Sigh.
I am surprised you never saw the big fights all over the internet when some tech reviewers wrote articles about features that Apple stole from Windows. I suppose I am going to have to help you out, since you can’t appear to be able to use a search engine:
“Apple Mac OS X Leopard Preview: Who’s the Copycat Now?”
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/macosx_leopard_preview.asp
Top 10 features that Apple stole from Windows
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/macosx_leopard_preview.asp
I am sure you will find more if you looked.
“Windows marketshare is about a lot of things, both legal and illegal, but none of them are quality of the software”
Just keep telling yourself that. :)
It never falis to amaze me about the dichotomy of the thinking of Apple fanboys. The Apple fanboys will swear from here to Timbuctu that the iPod has the biggest market share, because it’s superior to every other MP3 player out there. At the same time, the same Apple fanboys will swear with a straight face that Windows has an even bigger market share by far than the iPod has in MP3’s, but then that as nothing to do with quality or the sheer volume of apps that Windows has.
“Windows users have been waiting for a usable Windows successor to XP for about eight years. They’re buying because there’s finally something worth buying.”
Win 7 is an excellent operating system, but that doesn’t no one was doing any work with XP or Vista before Win 7 came out, because they were “not usable”. Both operating systems are very usable. Most of the world’s work which is done on computers are done on XP and Vista, and that has been the case for at least 6 years.
“I’ve seen some of the smartest people become dumb as a rock when it comes to computers.”
Funny. I have seen the direct opposite of that.
64-bit: Not copied, inevitable. Either that or they're all copying DEC Tru64 UNIX from the early 90s.
Time Machine: Apple did not copy what makes Time Machine great, the absolute brain-dead usability to back up and retrieve files. Also, the under-the-hood implementation is completely different, and utilizes the Spotlight indexing and technologies specific to UNIX.
The Complete Package: Not a claim of copying, he just doesn't think it's great.
Spaces: An implementation of something much older than any done by Microsoft, like an 80s Amiga. But again Apple made something simple that was usually too complicated for the average user.
Spotlight: Microsoft announced the general concept early, but then Microsoft announced many things that didn't entirely make it for Vista. In any case, Apple did it first.
Core Animation: Not a claim of copy, he just doesn't find it impressive. Same for Accessibility Improvements, Mail, Dashboard improvements and iChat.
The Apple fanboys will swear from here to Timbuctu that the iPod has the biggest market share, because it’s superior to every other MP3 player out there.
Windows had some unique circumstances with Microsoft being in the beginning of the PC age backed by big IBM. One of the reasons it is so popular is directly related to poor quality. NT was supposed to be better than it turned out to be, but Gates wanted to use the antiquated Windows 3.1 API. All the way through you will find examples of this backwards compatibility hurting the quality and stability. But that kept people buying the product since they could use their old stuff.
And then there's that little anti-trust conviction issue.
MP3 players had been out for years before Apple got into the market. Apple was just the first one that got it right, which exploded the market from a geek toy to something the average person might buy instead of a Walkman. In contrast, DOS was not the best text-based OS, and Windows was not the best GUI-based OS, nothing revolutionary about either.
Win 7 is an excellent operating system, but that doesn’t no one was doing any work with XP or Vista before Win 7 came out, because they were “not usable”.
Usability is a gradient, not an absolute. Windows 7 did indeed make great strides, especially over Vista which actually got in the way of you doing things. OS X is still the best example of OS usability, although it's not exactly perfect itself (I have some complaints). Yes, I specialized in usability as a software developer.