Never heard/read so much back peddling in such a short span of time. My hats off to M$ for damage control. Now, what I wanna know is, will M$ feed Simon Aldous to the sharks, or the piranha?

Oh, and before this turns into a debate on which is better, Win7 or Mac OSX, get a life. No seriously, GET....A....LIFE! Each company, and many others, steal, pilfer, acquire all kinds of ideas from one another. Sometimes to the detriment of the originator of that idea. No one, that includes you Linux, is not guilty of co-opting all kinds of ideas from other sources. As to the stability, or reliability, you milage may vary depending on the density of your brain matter or lack there of.

No really, back away from the keyboard if yer just gonna lob "My mac is better, Win sucks," or "Mac Fanbois are gay and Win7 rulz." Computers are tools. Don't act like one.

I actually find it very hard to see any similarities between OS X and 7. 7's taskbar is just a slightly scaled up version of the one Windows has had since 95 which I've used heavily since then. And the touch things aren't that new either coming from XP's tablet editions, then Vista and now 7. Does the Mac do libraries? does it have a shed load of kiddy protection software? does it have VM's for previous versions for backwards compatibility? frankly there are to many differances that someone not noticing whats been around for donkeys years is just blind to them. Even those withing MS themselves it seems.

"One example of this is the multi-touch support in Windows 7, which is not supported by the Mac OS."

In Mac OS X, I can use two fingers to rotate images, three fingers to navigate in the browser, four fingers to switch apps. Isn't that "multi-touch"? Microsoft is clearing and creating FUD at the same time.

This isn't the first time MicroCrap has stole from Apple.

Apple was the first to have a GUI with windows...then Bill Gates stole that idea.

I use both Mac OS X and windows. And truth be told, A lot of what Microsoft put into their OS's Apple has done way before Microsoft.

"Apple was the first to have a GUI with windows..."???

I believe that X-Windows was out long before Apple created its first computer.

TimA, wikipedia is a great tool.

X11? 1984. Apple Lisa? 1978.

Then there's the Xerox debate to make that a moot point.

Microsoft is a marketing company; they copy innovative ideas, usually years later. That doesn't necessarily mean all of their products suck, but it doesn't help.

^^

[quote]
TimA, wikipedia is a great tool.

X11? 1984. Apple Lisa? 1978.

Then there's the Xerox debate to make that a moot point.

Microsoft is a marketing company; they copy innovative ideas, usually years later. That doesn't necessarily mean all of their products suck, but it doesn't help.
[/quote]

well said sir.

So, from reading these comments it seems that it's okay for Apple to copy anybody else, but no one can imitate Apple?

That's stupid, and it shows a profound lack of understanding on behalf of the people who wrote it. This is how business has been done for years! Get over it!

Also, how can you say that Microsoft is a marketing company, but not Apple?

Steve Jobs is widely regarded as a marketing genius! Just look at all the people here who paid a huge amount of money for their computer, and instead of being upset about it, they tell other people theyre stupid for not doing the same!

That's very good marketing :)

I am constantly amazed at how opinion becomes fact over time and how many people comment on organisations they know nothing about. Absolutly nothing.

If Microsoft copies everything years later why do they spend more on R&D than anyone else in the industry? Apple is the marketing company...and they are "Brilliant" at it. So know when you have been marketed to!
An interesting exercise is to look at the R&D projects MS is working on (they have a website somewhere with all that stuff) then look at all the innovations from Apple and you will see they are often very close to something MS has been working on for a long time. Are MS slow to market...yes, do they miss the mark sometimes yes...but they are also having to meet the demands of 90% of the market.

Personally I have owned several Apple Macs...been shafted by Apple and don't like the lock in of all their iPhone and MP3 Players for memory upgrades etc...do you think they do this for convenience or to force you to spend more to replace it in the future?

Interesting that the very person telling people to "Get a life" is the one that spells MS with a dollar sign... bling bling ;)

I'm almost sure steve jobs said multi-touch was intensly patented.

Apple owns the patent on Multi-Touch, so Im not sure what the Microsoft is talking about. Not to mention it has been on my Macbook Pro for over a year now. Didn't Windows 7ista come out a week ago?

Typical MS BS.

Um, Apple doesn't exactly own multitouch. While I love their fabulous implementation of it in both the MacBooks and the iPhone/touch, Apple doesn't own that specific idea. They own their specific methods for multitouch. While they own many patents, one of them (iPhone based) can be found here: [ http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=multi-touch&s2=multitouch&OS=multi-touch+AND+multitouch&RS=multi-touch+AND+multitouch ].
== LeftClicker ==

>> we have derived great insight about User Interface (UI) design

Microsoft is specifically talking about the user interface here, so let's specifically discuss that.

Vector based interface, complete with ability to scale it live and apply transparencies/etc - OSX did this 7 years before Vista.

Additional progress bar widget that indicates an unknown amount of time - OSX had this 7 years before it existed in Vista.

New mini-progress widget (animating circle) - OSX had this 7 years before it existed in Vista.

Animated widgets (default button pulsing blue, progress bars with an animation with, etc) - OSX did this 7 years before Vista.

Mouse pointer consisting of a larger triangle and a shorter stem than previous generation mouse pointers - OSX did this 7 years before Vista.

and plenty more... Like others I'm not interested in arguing about which is the better OS, I actually use and appreciate both, but the pure fact is that people claiming the new Windows UI is not copied from OSX have absolutely no idea what they're talking about... otherwise how could they possibly not realise the UI they are insisting MS Vista pioneered was already pioneered in OSX 7 years prior?

And that's not even getting into actual DEPTH of the OS. What about even something trivial like exiting an applet without saving first? Windows has ALWAYS said the description of "This document is not saved, would you like to save - Yes, No, Cancel" (yes/no/cancel being a rather technical MS approach) whereas OSX uses a more English approach of "Do you want to save the changes you made in this document - Don't Save, Cancel, Save". Vista/Windows 7 has even copied that...