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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HairBall who wrote (32593)	11/6/1999 11:16:00 AM
From: dclapp	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

*OT* re the comment 'Windows is a Mac clone' and your comment that >>Apple snuck into Zerox's shop and stole the goods. I'd like to comment on that. I was fortunate enough to be at Apple in 1983, while the Macintosh was being developed, and got to know the original Macintosh programmers, and see the software being created. To say that Apple "stole" what Xerox had isn't quite right, and diminishes Apple's accomplishment. Xerox had the "Star" which sorta/kinda did (quotes needed here!): "Windows." That's what Steve Jobs saw during a visit and was impressed with. The Star, however, was a hugely expensive machine and quite unlike the Macintosh, as it shipped, in terms of User Interface. First, Apple invented the notion of overlapping windows -- a key to the Macintosh interface. Maybe more important, Bill Atkinson invented -- and Apple successfully patented -- "QuickDraw," a remarkable and incredibly fast algorithm for writing memory bits to the screen. Without QuickDraw, you couldn't do Macintosh. And Xerox had nothing remotely comparable to it. I think a more proper way to put it is: Xerox had an apple seed, Apple made an Apple pie -- BIG difference! <g> The next question: Did Microsoft then "steal" from Apple? That's a tough, complicated question. My personal opinion is "Yes, they did." Apple had developed a fully thought-out user interface with distinctive elements (few of which were found in anything Xerox had previously done)-- and Microsoft flat-out swiped it. Again, that's IMHO. I'm a great admirer of Steve Jobs and also Bill Gates, and own both Mac's and PC's so there's no "religion" in my opinion (probably :). regards, doug ps - thanks, as always, for the great thread! OT OFF