“What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 … is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics,” said Microsoft’s partner group manager, Simon Aldous.
Following later that day, Microsoft’s communication manager Brandon LeBlanc issued a statement publicly dismissing this: “Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.” Ouch.
So, which Microsoft middle manager do we believe? The guy they pay to work with Microsoft’s army of partners and keep them happy? Or the spinning head of its (admittedly) great PR machine? Perhaps, a better question is: Who really cares?
Anyone who has spent any time with Vista or 7 will notice just how “pretty” they’ve made the operating system and how many of the effects are reminiscent of Mac and Linux desktop environments, but just different enough so as not to impose any copyright
infringement lawsuits on themselves.
It’s definitely appealing to that crowd in terms of beauty, functionality and visual-oriented task management. From where I sit, this is nothing but a good thing. It taps into the latent 3D graphical processing power of most modern PCs (and even makes good use of those with non-dedicated graphics capabilities) to enhance our ability to browse through files and surf the Web. Of course, I’m content with typing “dir” and seeing a list of white words on a black screen. Or perhaps green words on a black screen. (Ah, the monochrome days of my youth.)
PCs were going to go this way, anyway, and with all this power lying around, why not? I can’t imagine a different route for them to take other than becoming more 3D, except becoming more interactive with thought-control, which we are beginning to experiment with as a society.
The simple history of the matter is that Apple got their original idea of the graphical user interfaces as well as the mouse from Xerox, who were more than happy to give it away for a healthy share of stock in Apple Computers, Inc. Then Microsoft bought DOS from some other guy for peanuts and got Apple to reveal its graphical user interfaces. Then Microsoft combined what it learned of interfaces from Apple together with DOS to make Windows.
Apple then made a comeback by looking at Microsoft’s refinements and incorporating similar ideas into its interfaces, and later added the power of UNIX. Now, Microsoft is refining its own operating system to be more visual. The entire time Linux has sat in the background with the Gnome and KDE desktops combining enhancements from both operating systems while infusing its own ideas. In the end everyone is feeding on everyone, and the entire computer industry is better off for it. What I’d really like to see is the idea of multiple desktops take off.
Bottom line is that computing has moved from the old-style capitalistic competition and secrecy into an age of sharing and collaboration. With a long and storied history of “borrowing” ideas, concepts and the like from each other, it’s no wonder that the Open Source software movement has taken off. It’s not stealing anymore; it’s welcomed. People write programs and want others to look at them, copy them, take up the torch and improve upon them, for the benefit of all.
So does it really matter that Microsoft, Apple and Linux may “borrow” from one another? No. Not for you, the end-user, it only works toward a golden age of compatibility and unified experiences. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get too compatible, we don’t want a monoculture of virus-ridden PCs sickly eradicating one another by being too similar. So I say keep on keeping on, industry.
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Sharing is PC in computer world
Daily Emerald
November 16, 2009
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