On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:32:14 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> This comes to show why competition is so utterly necessary.
Competition is not always a good thing for consumers, but more often than
not, it is. In some cases, too much competition drives costs down too low,
and drives the ethical and "good" companies out of business (that is, the
ones that won't compromise their principles). However, this is not what
we're talking about here.
> Without some
> innovation from the competition, who would Bill and Associates have ever
> copied from? Gadgets? Brushed metal? Transparency? Even fundamental things
> like the World Wide Web and the Web browser were unavailable until the
> coin finally dropped.
You've got to be kidding me. Microsoft demo'd it's sidebar with gadgets 4
YEARS ago, long before OS X had it. OS X copied it from Konfabulator, who
copied it from Microsoft. (Note: I'm talking specifically about the
technology that's embodied by Konfab, Dashboard, and the Sidebar, not
reusable controls in general).
Second, Microsoft isn't using brushed metal. Some of their beta products
were using it as in intermediate step, but the final designs are all
brushed metal free.
Transparency? Windows has had that since Windows 2000 came out in 1999.
Now, I'm not claiming that Microsoft doesn't copy others, of course they
do, as does everyone else. That's the way this industry works. But, there
is this tendancy to claim every technology Microsoft has was copied from
Linux or OS X, and often times they copied that technology from somewhere
else as well.
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