Microsoft innovation, or not

Dear Bob ...I have to take issue with your current column and the parallel it drew between Apple's use of PARC Labs' GUI and Microsoft's use of Apple's GUI ("Barbarians at the Gates," Keep the Joint Running, 7/7/2008).Apple offered PARC a million dollars' worth of Apple stock if PARC would give Apple permission to use the GUI concept in a computer. Microsoft blackmailed Apple into "licensing" the GUI concept to

Dear Bob ...

I have to take issue with your current column and the parallel it drew between Apple's use of PARC Labs' GUI and Microsoft's use of Apple's GUI ("Barbarians at the Gates," Keep the Joint Running, 7/7/2008).

Apple offered PARC a million dollars' worth of Apple stock if PARC would give Apple permission to use the GUI concept in a computer. Microsoft blackmailed Apple into "licensing" the GUI concept to it, which is an entirely different matter. Not to mention which, the GUI developed by Apple had significant differences from PARC's GUI, which most agree are major improvements over PARC's concept. The MS GUI was (and is) simply a photocopy of the Mac GUI.

And on top of that, Apple has long innovated in a wide variety of ways. (Microsoft has never innovated at all -- which may sound like a rather radical thing to say, but I'll stand by it and will argue against any claim of "MS innovation" that I ever hear.) As Byte Magazine said in 1994:

"It would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry for the past decade as a massive effort to keep up with Apple. In 1984, critics derided the Mac for its appliance-like simplicity, but it went on to pioneer or popularize almost every innovation in personal computing: the GUI, desktop publishing, built- in networking, plug and play, integrated multimedia, API-based software development, visual programming, hypertext, 24-bit color, the global clipboard, undo, voice control, built-in color calibration, dynamic memory allocation, SCSI, and even 3 1/2-inch floppy drives. Apple's R&D lab, located in Cupertino, California, is the inspirational R&D center for the entire industry."

No one will ever say anything even remotely close to that about Microsoft. (Unless they're being paid by Microsoft.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm one of those people who has long loved Apple's products and hated the company itself for its indescribable arrogance. But give credit where it's due. Apple's engineers are brilliant. That's why Bill Gates built his company and career on copying Apple's ideas. And these days, the copying is so blatant as to be almost comical, if not pathetic. I mean, jeez -- look at the Vista start button. It's the Windows logo on top of an element from the OS X GUI. Has Microsoft become so fantastically lazy that they can't even be bothered to think up their own skins?

Come on, Bob. You're a smart guy. You know better. Microsoft has been spitting in our faces for well over a decade. Please don't be one of the MS apologists who insists that it's raining.

- Innovationophile

Dear Innovationophile ...