[Tribune7]

Microsoft stealing windows from MAC. Apple stoled it first.

One more reason why I find it hard to get indignant over software piracy.

[antiRepublicrat]

Microsoft stealing windows from MAC. Apple stoled it first.

One more reason why I find it hard to get indignant over software piracy.

The idea was first envisioned by Vanaver Bush in the 40s, extended by Douglas Engelbart (inventor of the mouse) in the 50s and 60s, and most of his engineers went on to work at Xerox PARC to continue it more, where they developed the Alto and Star.

Later, Apple offered Xerox a chance to invest in Apple for letting them take tours of PARC to see their GUI technology. Apple already had an OS almost finished, but they took the basic idea of movable windows, but added a lot to it to make it actually work, like double-clicking icons, dragging, pull-down menus, a menubar, and a trash can. It's this fully-usable, finished product that was copied by Microsoft.

So, yes, Engelbart, Xerox, Apple and Microsoft did build on the ideas of others. But of all the players, the credit should go like this:

• Bush thought of it
• Engelbart expanded the concept and created the critical mouse
• Xerox made it work (using Engelbart's engineers)
• Apple made it affordable and usable for the masses (using Xerox's engineers)
• Microsoft basically just copied