Holy crap, if I didn’t read this I never would’ve believed it to be true. Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet is actually accusing Apple of copying Vista.
No, it’s not satire.
Let’s go point by point.
1. New Leopard Desktop: Not a whole lot different from Vista’s Aero and Sidebar.
Well, see, it’s not all that terribly different save for a few tweaks from Mac OS X which has been out… What… 6 years already? I guess, if you’re saying they look alike, then Microsoft copied Apple, huh?
2. New Finder: Many of the same capabilities as the integrated “Instant Search†in Vista (the subsystem that Google is trying to get the Department of Justice to rule as being anti-competitive). The new Leopard Coverflow viewing capability looked almost identical to Vista’s Flip 3D to me.
Coverflow was built into iTunes before Vista was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, Mary Jo. As for Instant Search, well, so far from what I’ve heard it isn’t all that instant. Spotlight, on the other hand, again was integrated into Tiger before Vista ever was a concept. Oh well. So much for that.
3. QuickLook: Live file previews — just like the thumbnail preview capability available in Vista.
No it’s not. It’s a lightweight preview viewer. OS X has always had this feature, they’ve just added some oomph to it. Previewing thumbnails is not what Quicklook is, though, and if Mary had bothered to actually watch the videos of the demo, she’d understand that Quicklook is a lot more than representative icons.
4. 64-bitness: Leopard is the first 64-bit only version of a desktop client. Vista comes in 32-bit and 64-bit varieties. And most expect Windows Seven will still be available in 32-bit flavors. Until 32-bit machines go away, it seems like a good idea to offer 32-bit operating systems.
Obviously spoken from someone who lives in Windows world where something is either or. There is one version of Mac OS. It’s 32 bit and 64 bit simultaneously. As far as 64 bits, it runs stuff faster if you have it, but it’ll run just fine on any Intel Core Duo Mac. It also runs in 32 bit mode on a Power PC G4 and G5. Try running Windows Vista on a chip that’s two generations Old, Mary Jo, and let me know how that goes. This isn’t the Windows world where Microsoft sells two versions of the OS.
5. Core animation: Not sure what the Vista comparison is here. The demo reminded me of Microsoft Max photo-sharing application. The WWDC developers attending the Jobs keynote didn’t seem wowed with this functionality.
You don’t even know what it is, Mary Jo. Core Animation is not an application, it’s a graphics framework for application developers. For God’s sake, if you’re going to write about something, have a clue what it is first. Think OpenGL if you really need something to compare it to.
6. Boot Camp. You can run Vista on your Mac. Apple showed Vista running Solitaire in its WWDC demo. But I bet those downloading the 2.5 million copies of Boot Camp available since last year are running a lot of other Windows business apps and games.
Yeah, and? I mean, I’m sure all the Windows folks would never run OS X. Oh wait… They can’t. Never mind.
7. Spaces: A feature allowing users to group applications into separate spaces. I haven’t seen anything like in in Vista, but the audience didn’t seem overly impressed by it.
Oh right… So that means they didn’t copy it. Cool. Try to stay with your story here, huh? I know Apple didn’t invent virtual desktop technology, but the title of this article relates to Apple copying Vista. I guess this one just slipped in so she could touch on everything.
8. Dashboard with widgets. Isn’t this like the Vista Sidebar with gadgets?
Sure… Which is ironic because OS X Tiger has had Widgets since before Vista existed. Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets) has been making Widgets for quite awhile. Sure it’s like it, proving that if anything, Microsoft copied everyone else.
9. iChat gets a bunch of fun add-ons (photo-booth effects, backrops, etc.) to make it a more fully-featured videoconferencing product. The “iChat Theater†capability Jobs showed off reminded me of Vista’s Meeting Space and/or the new Microsoft “Shared View†(code-named “Tahitiâ€) document-sharing/conferencing subsystems.
And? So are you going to tell me that Microsoft invented IM teleconferencing and screensharing now, too?
10. Time Machine automatic backup. Vista has built-in automatic backup (Volume Shadow Copy). It doesn’t look anywhere near as cool as Time Machine. But it seems to provide a lot of the same functionality.
Ummmmm… Not quite… Again, if she actually watched the demo instead of planning what spin she was going to put on it, she’d understand that it’s not actually the same thing. I found a great piece talking about people who say Time Machine is a rip job:
The critics miss the point by a light year. The innovation here is not automated data backup, which is really the technology we’re talking about here. The innovation is making that technology accessible to people who are not technically inclined. My mom (yes, it’s a mom-test) can understand Time Machine because it provides an experience that capitalizes on familiar metaphors for moving through time, namely backwards and forwards.
How about that…
She closes with this idiocy:
Granted, I am not an Apple user. So I’m sure I’m glossing over some subtleties regarding what’s new and cool in Leopard. But given how often I hear the “Redmond, Start Your Photocopiers†message, I was thinking that Leopard would be light years ahead of Vista.
I’d say that considering you didn’t understand half of what you saw, you wouldn’t know if something was light years ahead anyway.
The bottom line is this. Microsoft and Apple and every flavor of Linux do copy ideas from each other all the time. Calling any one company out for copying the other leaves you open to critics who will destroy you for missing obvious examples in the reverse.
One important thing, though, is that when you’re calling into question who copied whom, you may want to also have some kind of mental timeline about when things happened. Unless Apple used Time Machine to go back and change Tiger after Vista launched, her chronology is so far off, it’s laughable.
[tags]mary jo foley, apple, mac, os x, vista, windows[/tags]