Swordmaker, you should calm down. This is simply an internet forum for an exchange of ideas and opinions. Aren’t you going a bit overboard? ;-)
As far as I am concerned both Apple/Jobs and Microsoft/Gates should share the credit/responsibility of being both good/evil.
You seem to blame Microsoft for lawsuits against them but forgive Apple for the lawsuits against them. Isn’t that favoritism on your part?
I have worked on both PCs and Apples so that I have no dog in this hunt. I have never, nor do I see now, any great difference between the two operating systems except in the GUI, which you have mentioned. Who stole what is still unknown. Did Jobs steal from Gates? Probably. Did Gates steal from Jobs? Probably. ;-) Initially, Gates, was, after all, contracted to Apple by Jobs to write Jobs’ software for him, right? Are you saying then that Gates has no right to the software?
Do you work for Apple or are somehow connected by way of contract? LOL
No, I do not work for Apple. I am interested in the truth, not the continued promulgation of these false "factoids" that have been running around the Internet for years and have gotten life of their own. . . and get repeated and repeated and repeated. I maintain the Apple Ping list for over 700 of our Fellow Freepers who have asked me to do so. . . and they also expect me to correct the false claims with the truth.
I DO think that Microsoft is more evil than Apple. I've experienced it. . . through my friend. I've put up with their less than even good products for years (and made a lot of money because of their less than good products), and seen from the inside of the industry who-stole-from-who, and it usually is not Apple stealing from Microsoft.
Yes, Apple contracted with Bill Gates and Microsoft for specified software and the contract specified that Apple would own the software when the job was done. Bill Gates ignored that portion of the contract. . . and also used his access to portions of Apple's code to add to his other projects. . . and then released projects that were supposed to belong to Apple, as Microsoft products. Apple gave Microsoft access to the Mac to write software for it. Microsoft lifted the GUI.
Apple's CEO at the time executed an agreement with Microsoft when that happened and retroactively gave Bill Gates' company an OK to use certain elements of the GUI specifically for Windows 1.0. When Apple found that Microsoft continued using Apple's GUI elements in Windows 2. 0 and Windows 3, Apple sued for copyright infringement.
The judge in the case, before it reached the jury, decided that informal agreement extended for ALL elements of Apple's GUI for any Windows development that Microsoft might make, ignoring the limitations to Windows 1.0 and the time limitations specifically written in the agreement. He only found that of the 193 copyrighted items in Apple's GUI that had not been ceded to Microsoft by that agreement was the Trashcan name. . . which subsequently became the Recycle bin.
There are many who think someone, or a company who shall go nameless, got to the Judge in light of such a strange decision when the agreement was so specifically limited.