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Oh... my... God. They've really lost it in Redmond. Bill Gates will be in a Vegas hotel room with fifteen inch fingernails soon.

Do you think they actually do believe this crap they spout, or are they pre-emptively rewriting history again?

They can't really be serious about someone trying to copy that garbage..... right?

This looks like a seriously huge lawsuit in the making; millions of windows users will want money for damages due to Longhorn's "windows-effect" makes them cock-eyed.

"Aero"!!!! Amazing!!! Of course, XP was pure coincidence too!! I wonder if Bill Gates has a poster of Steve Jobs up in his bedroom.

Oh God! I'd rather not think about it!

John Davis

I believe Microsoft's concerns are directed more towards the developers of Gnome and KDE GUIs that provide front ends for Linux. They are heavily Windows inspired in their current incarnations. It is not unreasonable to think that future versions of these projects would continue to borrow heavily from Windows.

Right now Microsoft pays far mor attention to Linux as a threat than to Apple and OS X.

Irregardless, Microsoft has perfected the art of copying the work of others. They copyrighted that claim way back in 1985 with Windows 1.0 anyway. It doesn't matter if they are referring to Linux GUIs or not, it isn't "copying Longhorn" when they themselves copied heavily from Apple first long before Longhorn ever went into development. It would be a case of Linux copying from Apple via Microsoft is all...

What is MS slogan for that mess?

"Catch the Windows' wave" with Max Headroom advertising MS?

I would not be surprised after seeing how original MS is...

MS has always taken a good idea and bastardizes it with 5-6 upgrades/patches to make it half as good as the original.

I find it amusing that (In Europe at least) "Aero" is a chocolate candy bar that's full of holes! :>)

Copy M$? Yeah right and Bill Clinton said "I did not have sex with that woman". Well since Bill G. and his gang have the courts in thier pockets they will probable get by with ripping Apple off agin. The first time was back in the mid 90's when they came out with the first Windoz 90 something. Looked a lot like Apple's System 7, and they got by with it because at time Apple and the great Steve had parted ways and Apple was so broke from bad management that they couldn't afford a lawsuite. I know because I was working for them at the time. Times have changed and now Apple has a lot of bucks and Steve is back. I hope that Apple screws Bill big time if M$ rips them off again.

Apple won't sue, mainly because the Office-killer isn't here yet. And with OpenOffice delaying their version until 2005 or 2006, we'll be even more dependent on M$ for an office suite for a while.

Regardless. What does "irregardless" mean?

Oh someone might steal the "look and Feel" of Longhorn the way M$ STOLE that from Apple for Windows 3.0 and everything after it ??

BTW - they did the same thing a 5-6 years ago with 10,000 lines of code from Apple's QT.

Tell me something credible, M$ should worry about OTHERS stealing from them??

LOL. Do you think OpenOffice for mac wasn't delayed for no reason. It was put on the back burner because another corporation is already using the OpenOffice source as a basis for a Mac version. They will re-contribute back to the community their modifications ala Safari. Can you guess who?

"Irregardless" - the second most mispronounced word in the English language behind "mute" (e.g. It's a mute point). Is moot that hard to remember?

Thanks for the info Stingerman. It all makes sense now. I guess I'll shut my hole and not complain about OO being delayed.

first irregardless/regardless and now double negatives. what da hell???

Stingerman: "wasn't delayed for no reason"???

I'm guessing you're referring to StarOffice and the MadHatter project from SUN? Hopefully you're not referring to Apple 'cause Safari is a hack of the Mozilla codebase; I was under the impression that when you "contribute back to the community" that you improve, not make it unstable.

They really don't get it. They think that what makes the Mac special is the eye candy. Like usual, Microsoft thinks that they can copy the look and forget the feel. The Mac effects add to the visual concept of the interface. The Genie effect makes you get the feeling that the programs are being placed on and removed from the dock - improving the users understanding. The fact that it is cool looking is just a classing implementation of a good concept. How do these effects help a windows user get a better understanding of what is happening with his computer? The answer is it doesn't. When Microsoft copied the mac to make windows, they did the same thing - they gave it a GUI - a difficult one to manage, but it was a GUI. Unfortunatly, the masses will blindly buy into it.

Man, there's a lot of misinformed people out there:

From tthomcarl: "The first time was back in the mid 90's when they came out with the first Windoz 90 something. Looked a lot like Apple's System 7, and they got by with it because at time Apple and the great Steve had parted ways and Apple was so broke from bad management that they couldn't afford a lawsuite".

Wrong. Apple was not so broke that they couldn't defend themselves. Two things happened depending on which rip-off you're talking about. First, in an original software development between Apple and Microsoft circa 1982, Apple inadvertently gave them permission to use the Mac OS to develop software, even their own OS, which they did. The second time was for Windows 95 and Sculley caved because Bill threatened to kill Office for the Mac. They did actually sue MS and lost. Apple: Great technological innovators, lousy businessmen.

Second, from grammer: "Hopefully you're not referring to Apple 'cause Safari is a hack of the Mozilla codebase;"

Wrong. Safari was built from Konqueror, not Mozilla. The Mozilla group was pissed that they didn't use Mozilla.

Fast User switching on a Mac first... spare me (XP first). Windowed interfaces first... again spare me (Xerox did it). Mac GUI is pretty, but a far cry from a Windows Interface. Aero looks and feels nothing like OSX, so why bother saying that it was 'stolen'?

Only Mac zealots would actually look at Aero and see anything Mac-like on it. They would also say something like - 'irregardless'.

Well thats a switch. They can't steal from themselves so I guess they are worried that what they have been doing for years will happen to them.

"Mac GUI is pretty, but a far cry from a Windows Interface."

One more thing to be thankful for!

BTW, I use both.

RP - You're right on the Fast User Switching. Steve said so himself. He openly admits that this is something that windows does much better and that they're copying it. That's one thing.

The wondowed interface was a Xerox thing, but it wasn't stolen. Zerox was an R&D;facility and one of the things Jobs saw there was a little winsow/mouse thing. Xerox weren't actually going to do anything with it. They created the concept, bt it was fully developed by Apple.

So in 1984, the Mac is released. In 1993, when I bought a Win 3.1 system (because it was affordable and I mistakenly thought it was like the mac that I couldn't afford), PC using friends used to really take the mickey becasue I wasn't using command line DOS (A real man's OS, according to them). That's NINE YEARS LATER and microsoft was only just starting to catch up.

I think windows has come a long way, but in terms of a user interface, it's still behind and in terms of the stuff under the hood, I just don't trust it. Just look at how you uninstall something on windows and compare it to the same thing on a mac (i.e.simple drag to the trash). No DLLs! The equivalent to DLLs are kept local to an application package and only Apple updates system level library stuff. And it can keep multiple versions too, so if an app needs an older version, it can run that one instead.

I use Win2KPro at work, and i have to say, it's really stable, but it's maintained by professionals and is a standard hardware and software configuration. Even so, it's less stable than my 3 year old mac that has really not been looked after particularly well.

RP

I am so sick of people bringing up the Xerox connection. Yes, for heavens sake, Apple used ideas from Xeroxs original GUI, but did not copy it. On top of that, they received the rights to use the ideas explicitely from Xerox, they did not steal it.

Microsoft lifted not only the ideas but directly copied many features, in the process violating copyright laws. Microsoft and Apple were in an extended court battle, with Microsoft using their ONLY ORIGINAL THOUGHT to wear down companies in extended court battles until either their competitor goes bankrupt, can no longer afford the court battles and settles out of court(which Apple did)

Oh, wait a minute. This tactic isn't Microsoft's ORIGINAL THOUGHT, they stole it from other ethicly corrupt corporations and have refined to state of the art.

By the way, I'm not a Mac zealot nor am I a Microsoft apologist or TROLL.

Complain all you want y'all. These videos have nothing to do with Aero - this is Avalon (the new graphics subsystem). None of you have even seen Aero yet. Until then, your comments only show prejudgement.

The ONLY usefulness that I think these effects can serve is as a screensaver. They use too many resources to be useful, and would cause any user to freak-out if they looked at these effects too long.

RP, you seem to be devoid of any factual knowledge concerning Apple so please give it a rest. You only show yourself to be an idiot.

"The Mozilla group was pissed that they didn't use Mozilla."

And the Opera group actually threatened to stop developing for the Mac if Apple didn't use their engine. Ohhhhhhh, they seem to be even more ignorant than RP!

note to editors:
no wonder i never visit your site.

those links are of the Avalon 2d/3d real-time windowing model for Longhorn, which was designed for 128+mb VRAM, unlike QExtreme.

Here's the "Aero" UI:
http://winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_aero.asp

also, these "effects" are all demonstrations of the underlying technology, not intended to be "features"... so much misinfo out there.

From WordNet (r) 1.7:

irregardless
adv : in spite of everything; without regard to drawbacks; "he
carried on irregardless of the difficulties" [syn: regardless,
irrespective, disregardless, no matter, disregarding]

http://www.apple-history.com/frames/?
An Interseting dialogue bettween Bruce Horn & Jeff Raskin (both worked on the Macintosh project & both worked at Xerox Parc) about Apple, Xerox & the development of the GUI....I'm tired of hearing the BS about Xerox Parc from PC centric users. Do some research the story is out there. There also used to be some very good articles at Mackido.com about what was developed when & by who...I'm not sure if they are still there.

re: erik
is it for Windows 70's?
Even windows is not for 'graphic' people, at least they should hire someone who knows something about design. It's not that expensive actually. And it can make windows looks good. Like OSX.

re: bezier

okay maybe i didn't fully explain things in my last post. the "unusable effects" that some of those movies show are for demonstration. the movies are from win hec 2003 where they demoed the capabilities of the new model.

however, the underlying functionality will be applied in Longhorn.

"Examples of visual effects that will be enabled in Windows Longhorn include: Windows tumbling onto the screen. Rotating windows. Warped windows. Alpha blending between windows. Threads. Events and other synchronization objects."

"The Windows Longhorn Driver Model allows for the visual effects seen on a user's desktop to scale relative to the available graphics hardware. For example, the experience of viewing Windows Longhorn on hardware with capabilities equivalent to a high end DirectX 9-compliant graphics chip will be much richer than Windows Longhorn displayed on baseline legacy graphics hardware."

trex:

ir?re?gard?less ††

adv. Nonstandard
Regardless.


[Probably blend of irrespective, and regardless.]
Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

^from dictionary.com

So sorry, because I didn't believe that the Mac is the paragon of innovation - I must be an idiot. A little hard to refute facts sometimes. However, occasionally I am wrong; I should not have said 'stolen' in reference to PARC, 'copied' or 'borrowed heavily' should have been used instead. After all, Aero stylings (based on Wininformant screen shots) are obviously 'stolen' from OSX. When Windows takes a feature, it called 'stealing', when Macs derive a feature it's called, 'we thought of it first, but hadn't had time to implement it yet'.

Irregardless (sic), the point of the posting was not get everyone all buggered up, rather to point out two facts:

1. As stated before, Macs are not the paragon of innovation (see previous two examples). Innovation does not begin or end with pretty effects.
2. Anyone purporting that Aero is based off of OSX doesn't have a clue - unless of course they have managed to get more than a couple screenshots from an OS that has yet to see public exposure with final stylings. Not likely. I am sure that as soon as it is released we can hear all about how the Mac 'innovated' all of the features first...

I find it funny that Apple/Mac users and supporters love to chastise MS for "stealing" the GUI concept, look, and feel from Apple, but refuse to acknowledge that Apple stole it from Xerox. Or did you not know that fact? I can't wait to hear the excuses and BS as to why that is not true.

all of you... get a life

Apple paid for Xerox's technology through stock. M$ did not. Apple used that technology to create/invent the mouse cursor, and icons. M$ did not. Apple also used this technology to create the menubar. M$ did not. Apple inovated. M$ stole.

still two years away. OS X will be closer to OS XI by then.

The original programmers at xerox ended up WORKING for Apple. Not to mention that the Xerox GUI was basic and Apple built upon the idea and added a lot of features to it.

This is not a new idea, UNIX has had this for a WHILE. The only difference is that GUI has been slapped on.

Have any of you actually used a Mac for serious work (in my case web development?)? Apple make so many assumptions about how you use a computer, it makes it difficult to take seriously. The basis for many of Apple's recent "innovations" stem from the GUI. The underlying OS is Unix, and employs many well established Unix elements, Samba being a good example. The effectiveness of the GUI is of course a matter of taste, although I find it too much myself.

I personally believe Macs are pretty much for not very bright housewives, people who need WiFi products branded as "Airport Extreme". And that seems to be Apples great strength, marketing. Lets not forget that up until a few years ago the fastest Mac ran at 800MHz and despite the hype, they really were slow. Although people keep telling me that MacOS X runs fine on Macs 2 or 3 years old, it really has to be seen to be believed just how dated the entire process feels, even with their eye candy. Many of the GUI elements very quickly get in the way, and the Dock itself has limits as an interface for just about all interaction with the machine.

The best example, and I believe the biggest insight into whom Apple see their customers as, is the fact that they ship with single button mice. And don't bother flaming me about elegant design, and well thought out interaction metaphors, any serious user beyond age 6 needs more buttons on their mice.

Apple, in my view, have missed the point. They are a dwindling minority selling specialist software and hardware. They are appealing to the same market that is really impressed by annoying Flash splash screens. Microsoft seem intent on killing the desktop and speeding the shift towards alternative interfaces, Media Centres and the like. The days of sitting in front of a box to send mail and do your finances are drawing to a close. Many of the pro Mac comments above revolve around the kind of interaction with a computer that will die within the next decade or so. I personally think the appeal of bouncing widgets and ropey Flash-like animations will dwindle. Given Apple's shrinking market share, it can't be good.

ir·re·gard·less (ĭr'ĭ-gärd'lĭs) pronunciation
adv. Nonstandard.

Regardless.

[Probably blend of IRRESPECTIVE and REGARDLESS.]

USAGE NOTE Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir– prefix and –less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

http://www.answers.com/irregardless&r=67