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:
So it's Bush's fault! :-)
Microsoft basically just copied
Silly statements like that are why nobody takes you seriously.
Funny you forgot to mention Xerox sued Apple over stealing their GUI. Apple Mac's are little more than an ascetic in the history of computers - clearly Microsoft made the GUI affordable and usable by the masses (that is why MS has 90% of the market and Apple has 3%)
You mean it REALLY IS BUSH'S FAULT???????????