Actually, I think Windows was ripped off from Xerox. I believe Xerox had a graphical interface, network, and mouse before anyone else even dreamed of these. Xerox believed these things were a novelty. Microsoft and Apple realized the value.
I sure am a Firefox fan. Had used Mozilla for a couple of year. Firefox is a little better. IE sure likes spyware.
That Xerox GUI was called GEM. You could still see a chunk of it if using early versions of Ventura Publisher running under DOS.
I actually sold personal computers back in the mid-80's and dealt with this stuff on a daily basis - here's the short version on all this:
The 8-bit Apple II ran Apple DOS, which was developed to make use of the "incredibly cool" floppy drive (Disk II) which Steve Wozniak had created. The Apple III (and the improved 16-bit Apple II) ran Apple DOS's replacement, ProDOS. Then along came the Lisa in about '83, which used a GUI (graphical user interface) "inspired by" the work at Xerox PARC. Xerox also developed and sold a box using their GUI (the Alto, as in "Palo Alto"), but they didn't really see it as a core part of their business. Apple learned a lot from the Lisa effort and the result (January, 1984) was the first, "insanely great", 128K Macintosh. I actually owned one of these (autographs inside the case and all) and eventually donated it to the Computer Museum.
MS DOS was based on QDOS (written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products), while MS Windows was one of at least two PC GUIs (the other that I remember was Digital Research's GEM) developed in the mid-80's to compete with the Mac. If you think Windows is a pain now, you should have seen v1.0. I was very glad I had a Mac at the time.
If you're at all interested in the early days of the "revolution", I recommend Fire in the Valley by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. It was first published in 1984 (which is the copy I have) and then revised in the late 90's according to Amazon. A great read with lots of insights into the "players" like Jobs, Gates, Wozniak, and many others.
**Actually, I think Windows was ripped off from Xerox. I believe Xerox had a graphical interface, network, and mouse before anyone else even dreamed of these. Xerox believed these things were a novelty. Microsoft and Apple realized the value. **
Xerox did'nt invent the mouse, but PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) reseachers did invent Ethernet, the laser printer and Postcript (the founder of Adobe left PARC when they showed no interest in Postcript), and developed several key proprietary interface elements that were part of the Alto computer OS, which later evolved into the Star. (http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/alto.html)
Xerox (as usual) had no clue what to do with it, were hemming and hawing about getting into personal computers, and just showed it in dog and pony shows (there were several versions of the demo - the full monty with all top secret technology displayed for VIPS, or more fluff shows for the rest). While a lot of it was top secret, the existence of the Alto was well known in the then-small computer industry, Xerox researchers had published papers about the technology, and many people had seen it before the execs at Xerox stopped the demoes, when the executive suite finally realized what they were sitting on and could produce themselves as a heavy competitor to the Apple II and PCs in office environments - the Alto was conceived and produced as a business tool, not a personal computer.
Apple and Xerox were in talks early on, for Apple to produce a Xerox-branded computer or to get guidance from Apple on how to enter the field. Apple had Xerox invest in 100,000 shares of Apple stock, with the stipulation by Jobs among others that Apple's engineers get a demo of the Alto and associated technoloy at PARC, and to pick the PARC engineer's heads about their technology. As Jobs later put it, they'd get a serious "peek behind the Kimono". Jeff Raskin, the "father" of the Mac, who'd started the Mac project as a continuation of his college research in GUI and a truly user-friendly computer, an "everyman" computer, knew guys at PARC, had already seen the Alto, and pushed Jobs to get the demo. Jobs was'n on board 100% the Mac wagon yet, and Rasking wanted the demos as a proof of concept for Jobs.
There were two demos of the Alto. There were some major fights within Xerox about the demos, some saying that since Xerox was going to be using Apple to build computers, they should share technology, others saying the demo would be a daylight raid of their crown jewels, some at PARC refusing to be part of the demo, and refusing to show even a fragment of code - but a compromise was made, giving Apple the fluff show. The Mac team, with Jobs, showed up, watched the demo, asked some pointed questions, and left.
Apple returned two days later, asking to see more (remember, Raskin had seen the secret stuff), and after considerable pressure from above within Xerox, Apple got the full top-secret Alto demo with Smalltalk (a precursor to object oriented programming) and all associated technologies like the mouse, windows based interface, networking, documents with text and images, etc... They were allowed to talk programming with the Alto team, and while they still saw no code, they got a huge, huge insight into how they accomplished the Alto GUI, which had things nobody had seen before, like overlapping windows, and smalltalk, a revolutionary programming concept. The Apple/Mac team had done their homework, and their questions by all accounts were very targeted and specific, and they also saw things that were never seen before - and they also saw things they already had, and saw it as a proof of concept for their own ideas.
The story goes, Jobs left the meeting, went back to Cupertino, and demanded that they scrap all work on the Mac so far and incorporate most of what they'd seen in Palo Alto. However, it's been said most of the concepts had already been developed concurrently in Cupertino, and while the Mac team was heavily influenced by the demos, it was more conceptual than actual execution, or so it's told. At the very least, by his own admission, the demo lit the lightbulb over Jobs' head, and he became the Mac champion and started diverting as many resources within Apple to the Mac as he could. Apply as much of the Jobs Reality Distortion Field to that as you wish.
Later, after Xerox had (stupidly, IMHO) divested their stock position (before the run-up, losing Xerox millions), Jobs approached Xerox to license Smalltalk, and he was denied. So, in ever-so-Jobsian arrogance, he hired the head of Smalltalk, Tesler, to work for the Mac team, along with many other key PARC engineers. While Apple never saw actual code, he did eventually get many of the minds behind the ideas.
The whole story is more than a bit murky - Raskin, the true "father" of the Mac, knew many of the engineers on the bleeding edge of GUI concepts, having gone through college with them. Many of them ended up at PARC, and he'd visit and see the PARC technologies. Raskin was developing similar concepts at Apple, who knows, possibly some of his ideas were used at PARC. The world of the GUI was very small then, most of them knew each other, and "overlap" of ideas and concepts common. Who knows what belonged to whom, who invented what, and where ideas ended up.
But, the important issue is this: Apple had a business agreement with Xerox that included the sharing of technology - specifically the Alto. Was their utilization of the concepts "theft", when they had ostentiably paid for it? Several key players at PARC have since stated that they knew letting Apple in was a bad, bad idea - but if the executive suite ordered them to show Apple, was it really Apple's fault? Xerox never said 'Okay, here's the Alto, but you can't use anything you see". It's true that no license was ever agreed upon, which i believe was the basis for the lawsuit Xerox later brought, but Xerox lost. Both sides knew what was happening, and while there was some dispute, in the end, Xerox voluntarily showed the technology to Apple.
Apple even told the Xerox folk at PARC about the Lisa, a ultra-top secret project at Apple at the time (the Apple III, or Lisa, had an embrionic version of the Mac OS, but was very klunky and buggy, and the Lisa failed, soon eclipsed by the Mac). They told Xerox they were working on a GUI. It's not as if Apple showed up for a free lunch and a cool computer demo to fill out a slow day.
It's hard to say "theft" in this story. Apple paid for access, knew what they were paying for, were up front who was going and what they were working on. They did'nt swipe code, and all they did was watch a demo, and ask some questions. Theft? Or mind-boggingly stupid decision from a company (Xerox) that has the most talent of any other corporation of shooting itself in the foot?
Windows was a similar tale of Apple pointing the gun right their own foot and pulling the trigger, all the while saying "This won't hurt a bit!". Microsoft had received two prototype Macs at their Redmond campus for the developers working on Excel for the Mac before the Mac went public (by some acounts the two machines were locked in an office with papered over windows, and the access was VERY limited), with an oral agreement between Jobs and Gates that MS NOT steal any ideas from the Mac OS. MS had the working code for the Mac, and Gates immediately started the Windows project, he himself said he was a huge, huge fan of the Mac when he first saw it, and he wanted the GUI for MS - and he got it.
This may have been one of Jobs' worst mistakes in a long line of big mistakes, if true (and by all accounts it is), trusting Gates/MS with prototype machines and source code without an army of lawyers and paperwork locking Gates into what he could use and what he could'nt - or bringing the MS programmers to Cupertio and carefully controlling what they had access to. Gates laughed his way all to the bank, and his comments later about it are even worse when you realize Jobs gave him the keys to the house so Gates could help himself while Jobs was away.
The whole Xerox/Apple story is now the stuff of urban legends, but I was lucky to have a father who worked for Xerox as a corporate officer in CA who knew many of the key players, and got some insight into the story from him, and I believe the version told in the book "Dealers of Lightining, Xerox PARC and the dawn of the computer age" by Michael Hiltzik is the closest one to the version my father told me, and I tried to relate above. The book is a fascinating read about a very unique campus, and any computer fan should get a copy.
(Newbie screen name, been reading FR for years, you'll be seeing this screen name now, i can't remember the old one)
And yes, I use a Mac, a dual 2 ghz G5 and 23" Cinema, and I also have a Toshiba Satellite running XP, and I like them both. Mac vs. Windows arguments are pretty boring, having heard them for over 12 years now. They're tools, it's what you do with them that counts. A lousy artist is still a lousy artist even if you give them $150 brushes, and a Mac or Xp machine or Linux box in the hands of a clueless operator is a doorstop.