Re: Re: Re: What's all the shouting about?
Originally posted by jamilecrire
I guess since apple has copied: BSD, Xerox GUI, Internet Connectivity, ... the only thing left is Desktop Publishing (Oh wait WYSIWYG wouldn't be available without the GUI).
Why do these myths keep coming up?
BSD is available under the BSD license. Apple follows this license and there is nothing wrong here. Also, Apple has one person with commit privileges on the BSD kernel and they release all their changes back into the public that they are required to, as well as a few things that they are not required to (for instance, the BSD license does not require them to, but GPL does). Given the names of some of the employees on Apple's payroll, I guess they have no less claim to "ownership" of BSD as any other company.
Xerox PARC had done demos of their Alto computer (the first one that implement
Window
Icon
Mouse
Pointer user interface) for years before the Mac team came. Since Jef Raskin (of the Mac team) had seen the demo, he wanted to expose the rest of the team to the ideas behind it. To get Xerox to open its doors, Apple gave a huge chunk of options at a time when Apple stock was skyrocketting. A lot of those Xerox PARC employees were later hired by Apple (and Apple employees later hired by Microsoft). Also, there are a lot of things that didn't exist in the original Alto WIMP design that Apple improved on and are essential for what we call a GUI today: the concept of the desktop and trash can (icons only represented actions, not files), the location of the menu bar (menus were contextual before this), command-key equivalents (Apple UI engineers noticed that expert users would have to move mouse focus in order to perform menu actions), etc.
The key was the packaging though. Look at the cost and "look" of the Alto or the Lisa and compare it to the Macintosh. It is obvious why the latter became an icon and the former pair is just a footnote.
Internet Connectivity? What do you mean by this? Do you mean the BSD-stack which is the layer found in most operating systems including Windows? Nobody claimed Macs were the first here, though a lot of "firsts" did come from the Mac: the first graphical e-mail program, Eudora, for example, came from the University of Illinois. Then again, the first web browser was brought to us on a NeXT machine (aptly-called "World Wide Web"), but few remember this.
Apple was responsible for giving us AppleTalk, the first truely useable plug-and-play LAN. Those of us who remember/curse token-rings and Novell netware appreciate it. Rendevous is AppleTalk reborn.
Apple didn't invent desktop publishing. There were a lot of products at the time (Ready-Set-Go, PageMaker, etc) and none of them were produced by Apple to my knowledge. Of course, we had WYSIWYG (detrimental when purchasing a monitor at the time), an AppleTalk LAN, and an affordable laser printer running something called PostScript (again, not an Apple invention(thank God)). The Mac platform may have made the conditions "ripe" but I don't think they predicted DTP. In fact, the LaserWriter project was almost canned by Apple management.
No, Apple isn't responsible for all computer innovation. In fact, they're probably not responsible for half the stuff attributed to them. But before you start spewing conventional wisdom, please get some of your history straight.
Back on topic:
Rhapsody, PressPlay and Listen were created by various labels. They've been out for years and with miserable adoption rates. Analysts said this was because they didn't have enough selection which was corrected about 8 months ago. Then they said it's because you can't purchase and they added burning (for 99c/song). Their adoption numbers are so dismal not one of these companies admits to the actual numbers.
Now RealPlayer and Roxio are entering the fray with the same services redone/relabeled (the burn price for RealPlayer Rhapsody has dropped to 79c). The fact is, after all this time, I'd still have to pay a subscription fee and then an additional fee to burn.
Microsoft isn't necessarily promoting their own subscription service. There is enough of that. The new "theory" is that people want to take their music with them and not be "tethered to a computer" as someone put it. Thus, they are modifying the DRM in Windows Media Player to allow the user the download the music onto their portable music player (but it will still destruct at a given time). They are confident they can do this. They are also confident that if it doesn't work out, they can modify the DRM again to do something like Apple's FairPlay.
Now if they are also planning their own music service also, color me unsurprised. I believed at one time Rockefeller owned nearly everything from the oil well to the gas pump. This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has competed with the companies that depend on them. I believe Apple does the same thing, in many ways.
However, I believe there is a difference between:
- giving a product to an employee to form his own company because your developers fear being marginalized because it is superior (4th Dimension).
- starting your own company under a different name so as not to have an edge based on your brand (Claris)
- hiring an entire staff of a company who makes a product in order to may your audio player (C&G SoundJam and iTunes)
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and
- bundling a browser whose revenues are based on royalties with your OS and strongarming another company into doing the same (MS, Spyglass, Apple)
- Hijacking a competing video standard by default and breaking plug-in support (QuickTime and RealPlayer)
- stealing IP, bundling, and then killing development (Stacker).
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No matter how much you hate Microsoft, you got to give them points for chutzpah. 
Take care.
