Before he died, Steve Jobs kept a letter from Bill Gates by his bed - Page 2

Let's take a vote: repeating this exhausted, endlessly refuted chestnut should be sufficient grounds for immediate, permanent ban, in that it suggests the kind of profound and willful ignorance that can only lead to tears.

you're a paranoid person...for no real reason.

It hasn't been fully refuted as I've heard many stories suggesting both things with the same level of clarity (and evidence) so I simply discount it as the usual and time honored tradition of idea A inspiring idea B and I move on.

Everything is borrowed and adapted...that's life...but in Mac World apparently all ideas aren't supposed to inspire other ideas.

rbryanh, I will forgive you your bitterness, while also saying I try to not post publicly when I have those days. I take a walk instead. We all miss Steve.

I would not characterize Cook as little more than a 'bean counter'. Having worked in a number of different fields, I can say that one of the most overlooked and maybe least understood elements of any venture is capacity management. I've had managers in my face telling me how little they care about licenses, or BTUs, or staffing. But from swizzle sticks in the break room to the number of servers tagged for tech refresh each quarter, it all matters when it comes to getting your product out the door. You may infer this has been my work for many years. When you get to a certain point in this career, one's success lies in the accuracy of determining and reporting the consequences of failing to act on supplying the elements needed to deliver the products. One's grasp of the basic but elementary need of dollars and cents should have been mastered long ago. That Apple has amassed more than USD $80B in cash and liquid assets tells me Apple mastered that skill remarkably well.

I am probably just being picky here, but it wasn't called MacOS until (if memory serves) version 7.0, when the clones came out. Before that it was just Macintosh.

I still have some of those original floppies and and can still conjure up the unique sound of the 400k drives in my mind.

I wholeheartedly agree.

BTW....Thank you for saying that before I fired back at dasanman69....and....get permanently banned from AI.

"it was strange to have someone as "vibrant" as Jobs die so young"

Fact: more than 30 million people (mostly kids) die each year of hunger worldwide.

Is that strange then as well?

Adaptions are expected to lead to new innovations. My main complaint about Windows 95 (Microsoft's first real effort to compete with the Mac) wasn't so much that it ripped anything off from Apple, but that after eleven years of effort, all Microsoft could manage was a pale imitation of the Mac and nothing even arguably new. From that point on I have harbored the opinion that Microsoft is one of the most colossal wastes of resources in human history. Sadly, I've found little evidence to refute that theory since that time.

I don't know of anyone who claims that the Xerox PARC work didn't influence the eventual Mac OS, it's the (oft repeated) use of the world "stole" that gets my dander up.

But take it from the horse's mouth-- a Xerox employee recounts the visits by Apple.

As he says, there was a deal signed for access to technology, so "stole" is simply factually untrue. Moreover, as he says, Apple saw "1%" of the Xerox technology, but "it was enough" to get the Mac team (and especially Jobs) fired up about the idea of a mouse driven, GUI based computer.

As Andy Herzfeld (one of the original Mac designers) recounts elsewhere, beyond the general notions of a mouse driven graphical user interface there are a great many significant differences between what they saw at Xerox and the nascent Mac OS, as one would expect given the circumstances of general inspiration.

Amusing in that the same folks that insist they can't see any connection between Samsung's cookie cutter hardware and Apple's iOS devices will forever claim (probably without any specific knowledge of what actually went down) that Apple "stole" the entire basis of the Mac. There's a weird cottage industry around denying any innovation or authorship to Apple while simultaneously insisting that their influence on the consumer electronic industry is illusory, since everything was always invented already.

Maybe.

According to the (late) Jef Raskin, he made the arrangement for Steve and Co. to visit Xerox PARC in order to get him behind the Mac project, which Raskin was then managing. Steve got so excited by what he saw at Xerox that he took over the Mac project and kicked Raskin out. A great part of the creative art is knowing when something is good.

To Bill & Steve. They both have accomplished much in their respective lifetime for the technology industry. I appreciate Bill's comments "There was no peace to make. We were not at war,".

Geeze some people really need to give the whole Windows is a copy of Mac a rest. A lot of Windows is copied of Mac and a lot of Mac is copied of Windows. Even more of both comes from other companies. It's fairly hard to name an awesome feature of either from the last decade that wasn't availiable as a plug in made by someone else before appearing in the products. But that's the nature of the business. Developers move from one company to another and take there ideas and experiance with them. All those software companies located near to each other share ideas in the pub, and just read in Steves biography how many companies he visited and got shown products that ultimately inspired ideas for his own.

End of the day, both were great businessmen. SJ was more of an artist that recognised ideas and made them beautiful. BG was more of a businessman that recognised ideas and new how to make money out of them.

That is well very well said

Weird, creepy, and perfectly in character. He really, really, really wants people to love him.

So ignore the truth?


The difference here being that Windows wouldn't exist without Mac OS.

I don't believe in software theft by simply taking an idea and modifying it to be your own.

Others do...why do you think so many people say Android is a 1:1 copy of iOS despite them being as different as Mac OS and Xerox PARC?

So?

I wouldn't exist without the random person who knocked my moms books out her hands causing my parents to meet as he helped her pick them up...does that random person deserve ALL the credit?


You seem upset that good ideas are borrowed and adapted...if that's so, I suggest you leave reality as such a thing is rampant in all parts in all areas all of the time.

I used Macs and Windows PCs at that point in my life (granted I was 12) and I could never stand Macs really...While they were smoother overall and less prone to BS I feel the Windows has a better file browsing system and having the menu bar on top of each separate app is lightyears more useful than the finder bar IMO....

I feel that where Mac really wins is the attention to detail and the general cohesiveness of the system...it's fluid and everything looks like it belongs pleasing the eye as well. That combined with the fact that they are both good OSes (now I'm up to Windows 7 and OSX in my thoughts btw) puts Mac in the lead to a lot of people.

I'm simply grandfathered in, so to speak, to the menu bars and taskbar and the file browsing in Windows...but looking at Windows 8 if, after trying it, it doesn't appeal to me I may have to make my work PC experience (Mac) my home PC experience.

Well I could've said "stole from Xerox" which we know is not true. Nothing wrong with swindling, we all try to do that.

So would you be happy if the only computers and OS that existed was MACs?

Let us hope Gates doesn't use somebody as talentless as Isaacson. Good thing Jobs never read his own.

Two giants in the tech industry and they're still writing letters...
Interesting.

Well, no is has been utterly refuted, just as it is incontrovertably established that Android is a cheap, cheesy knockoff of iOS, and that Samsung is copying Apple's phone and tablet designs, just as they copied others designs before that. But, there will always be people like you who will claim that things that are proven aren't.

The reality is Microsoft blindly copied the Mac OS, much like Google is doing today with iOS. The interesting thing is Microsoft in the phone arena has actually come up with its own ideas for its new Mobile OS. I'd like to see more of the new Microsoft.

2 reasons I'd guess:

1. secrecy

2. intimacy

... in that order.

Where do I vote? I'm in. Garbage like this only serves to troll and derail threads. Since most forums and comments section on the internet are filled with nothing but Apple-bashing, yes, even apple fan sites, this is the only site I know of that has so far escaped that to some degree. I'm all for banning anyone who willfully tries to stir up shit. There's a billion other forums where they can do that and be applauded. But please, let's maintain a higher level of discourse here, and at least keep this place from becoming an Apple bash-fest.

If being a despicable businessman makes me the most wealthy person in the world (only reaso he isn't is because of his charities), then I hope I too can be that despicable.

Apple did something significantly different that Google. The concept of a GUI predated Xerox. The first significant GUI work started at the Stanford Institute of Research and was lead by a guy named Douglas Engelbart. He was the same guy credited with creating the first mouse. Many of his students later went to work at PARC, and other places, like Apple. Before Apple's team visiting Xerox, there were people already interested at Apple in GUIs. The plan was to get Jobs on Board with the idea. That is how the whole Xerox visit was hatched. To inspire Jobs.

Apple gave Xerox 100, 000 pre IP shares of Apple stock just for Apple to be able to take a tour of the research facilities. Split adjusted that equates to 800, 000 shares of Apple stock today. So, here is the first place Apple and Google differ. Apple actually paid Xerox for the privilege of checking out the Xerox goodies to essentially inspire Jobs. Apple also paid Engelbart $40, 000 for a license to use his mouse.

The second place where Apple and Google differ, is Apple didn't copy Xerox at all. Xerox's GUI was running on an expensive mainframe computer. Apple did not get to look at the underlying code. The Xerox Star was the product Xerox actually shipped. It cost $75, 000 dollars. Apple's system cost about $2, 500. So, Apple's engineers essentially figured out how to create a GUI from scratch. Google on the other hand 1) had inside access to Apple's plans (via Eric what's his name), 2) didn't pay Apple squat, 3) stole Java from Sun Microsystems (so it wouldn't have to spend years (like Apple) writing the underlying Code), and 4) did this to compete directly with Apple (Apple never competed with Xerox as Xerox never brought a consumer version of its product to market).

I never understand the point of these posts. Yes, I think we're all aware that people die everyday. Many, many people, old and young. You know why Steve's death was 'strange' for me? Because I've watched every single one of his keynotes for the past 15 years- many of them live. It's because I absolutely loved the company he built, the vision he had, and the philosophy he instilled. To me, there was noone like him in the field, and in general. Obviously I felt a personal connection with him- even though I never met him. I use and love so many of the products he personally envisioned and made into reality. I benefit everyday from the innovations both directly and indirectly attributed to him. This sentiment was echoed millions of times after his death. So yeah, I can also see why it was strange for BG, because of the relationship and the history they had. It's not everyday there's such a high profile death of someone at the peak of his career, the CEO of one of the most loved companies of the planet, that had such an effect on soe many people in such a tragic way. Stop trying to be obtuse and pretending you dont understand the strange bit.

You know how it goes. 'The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of a thousand is a statistic' or whatever. I can't get choked up about ramdom children whom I've never seen dying. I can only be affected by people I know, or feel I know. As the case with most human beings.

Built on the backs of WordPerfect and 123. Actually, thats not fair - Excel was and is pretty good, especially compared to 123. Then again it was birthed in the Mac division


Exchange? Please! Until 2010, Exchange was a complete house of cards. Now it's just mostly a house of cards. Don't sneeze!


Screwed over IBM with OS/2...


Active Directory still can't do 1/2 of what Network Directory Services could do in the late 90's. If Novell would have had the balls to release NDS for NT as a separate product that didn't require Netware at that one Comdex (one of the last Comdex's I attended) the world would be a different place indeed...


Has evolved into a really nice product with SBS 2011, but the original offering was just a bunch of products thrown together in a bundle that got you a slight price advantage.


Convicted of illegally starving out the competition - nice!


Windows mobile sucked! The web browser was completely unusable. WAP was a total joke! I paid for smartphone data for another 7 months before my contract expired when the first iPhone was released. Stupidest waist of money ever! I would have been WAY ahead if I had canceled, happily paid the termination fee and ditched that flaming pile of poo that was the Treo.


They were all products. Great, I wold not use. I would go with "successful due to lack of better alternatives"

Guess what - in the face of better alternatives, MS is floundering pretty badly!


Nothing to flame over but your memories of history is pretty out there...

It wasn't stolen, but it was given away - by Scully when Steve was out.

The comment at the launch of the iPhone - the "And we have patented it" - was aimed right at that moment in time.

Squarely.

Like most characterizations, all this is really shades of gray. I was impressed with Bill recently, because I thought he had the best quote when Steve passed away. Bill has found another niche in life with his philanthropy, which is insanely great. I think Steve may have appreciated Bill's philanthropy as much as anything Bill did in the computer industry.

I don't know about Apple paying Englebart anything (never heard that story) but I'm pretty sure nobody can give away pre-IPO shares, since at that point they don't actually exist. What they can do is give them an opportunity to buy shares at the pre-IPO price, which is a deal that few get. Usually the buy-in minimum is $1 million. This is probably what happened. Did Xerox take advantage of this opportunity? I don't know, never heard.


In a way. Microsoft had Apple over a barrel in 1985 and used that leverage to the max. It was a classic Bill Gates take no prisoners, I'm your partner and your worst enemy combined, sort of tactic.

I would be happy if the only computers that existed ran OS' that were from UNIQUE SOURCES. I would be happy if these OS' made the greatest possible effort to open the same files (so basically the world we have now; standardized media, document, etc. files) for compatibility within and without their various ecosystems around the world. I would be happy if these OS' competed in functionality, usability, and tightness/lightness of code WITHOUT stealing implementations from each other.

License them? Sure! Say we had four big OS', each with about a quarter of the market. One has an exceptionally better GUI than the rest and would dominate because of it. They should WANT to license that out to the others, specifically because one of the others has a much cleaner file system and yet another one takes advantage of better multitasking, or some such.

Rather than a duopoly, necessarily, I would have wanted a few more big operating systems. Not hundreds. Not dozens. Not even ten. But more than two. Right now we have The One That Everyone Uses Because They've Always Used It. It has tweaks out the wazoo but is only good because everyone has always used it. And we have The One You Use When You're Fed Up With That Other One. Less tweaking, but a better UI and a much smaller hill to climb if it's your first computer.

We should have greater shades than that. And no, the *NIX crowd isn't a solution. They're fine for a back-end, but they're not a solution.

I second this motion, as long as there is also agreement to stop beating the dead horse that Microsoft completely ripped off Apple to create Windows.

Xerox bought exactly $1M worth of Apple shares before the IPO - 100k shares at $10 ea. They sold almost immediately after the IPO and made $16M profit.

This transaction did not grant Apple rights to any IP. Instead, what Xerox gave Apple was access to the technology - see it work and, to the extent Xerox engineers were willing, see the underpinnings. What many people have forgotten is that Xerox sued Apple, claiming that the Mac stole the look and feel of the Star.

... and how did that work out for them?

It didn't. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the case was tossed out for legal reasons and was never tried. But I'm Just mentioning it to clarify facts, specifically to dispel the notion that Xerox traded IP for Apple shares.

You really can go overboard with the copying charges. Tell me, who did Microsoft copy when they developed Word? Word had an enormous influence on graphic design and printing.