(no subject)

[lostcarpark]

This from Apple's email newsletter:

Want a fast way to switch from one open application to another?
Mac OS X version 10.3 "Panther" makes it as easy as typing Command-Tab.

Now, I can't remember if the Alt-Tab shortcut was in Windows 1.0 in 1986, but it was certainly in Windows 2.0 in 1988 and every version since, so it's only taken Apple fifteen years to figure out that this is a good thing. But then it took them to System 7 to catch on to running multiple applications, and OSX to figure out preemptive multitasking.

Yes, Apple have come up with some great ideas, but let's not forget that they steal ideas too.

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

eeep, gosh that turned into a rant didn't it!

Ok, another "evil" of patents I didn't mention is when someone can get a patent for the blindingly obvious or only way of doing something, which didn't require either genius or perspiration to achieve. In which case it is just a land grab followed by a licence to print money, and far too many software patents have been too broad and actually cover either existing processes or something that any one of us could and would design with 20 minutes thought. Those things should not be patentable but the law is an ass (for those situations).

Oh, and the missing footnote from above
[1] if there is no law against taking someone else's hard won ideas and profiting from them without acknowledement and payment to the original thinker, then it is not "illegal" and so you can't really say they have "stolen" the idea. Though the definition of "stealing" also usually includes depriving the original "owner" of whatever has been stolen, which is not usually the case with ideas.