[Petronski]

Everything done legally - and Microsoft hasn't "taken" anything from Apple.

Except that Apple took what Xerox showed them (in 16 hours with no code) and built upon that and built and built.

Microsoft has been dining out on Apple innovations for years and years.

And without Apple's determination to turn their Xerox PARC lessons into the personal Macintosh, there would be no Windows, and you're be memorizing keystroke combos for Wordperfect 14.2 to this day.

[KellyAdmirer]

The whole key to Apple's early success was the GUI - and that idea they got from Xerox, just by looking at their machines and "playing with them." They didn't have to see the code itself. There wasn't anything original about what Jobs did, all his people had to do was imitate Xerox, just like there wasn't much original about what Gates did when he bought the original code from IBM for $50k. Or are you implying that MSFT stole code from Apple? I don't think so.

The real problem here is the "holier than thou" attitude that somehow Jobs is this genius and Gates is a schmuck loser - I don't think so about that, either. Neither invented the wheel, both rode on others' inventions, and both are probably equally clean or dirty or however you want to look at it. Just don't lecture us about how wonderful Jobs is compared to Gates, because they are birds of a feather.

[ByDesign]

"Everything done legally - and Microsoft hasn't "taken" anything from Apple.
Except that Apple took what Xerox showed them (in 16 hours with no code) and built upon that and built and built."

No, they did'nt, and it's well documented. Apple's GUI was already mostly done, the major parts worked out by the Mac team, who documented their work.

Try using and actual Alto, and a first Gen Mac, and you'll see how flat out wrong you are. Then read the material avaiable about the development of the Alto and the Mac, and the people involved, and then say Apple "stole" anything.

It's simply not true, and you make yourself a bigger fool every time you spout off about it.