MS has a long line of screwing companies over. CP/M, DR DOS, Novell, WordPerfect, Lotus 1,2,3 and this all before getting to the Windows age. They got their start by selling an open source version of BASIC as their own.
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Microsoft Internally Worked on a Mac OS X Aqua Inspired Windows XP Theme
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DR Dos did it themselves when they had a chance to work with IBM but dropped the ball
How did Microsoft screw them over?
The pre-windows era MS was not a major force. True they had market presence thanks to their relationship with IBM and writing pc-dos and ms-dos, but back in those pre-windows days it was lotus that was thought to be too powerful. It was the first true killer app and Lotus used that power and market presence to their advantage. They failed to move quickly enough to windows and it cost them.
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Embarrassed to say I still have a Zune. I never used it. It was a gift.
I miss the mp3 player/iPod era. It's so boring having to listen to music on your iPhone. Back in the day we used to have a Moto Razr for calls/messages and an iPod for music. Iconic times.
DR Dos didn't screw themselves. There was no deal to lose, from what I remember.
It was 123, WordPerfect, and Borland. ALL were decimated by Microsoft, and some unfortunate business decisions. At the university I worked at, the 'standard' for all new systems was MS-DOS, later Windows, and Microsoft Office. Some departments got away with ordering WordPerfect, but once the 'ivory tower' got the word out that Microsoft was funding things at the university, people dumped WordPerfect. Most departments that had servers used Novell Netware too, but Microsoft lured them away with great educational pricing, and deals on licensing.
WordPerfect used to have 'one computer, one license' terms, and it got expensive. Microsoft, for the longest time, had three license deals, one at work, one at home, and one notebook. Then it was 2, and now one. Who's their competition? Open Office? Borland went to a place people didn't want to follow, and Microsoft again lured departments at the university to their programming environment. That is even with Borland having amazing educational pricing deals. (I still have my Borland Pascal disks, and my LightSpeed C disks too) Ridiculous pricing for education, but Microsoft always seemed to win the deals somehow. It didn't seem to matter, Microsoft won. The physics department changed over to all Microsoft, apparently, just because. Yeah, Microsoft sure did a lot to make sure that their toast always ended up buttered side up.
I still have most of my old iPods. Most of the disk based ones didn't last too long. I killed one building the house I'm in. In the future kitchen, the dang thing dropped out of my gloved hands, and hit the bare concrete floor. Yeah, it did not survive. I saved it, but when I tried to do a flash upgrade for it, the board cracked, along with the screen. Still don't know what I did wrong. Sad... But my Touch has tens of thousands of miles on it. I take pictures of/on the planes I'm on, and the pictures are a hoot...
I know right! The Fisher Price "My First Desktop" default theme was some of Microsoft's greatest marketing approaches to make it easy and accessible. Truly an interface design scaled up for toddler sized fingers, they were ahead of their time.
Yes and to an extent no, Microsoft went out of their way to make sure Windows wouldn't work on DR DOS as well.
Well sure. After decades of studied, continually refined graphic & UI design work and stories of Steve Jobs’ typesetting class paying off, Steve Jobs died, and Apple took one look at Google Mail, threw everything they knew in the trash, fired Scott bloody Forstall, gave UI design to a pretentious minimalist who made a name for himself & was literally knighted for removing features from the hardware until Apple products looked like old Dieter Rams designs, and promptly proclaimed the future as flat, white, & helvetica-strewn. We all celebrated that the bland featureless gray replacements of our once colorful, personable & charismatic machines got even more monochromatic & monolithic.
Along any timeline, design has peaks and valleys. I’m not saying Apple can’t have a high point in its future again, but looking back at the exuberance of the iMac G4 w/ Aqua, this is clearly an era of austerity, merely bridging the gap, cashing in on a big presence in the market with extremely conservative products.
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The reason that Apple is earning big now is because:
1) Other competitor's product sucks so hard that Apple literarily does not have a competition.
2) Lots of fundamentals of OS and UI that lead to their success remain unchanged over these years. (A very straight-forward example. It is very hard now for a new user to identify that "<" and ">" symbols in Safari UI are actually buttons to click. And for those who is new to Safari, they won't have any clue what those "<" and ">" symbols mean without a label. But if you are a long time user, you'll be familiar with the position of buttons and navigation interface. Your operating behavior won't be impacted by simple UI element change)
What really getting impacted is:
1) When it comes to new user, it would require long learning curve. (For god's sake, who knows "<" and ">" are buttons without a bubble around it and what they mean without label.)
2) When new features being added or existing UI gets re-design,
--a) It would take longer learning curve for everyone
--b) While at the learning curve, it's no longer a fun and eye-candy for kids and elder, thus discourage them to explore the UI for new features. This fundamentally changes their behavior from positive absurbing to negative adapting
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For the consumer market. Windows NT had been in the business world fairly early, but XP was the first consumer Windows version to be based off of NT.
Xerox was trying to get my company's business in 1991 and treated me to use their tools to create our logo for use with their printers and copiers. The UI was much the same as the Alto's interface from 1981, which meant that I knew how to work it immediately, but it was still a work-in-progress that shouldn't be out in public.
You are totally wrong.
They were 1st in following areas:
1. Introduction of retina display (High pixel density)
2. First to introduce proper flawless touch ID
3. Introduced Face ID
4. 1st commercial tablet iPad
5. 1st pro-motion 120hz display on iPad (mobile product)
6. iPhone 1 (2007) was the first mass produced device to use Capacitive touch screen where as everyone in that era were on resistive touch screen.
All the above Firsts by Apple have re-defined the mobile industry.
All fanboyisms aside, the Aqua UI was years ahead, even though it came out earlier than XP. Especially because of the fact that it was hardware-accelerated. That technology was introduced later in Vista. (and kinda over-engineered with that glass look and useless animations)
First thing I did with every XP installation was switching to the Silver theme and resizing the titlebars to the minimum size. And install some 3rd-party tool to have window drop shadows.
First thing I did with every XP installation was switching to the Silver theme and resizing the titlebars to the minimum size. And install some 3rd-party tool to have window drop shadows.
People loved the Watercolor theme so much that when 3rd party skins came into the scene via WindowBlinds you could have a finished build of this on your desktop. It actually looks like flat design which MS didn't incorporate until Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. Apple copied this flat design in iOS 7, but added their own flair to it.
Not all tech. He is referring to the OSX-like interface and probably the more obvious copies.
But, to agree with the sentiment, it would be nice for other tech companies to try to stop copying so much at times, at least for the sake getting something new. Apple blatantly copies too, sometimes quite late in the game.
But in general, if Apple sucks so much and is such a bad company, why so many spinoffs after it came so late in the game? Why so many iPhone-like copies even though companies have been doing cellphones for decades before? Why copy putting the notch that “everybody hates”, instead of a bottom or side notch maybe? Why now most full wireless in-earphones look like AirPods (even after being hated publicly before launch)? Why android phones also got rid of the audio jack after grilling that decision before?
Same examples to be found on many things... “Apple makes too thin laptops, form over function”, yet brands insist on having ultra thin books categories. I’m happy for example that the Mac Pro Wheels don’t have a copy look-alike.
I thought the purple in System 7 was kinda meh (but it did fit into the early-90s aesthetic, I suppose).
My favorite remains Platinum.
This has happened so many times in the past, and I believe on one occasion they left Apple originated notes in the code.
Microsoft tested a Windows XP theme that closely resembled Mac OS X's Aqua GUI, reports The Verge.
A recent Windows XP source code leak has revealed various unreleased themes that Microsoft developed in 2000, at a time when Microsoft was in heated competition with Apple regarding desktop operating systems.
One of the themes, codenamed "Candy," mirrors the design of Apple's Aqua interface, which was first introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo in 2000. Aqua was an iconic Apple design and gave a sense of depth through the use of shadow and translucency, metallic textures, and rounded liquid-like assets.
The theme was described as a "Whistler skin with eye candy," with "Whistler" being the codename for Windows XP, and was marked as "for internal use only." Though the theme was never finished, fundamental aspects such as the Windows Start button and various UI elements were a close match for Aqua.
Most striking is the replication of Mac OS X's rounded water-like buttons. Windows developers reportedly used the theme as a placeholder to build the theme engine for Windows XP.
The theme was ultimately rejected in favor of the blue and green Luna theme for the final version of Windows XP released in 2001. The source code leak reveals another instance of the influence of the Mac on Windows behind the scenes.
Article Link: Microsoft Internally Worked on a Mac OS X Aqua Inspired Windows XP Theme
I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?
Quite true, as the GUI itself that Apple utilised came via Xerox. I would content however it was the first really usable personal computer as the Altair was a bit of a beast and I don't think it had what you would consider a GUI? So whilst Apple may not have been the first to produce a Personal Computer in my opinion it was the first to produce a personal computer which was usable by most users by virtue of its GUI.
It was really 1983 when Lisa came out where in my opinion personal computing as we know it commenced. So in that respect Apple was the first.
I bought, two years ago, an whit iMac, just to have the Tiger back. The problem is: almost everything in it is useless today. Safari doesn't work properly, El Camino doesn't help much. But I turn it on from time to time, just to look at it hahahahahah