What is Digg?141 Comments
- tanxadillo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Please do not use the "Title Says All". It lowers the quailty of Digg.
- valis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"that is some bull!@#$, how can you say that it doesn't look, feel or act like OS X, for one, LOOK AT THE ICON FOR THE SEARCH! its is IDENTICAL to the spotlight icon, they weren't even trying to cover that up. the loading bars look EXACTLY like OS X, and, unless your a developer, how would you know how it acts? its not out yet?"
Geeze. So let me see. Windows sucks because it isn't like OSX. Windows Vista include alternate implementations of some *stuff* similar to OSX. Icons are much the same. So Windows sucks. Jobs, on the other hand, is god because he stole from Xerox. The Mac originally "borrowed" from Xerox based on a visit from Jobs.
Well. Aren't YOU special.
Get over it. Anyone with half a brain knows you do what works, and give your customers something usable. MS is at least trying, and changing in a lot of ways. Even after buying the who DOS thing from a guy for 50,000 bucks.
That's the way it is. No one is untouched by influence, or fascination with innovation.
This is the heart of science, and the way toward better things. - valis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I have the most recent beta of Vista. Say what you will, complain, freak out and run down the street naked because Vista draws on good, workable ideas ... but it's pretty good. Takes a bit of getting used to, and I like that I can customize ... but face it. Windows is getting better.
Flame on, kiddies. - MonkeyFit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@baddy1987
OMG!!! OH NOES!! THEY USED THE SAME ICON!! NOBODY WANTS STANDARIZED ICONS! WE ALL WANT DIFFERENT ICONS FOR DIFFERENT COMPANIES!!! THAT EVERBODY IS COMPLETELY LOST WHEN ATTEMPTING TO SWITCH!!!
If you want to look at it this way, this will help people acclimate to the "look and feel" of OS X so their switch will be as easy as possible. Then you can sleep better at night knowing a few more people switched to an OS most of the world doesn't use. Why is it so bad that Windows is getting prettier and more functional. Wasn't this your major complaint about Windows in the first place? Or are you just mad because lately you're having less and less to complain about? - LexisNexis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3When did they ever take credit for anything, Bill Gates never came out and said "CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME STUFF WE INVENTED THAT NO ONE ELSE HAS AND THAT WE TOTALLY THOUGHT UP"
No, he always described it as a feature new to WINDOWS. - DigitalDud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The credit for the first 3D accelerated GUI doesn't go to Sun, Apple, or Microsoft but to SGI's IRIX operating system which rendered using OpenGL.
- wilcohol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Digg should implement a feature whereby if they detect the two words together as in, "title says", it will automatically remove the description. Something like that. :-)
- valis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Thanks for the lesson in common sense."
My pleasure. You needed it. I've run most operating systems, including Vax VMS. Vista is a complete overhaul. So you should have at lease some hope for success. Instead, you just recite the party line. Time will tell if this works out. I make no bets. I also don't presuppose failure.
Good luck. - hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Aquinas315, have you looked into what Vista actually has to offer? And I don't mean the screenshots in this story. I mean the actual features (like WPF for one). Here's a good place for you (or anyone else) to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_vista
Vista is going to be worth the cost of an upgrade. It's not just fancy graphics and a couple of new features. And what's more is that Vista is bringing interesting features to Windows users. I don't particularly believe that any ideas have been "stolen" from anywhere...things like desktop search are ever-evolving ideas that will eventually be present in all operating systems. - Branden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"LOOK AT THE ICON FOR THE SEARCH! its is IDENTICAL to the spotlight icon"
Are you kidding me? That is a magnifying glass. - noghead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2hahahha...i think we should all say "title says it all" or somthing along these lines from now on. Infact, lets take the whole discription blurb option off.
- VinCenT13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Really good, dugg
- hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"windows users can never accept that OS X is better then windows..."
tacoxl, it's obvious that you don't belong in this thread and have nothing to really contribute to the discussion here. If you think that all Vista is incorporating are ideas that OS X had years ago, then please do yourself (read: EVERYONE) a favor and get informed.
Some people feel more comfortable and productive in Windows. Grow up and learn to accept that fact. - JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Excellent! They have kept the Clock and the Calculator.
Even Apple had to pay those applications the respect they were due in Apple's recent TV ads.
I was pleased to see that IE 7 was included in the review.
Since the IE 7 team have taken+received extra time to work on IE 7 thanks to the more "futurized" projected release date for Vista, I was hoping to see more features than those they announced.
No new features were mentioned in the review beyond what was announced a year ago. Tabs are great and so are RSS but I have had those features in all my browsers for a couple years or so.
It would be nice if they included some aids to create/correct/check web pages in IE, as a reward - and aid - for those who have waited for IE to come out and want to change their existing pages to be compatible with it. Right?
Not necessarily something that looked like these free ones (below) that are widely used extensions for Firefox, but that at least had all of these functions:
http://editcss.mozdev.org/screenshots.html
- for seeing in realtime the effects of editing the CSS for a page
http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/documentation/features/
- for highlighting errors, missing images, tables, blocks, and other interesting useful/abusable/deprecated elements; editing CSS (not quite realtime as-you-type results that editcss has though); validation of HTML, CSS, etc. (via validator.w3.org service)
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/249/previews/
- for doing a _local_ validation of your HTML, so that it does not need to be sent to a remote site for scanning/parsing/analysis (for a lot of pages, you do not want to "send" the contents of the page anywhere; if it was finished, you would not be checking it!)
While it is possible to rely on FireFox for some of these things (HTML & CSS validation leap out as obvious candidates), for others - liked EditCSS sidebar functionality - it has to be done in IE, not a separate program - because you want to see how IE will react.
They could program it from scratch themselves, or buy a non-exclusive license for it from the author, if he is in a charitable mood. Retracting some negative comments made to Congress and US media organizations about Open Source software would probably be a good non-monetary show of faith.
I recently had dinner with web designers from all over the D.C. area. Most of them were familiar with these tools. Obviously, they don't use IE to run them. But if it had the same functionality, they could use it more than they do. - Pwelborn1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The upgrades go much deeper than the GUI. I build Windows and MAC OS Disk Images that get deployed to every computer in our organization. The changes to the substructure of the operatin systems are extensive. Even withouth WIN-FS the changes that are being incorporated will cause the job that i do on a daily basis to be significantly eaiser and the tools that are already going to be bundled into the os means that my company will have to spend much less money with 3rd party products like Symantec Ghost. It's really not at all like comparing XP to Win 2000. Changes are huge even the location of the user information is going to located in a different place within the file system. Security is much much tighter. The comparison between Mac and Windows in a large organization is not even a contest. Windows is SO much easier to manage and deploy, and with Vista it's only getting better.
- hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"it does look like OS X! the shading and shadow effects of everything, it might not be white like OS X, but if you can change the styles, it would look identical to OS X. and, by the way, windows isn't getting better, other people are getting better and windows is copying them."
Look, you're making it more and more obvious that you don't know what you're talking about with each successive post. The "shading" and "shadow" effects are drop shadows. Windows isn't OS X and it isn't taking any steps to become OS X. Also (believe it or not) Vista is a giant step ahead for Windows in every respect. - theantidote, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I used Vista a little while ago and it's much different. First of all searching is everywhere! Not just the spotlight (which is sooo innovative and revolutionary in itself :rolleyes:) but on the start menu and in every folder. They made searching a main part of the OS rather than the small feature that it is on XP. It's indexing features are very different than OS X as well, for instance there's a ton of metadata you can fill in to make your searches more exact. The loading bars look like OS X? What does that even mean? The graphical shiny-ness of them? Since when did Apple patent graphical shiny-ness in a GUI, and in that case they should sue Linux for having it years before them!
- jaknet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And notice that there has not been one comment from the Apple camp about their "new" media player...which "just" happens to be the same as media player 11...with its views incl. album graphics etc............. Oh sorry windows was first on that one...............
- JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Their engineers publicly announced several years ago that when Vista (at the time of the disclosure, it was called Longhorn) that all of the icons in Longhorn would be rendered using vector graphics that were scalable.
You do the math.
Apple does not bother to store/execute/cache a complete vector graphics program for each icon. They leave it to the software developers who create icons for their apps and documents to supply pre-rendered bitmaps in up to about a half dozen varying sizes. Apple scales these as desired, to achieve the best rending possible.
Apple has PDF 2D and OpenGL 3D graphics goodness in their OS and graphics pipelines. So the scaling seems to produce high quality images at realtime speeds.
It probably requires allocating less memory in the graphics hardware device memory than a series of vectors does.
Longhorn - I mean Vista's technique could allow easy pivoting of the icons along the Y-axis, of course.
But, you know what? There is a 2D graphics effect called "shearing" that does just the same visual effect.
I wonder if this means that next year everyone will be pining over Macs, wondering why other manufacturers cannot make affordable computer hardware like Apple does. Funny how the catch phrases slip over time and the halo becomes a noose. - _Caboose_, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Coral Cache: http://www.bentuser.com.nyud.net:8090/article.aspx?ID=332&page=1
- DigitalDud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, running Windows under a limited user account basically kills all security issues, malware/spyware/viruses, etc. We have 930-something lab computers here, all running XP using limited user accounts only, none of them have ever had security issues or spyware installed. This latest WMF vulnerability for example, harmless when running as non-admin. User-mode software like IE can't do ***** if it gets owned under non-admin. The only exploits that get you are kernel exploits. And there hasn't been one of those in something like 2+ years.
The problem with limited user accounts is they break a lot of poorly written Windows programs (which is the majority). Vista more or less fixes them with things like registry virtualization. So running as non-admin is more practical. - JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Maybe. Sun was the first to talk about it.
But Apple does not talk about future products until right before they ship. They prefer for the bulk of the product features to be spoken for by the product itself - not some marketing wonk.
Apple's engineers are gagged about their unreleased product details.
Given Apple's policy, I was surprised to read interviews with Microsoft developers/spokesmen back in late 2003 that described what was supposed to be in Longhorn.
Given that many of those features were cut, by necessity, in order to rush the product out in 2007 - the virtue of Apple's policy does seem to shine.
I have not read/heard any disclosures about when Apple engineers first started coding or designing the flip-around feature for Dashboard widgets. I know Sun started talking about 2003. Apple was already talking about the whole Dashboard feature in 2004.
Obviously, 2003 comes before 2004 but it is not well-known what Apple was doing with Dashboard in 2002-2003, is it?
Two companies might have had the same idea at about the same time, shipping a similar feature in a product at a similar time. Just because one company pre-announced long before they had a shipping product using the feature does not mean the other company is a copycat.
People have probably felt like turning around certain windows - and doing a lot more graphic things with them - for a long time. ;-) - JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They are just frustrated because Microsoft took one and a half to five and a half years to ship - assuming they do ship - a program with those same features that OS X already released. Not simply that they eventually got around to copying/innovating/immitating the features.
Actually, the full list of imitations - I mean "innovations" is a lot longer than one. There are closer to twenty items on the list.
The Mac consumers are not the only ones to be pointing this out. Apple itself, in the form of Steve Jobs, called Microsoft to the table on this one last year.
Here is a quote from Phil Schiller, Apple's chief technologist:
'They copied the original Mac with Windows 95,' Jobs gloats, 'and now they're going to be copying us again,'" Schlender reports.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/4950/
Stings of the "unjust" slings and arrows of imitation-not-innovation cracks aside, the Vista-ne-Longhorn that comes out sometime in 2007 will not be competing about the Mac OS 10.4 (or 10.2, in many cases) that people point to when they declare "copied, not 'innovated'".
What Vista will be competing with when it eventually comes out is Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard). Apple holds its Feature cards pretty close to its chest when it is in Development mode.
What the financial and computer industry analysts, trade magazine journalists, and consumers are going to see when Leopard comes out is a whole different animal than when Tiger debuted.
If Microsoft innovates, for real, then what all those people will see between Leopard and Longhorn (whoops, I mean "Vista") is parity, because both companies were working on both products at the same time and coming out with them at about the same time. Not much opportunity for copying in either direction.
However, if the new features introduced in Leopard are simply all missing from Vista, then well, yeah - the guys you are calling "fan boys" are probably right, aren't they?
Anyway, it is too soon to call the game.
Microsoft will have its first gander, at the latest, at Apple's WWDC next month. Since they are an important Mac software vendor, and they just signed a 5 year pact with Apple at the start of this year, they probably have already seen Leopard sneak peaks.
But with their apparently already challenging schedule, it seems really unlikely they are going to pull off the track and start designing new features based on those seen in Leopard. That probably still holds true, even if they saw them back in early 2006.
Anyway, it is too early to jump on the Mac consumers. Wait and see what happens. - DigitalDud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One thing to keep in mind when complaining about Microsoft stealing Apple designs is that Microsoft has a large influence in OSX as well. They're the largest third-party producer of Mac software since the Apple 2e, they certainly have influence there.
Secondly, one of Apple's designers (don't remember his name off hand) is the chief designer of the Vista GUI.
Third, Vista (or Longhorn) has been in development/design stages long before OSX was even released.
Lastly, the kind of glossy glass look you see in OSX and Vista has nothing to do with copying off one another. It is a trend in all product designs today not just computer software but consumer electronics as well. The glass look comes from the finish you see on cars. It is the natural evolution of making things more pleasing and natural to the eye. - hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"So I am very glad that Windows is getting a better looking GUI, and also am glad that it's still Windows."
Well said! That's exactly how I felt when I first booted the December CTP. - valis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Re: mrfx
XP has dual-core problems?
Please elucidate. - hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"it looks like their ideas were very similar to Apple's OSX."
Ugh, when are people going to get off of that? The OS looks, (more importantly) feels, and (most importantly) acts nothing like OS X. Apple didn't "invent" the insta-desktop-search idea (it's the logical progression of a search feature). And Apple didn't develop Firefox either if that's what you're implying. - imav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1subject line essentially summarizes the entirety of the relevant information on the topic that it links to.
- hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Are you sure? It seems like everything interesting they were originally going to put in has been delayed or cancelled."
That is a negative. Again, check Wikipedia or other places for more information on what's really going into Vista.
For me, I'm sold on the updated user experience (everything is so smooth and enjoyable), the lovely tagging system, far-superior WMP, the potential of WPF, the ability to manage windows more effectively (the improved ALT+TAB and live taskbar previews are a blessing...Flip 3D is "eh"), the wonderful search functions, and a few other things. - SupaDawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Very nice. color me impressed. I was considering installing a pirate osx86 on my next machine, microsoft had managed to change my find.
Now, i cant wait to see how many sku's they throw at resellers. theres gotta be a version that leaves Media Center out... but i guess that remains to be seen. - robbie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1all i want to know is, does vista still use the registry?
- Mekun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1microsoft has a harder job building an os for millions and millions of different configured pcs.OSX does not have that challenge would they fair as well if they had to?
- MonkeyFit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I especially like the graphical installer for it. That is SUCH a big improvement over the horrid text based installer that was the XP installer. Even my dad could install Vista.
- MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"linux has pretty much the same eyecandy that windows users will be getting"
I couldn't find anything that came even close to Vista's cool glass effects. - hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"I'm not saying they aren't taking a giant step towards anything, and i don't even care that much that they stole (and don't say they didn't) more than a few aspect directly from OS X. all that I'm saying that it pisses me off that they take credit for these things, and that, like you said, most of the world will never know who created these things. and, by the way, there are spotlight bars in every folder too."
I didn't say anything about "the world knowing blah blah blah" and I don't agree at all with the idea that Microsoft is "stealing" any features, graphics, or style from OS X. The people that claim this never really tote any good evidence.
Oh, and you did say (and I quote...) "by the way, windows isn't getting better, other people are getting better and windows is copying them" which sounds an awful lot like "windows isn't getting any better." - staticten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1As much as i love Mac OS X, i really need a windows OS for work.......
Therefore, this is automatically dugg, regardless...........c'mon!!! - hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Though its 256MB of video memory for min req (iirc) for the good looks are a bit high compared to my 64 on my powerbook and still get the eyecandy. Is it the transparency?"
Woah, where do you get your misinformation? Vista (with Aero Glass enabled) doesn't require anything more than a 64MB graphics card. And Vista without Aero Glass (Aero Express instead) doesn't even require that. My old Athlon 1800+ with 512MBs and an on-board GeForce 2 (32MB) runs Vista (Aero Express) better than XP. - nugget, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well I think that this huge flame war about something that is not out to the "general" public is quite stupid. And who cares if it takes ideas that Apple implemented in OSX, its not like they were the first who came up with a search function, or a magnifying glass. If you really want to debate it, first you need to get vista, and not just Alpha and Beta builds, the final product.
- donnie_dark0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not sure if this was mentioned, but IconFactory, one of the big OS X iconography houses, also created the entire icon library for Windows XP.
Now on the flip side in Vista, who on mother-flippin-Earth needs icons so bloody large? I think the 128x128 is plenty big enough for any human that is less than 80% blind. One other pet peeve of mine in Windows is to see echos of GUI and icons from the archaic Win 3.11 days. Please MS, get a few people on this. - MonkeyFit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm sure if Apple had patents/trademarks/copyrights on their ideas or the code Microsoft "stole," they would sue Microsoft for it. If they don't, then it shows you that they don't hold said patents, etc. That also probably means they didn't develop those features and "stole" them from someone else. Why are some people so opposed to advancement?
- valis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Until Microsoft can get their act together when it comes to security and stability/driver conflicts, it won't matter how pretty it gets. People will still hate it."
Well, that is what they are doing. Maybe you read a lot of conspiracy theories. Maybe you think companies just do stuff because they want to. But in the end, to survive, they need to improve and correct. That is what MS is doing right now. So you hate them for working toward a better OS, and an awareness of what has to be done.
Me thinks you fear that they will succeed, and make you look like an ass. - MrDiaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1guys the link isnt working for me.
- hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Anyone who has used a Windows PC for any length of time knows that Windows has a long ways to go before it can be considered secure and reliable."
I have only had XP crash on me once since I built my current PC four years ago...and that was when a stick of cheap RAM went bad. I'm also not a fool, so I know how to secure my PC (and why I need to do it) with a couple of free programs (firewall/virus scanner).
I wonder...are you still using Windows 98? It sure sounds like it! :/ - MonkeyFit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@dmoffitt
Go torrent a copy of it. Granted, it's buggy as hell right now since it's in beta. But they've added a lot of handy features to the UI. But just play around with it for a little. Also, check out the Wikipedia article on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_vista
And yes, it will take a more powerful computer to run, but it's also a more powerful OS. Give it a try, and if you don't like it, fine. But from what I've seen, it's incredible. Remember, Microsoft designed this from the ground up. Vista is a complete overhaul. It's not just a few new features tacked on to XP. Yes, the way you use it as well as the look is somewhat similar to XP. But that's because they have to do it to make the migration from XP to Vista as easy as possible. - valis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"I do hope for success. What I have read indicates that this release will not be one that fully addresses Windows' underlying problems."
Alright. Care to get a bit more specific? As a scientist, I need more validating evidence. - hotwaterham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"I can honestly say I haven't had Windows XP totally crash on me in over a year (maybe longer). I have had some program crashes, but this isn't Microsoft's fault. However, I notice a steadily decline in speed every time I use a windows machine. It's almost a requisite that I format every 6 months or so if I want to stay running at peak performance."
I have program crashes in XP, OS X, Fedora, Ubuntu...well, everything really. It's just a fact of life and has just as much to do with the programs as the operating system.
I can't agree with you about Windows slowing down over time. I'm running off the same install from four years ago...no slowdowns, no viruses, no problems. - shiftless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Windows Defender is more annoying than a screaming 2 year old. I hope they tone it down because it's a worthless addition to Windows.
After trying a Vista build I experienced an endless barrage of useless dialog boxes popping up two times every minute. Who needs that many dialog boxes? You start to ignore them so you're more likely to ignore an actually important dialog box. - replica, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Vista looks great. Will upgrade all my computers to Vista on the first day of release.
- theantidote, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To the dude complaining about paying the price of the upgrade: why didn't you complain when you had to pay to upgrade to OS 10.3 to 10.4? XP to Vista is like 10 to 11 in your software numbering terms, it's actually an upgrade.
Also 95 doesn't have nearly as many features as XP. It has the same layout, but so does OS 9. But you don't think OS 9 has the same features as OS X do you?
XP has so much more under the hood compared to 95. The only one that comes even close is Windows 2000, except that doesn't have as much eye candy. - JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Microsoft has a large influence in OSX as well. They're the largest third-party producer of Mac [application] software"
That does not make any sense. Mac OS X is an operating system. Microsoft writes applications. Apple writes the operating system (OSX).
Applications do not influence the OS unless there is a serious flaw in it. Applications are not allowed to modify the operating system willy nilly.
That is one of the jobs of an operating system, to see to that. The way it does that job is instilled by the OS programmers. They work for Apple, and/or the FreeBSD and/or Open Darwin projects.
Maybe what you mean is Microsoft is an influence on Apple.
The company and the operating system are not the same entity.
"They're the largest third-party producer of Mac [application?] software since the Apple 2e, they certainly have influence there."
Where to start? Sigh...
1. The Apple IIe was not a Macintosh. It was a member of the Apple II family, not the Mac family. Completely different computer all together. In between the Apple II line and the Mac line was the Apple III line and the short-lived Lisa line.
2. Where does "there" mean? The Apple IIe, in fact all the Apple II family, ended at some point in the 1980s. I do not think Microsoft is influencing the Apple IIe OS any more than the Google's former chef is influencing the meal I ate at McDonald's one sunny afternoon in 1984.
3. In the Apple II line after, but not including the Apple II itself (i.e. Apple II+, Apple IIc, and Apple IIe) Microsoft's AppleSoft BASIC, which was basically a rebranded Microsoft BASIC (8-bit version), was included in a 16 KB ROM chip build into every computer.
a.) it was not, however, the operating system of that computer - the OS was written by Apple and stored in a separate ROM chip
b.) it could not influence the OS, it was stored in a ROM (read-only memory!) chip
c.) the OS ROM (called the machine language monitor) was the same one that was included in the Apple II system (which is the one that did not include Microsoft's AppleSoft BASIC but instead include Apple's Integer BASIC, written by Apple's cofounder, Steve Wozniak)
"Secondly, one of Apple's designers (don't remember his name off hand) is the chief designer of the Vista GUI."
Do you have a URL for an article that says that?
I guess I am more skeptical than usual, having read through the whole two sentences above. But mainly, I am curious what products he designed at Apple.
A ton of engineers have designed a ton of different pieces of a lot of different products at Apple over the years. Apple just celebrated its 30th anniversary on April 1 of this year. So that is quite a few engineers and products to sift through.
I am wondering what the product he designed at Apple was, and how significant/popular it was. If I get a reference, I at least have a toehold on being able to find out what the product he designed was.
"Third, Vista (or Longhorn) has been in development/design stages long before OSX was even released."
Well, that is not completely true unless your definition of long is the same as the definition of short.
Apple shipped Mac OS X 10.0 in March 2001. Half a year later, in October 2001, Microsoft shipped Windows XP.
Microsoft started designing Longhorn when Windows 2000 came out, back in 2000 - the year before Mac OS X _shipped_. Apple started designing Mac OS X long before its early 2001 ship date.
Comparing the start of the Longhorn design "era" (for lack of a better word) with the culmination of the work on Mac OS X that resulted in OSX shipping, is like comparing the date of starting to figure out where to plant a grape seed - to the date raisin was put on a shelf, boxed and ready for sale to a raisin consumer.
For your information, Apple was already _publishing_ its plans for the Cocoa (new, extended NextStep based APIs written in Objective-C) and Carbon (Unix/C based APIs designed to ease transition from earlier OS 8 & 9 applications as well as Unix programs) way back in 1998! Maybe even sooner than that, but 1998 is the first time I can vividly recall someone telling me about them.
And of course Apple had announced its intention to use the OS it ultimately renamed "OSX" back even before that, when it bought Steve Job's NeXT computer company - the company that created that OS, calling it "NeXT Step".
Guess what? NeXT was founded by former Apple president/cofounder Steve Jobs and programmers he hired from Apple - way back in 1985 or 1986. Almost the first thing they did was create the OS.
Code and design was well along before Vista's feature set was worked out.
As evidence of Vista's fluid feature set, take a look at this article from eWeek in 2003.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1395329,00.asp
Here is an interesting quote from the article:
"In the meantime, Microsoft's rivals aren't sitting still. Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X, for example, already offers the sort of compositing graphical interface that'll be one of Longhorn's main new additions."
So, Apple shipped the product before Microsoft announced its intent to have the feature in the product.
"Some of the slowest—and the fastest—performance we experienced was linked to locating and sorting through local files. One of Longhorn's most prominent new components is WinFS, a file system that lives on top of NT File System and enables speedy queries of certain items on a machine's local file system. This capability is roughly akin to what Be Inc.'s BeOS offered several years ago."
So, that feature does not exactly enter into the Innovation Hall of Fame either. Oh, and it was cut from the planned Vista-né-Longhorn feature set a couple years later. Last year Microsoft announced they would be getting it out in a future release of "Longhorn" scheduled for (I kid you not) 2009.
"Internet Explorer has a slimmer look now, which reminded us a bit of Apple's Safari. Also like Safari, the version of IE included with the Longhorn preview offers pop-up blocking and a download manager—both firsts for IE. (The tabbed browsing that distinguishes Safari and Mozilla, among other browsers, remains absent, however.)"
Yes, it does.
"For now, the most interesting thing that inhabits the sidebar is a big, shiny-looking analog clock."
Apple is lauding Microsoft's current Clock in their TV commercials this year. As for the "shiny analog clock", the Mac I bought at the beginning of 2002 came with that feature as part of Mac OS X 10.1.
Neither your argument nor the ancient article I dug up from Early Days of OSX/XP really convince me that MS is innovating anything as much as Apple is, or that Apple is copying Microsoft.
If Microsoft had a problem with Apple copying its designs before Microsoft could put them in shipping products, Microsoft could keep its yap shut while it was working on them.
That is what Apple does. And Microsoft tends to announce these future "innovations" after Apple has been selling consumers that very feature in a boxed, off-the-shelf product. Sometimes a month after, sometimes a year after, sometimes two years after. Conversely, you do not see Apple announcing upcoming features that Microsoft shipped 1, 2, or 3, years ago.
If anything, if there was any "coincidence" involved, and Apple is miraculously even accidentally copying Microsoft, one would have to conclude that Apple was _studiously avoiding_ imitating something Microsoft had already done. That would be the only explanation. That, or they simply do not want to do the things that Microsoft is doing that it is not copying from Apple.
Consistently, in the case of the items cited in the article, Apple already had shipped the products a year or two earlier, with features that Microsoft had just announced would be coming out a couple years later (in 2005) and have now slipped to 2007.
Anyway, in 2007, we will all finally know who is copying who. If Vista has amazing features never before seen in OSX, and they show up in OS 10.6, maybe Apple is imitating, possibly. If Microsoft does not trot out original innovations with Vista in 2007 and Apple does not trot out imitations in 2007/2008 - then you have to admit the innovation imitation might just be a one way street.
In the meantime, the facts tend to support the Mac fan boys, not you. -
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