“Everybody steals from Apple Computer Inc. Or so the thinking goes in the Mac community. Ever since Microsoft Corp. introduced Windows 1.0 in 1985, there has been a ceaseless chorus from Mac users accusing the software giant, based in Redmond, Wash., of pilfering Apple’s best ideas and poorly implementing them for mass consumption in successive versions of its operating systems,” writes David Zeiler for The Baltimore Sun.
Zeiler continues, “Mac users had their dander up again last week after Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates introduced a prototype called Athens, built by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard Co., at the WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) event in New Orleans… Hardware and software development had at times been ‘a little out of sync,’ Gates said. ‘The best way to advance the state of the art is to work even more closely, always starting from the customer’s perspective and focusing on the combination of hardware and software that works best to create an innovative and compelling PC,’ he said,” Zeiler reports.
“The notion of designing computer hardware and software in tandem is, indeed, a terrific idea, but Microsoft and HP are late in embracing it. Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., has been designing personal computers that way for 25 years…”
Josh Bernoff, an analyst for Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. told Zeiler, “There’s enormous pressure on Apple to continue to innovate. Everything they do gets commoditized by somebody else and all the profit driven out of it… Windows is ‘good enough’ for most people.”
A great article from Zeiler can be found in its entirety here.
