things our Anti-Trust (Anti- Monopoly) laws had been written to stop, nearly 100 years earlier.

The genius of Microsoft was their business plan: let someone innovate (and take the risks), then rip them off. Microsoft used their size, money and unfair advantages from the start, to bully others out of business. They were never better, just bigger. And that was something a lot of people didn’t realize, just because Microsoft could do it, doesn’t mean you could follow it; unless you had their resources, which no one else had.”