Linked by snydeq on Mon 12th Oct 2009 15:24 UTC
InfoWorld's John Rizzo chronicles the 20 most significant ideas and features Microsoft and Apple have stolen from each other in the lead up to Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. 'Some features were stolen so long ago that they've become part of the computing landscape, and it's difficult to remember who invented what.' Windows 7's Task Bar and Aero Peek come to mind as clear appropriations of Mac OS X's Dock and Expose. Apple's cloning of the Windows address bar in 2007's Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard as the path bar is another obvious 'inspiration.' But the borrowing goes deeper, Rizzo writes, providing a screenshot tour of Microsoft's biggest grabs from Mac OS X and Apple's most significant appropriations of Windows OS ideas and functionality.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Apple did not "steal" Commond Prompt from Windows, even if "steal" here is meant tongue-in-cheek. I'll go along with the fact that it didn't appear in Mac OS 1-9, but it did appear in NeXT, which became OSX, and NeXT took it from X Windows, whose origin predates Microsoft Windows.
Likewise, the Amiga had a command-line shell in its windowing system from the start. I don't think this influenced any of the parties named here, but as with most things, Amiga did it first for the desktop, and until recently their version was better than anyone else's. :-P