[Mac Donald]

I posted a similar comment in another thread about how Vista is a ripoff of Mac OS X, but it got lost in the ensuing flame-war. This thread is not meant to be a flame-war, but I am actually interested in the topic. If you are not mature enough to discuss Windows and Mac OS without believing that any implication that OS X (or versions of the Classic Mac OS) took anything from Windows is an insult to their religion worhty of cyber-jihad, just skip posting in this thread. OK, with that (necessary) warning out of the way, here is my question:

As we all know, it is pretty much a given that Windows is based on Mac's original OS -- that's old hat, the whole OS is based on it, explicitly (with Gates' quotes about he wants things to be more "Mac-like). What I am interested in is what has Mac OS taken from Windows through the years?

Here are two I can think of (and please correct me if I am wrong -- though don't accuse me of bad faith):

1. When you click on a menu, you don't have to hold down the button, you just click it and the menu stays open, and then click again when you reach the selection. (Do people understand what I am referring to -- some of the younger people may not remember but on System 7 and earlier you had to hold down the mouse button when clickin on the "File" selection for instance and then let go of it to select something) . . . . First appeared in OS 8.5 I believe - and it appeared to be taken from Windows 95. This type of thing may have been in other more obscure OS's as well, but it was popularized by Windows, and Apple was right to incorporate it into its OS.

2. Right-click contextual menu? Not sure about this one, but it was definitely popularized by Windows (though I understand it may even predate the Mac OS itself and been present in Xerox's machines). Anyone know about this? I am one who really believes in the beauty of the right-click when properly used so I think Macs need to incorporate this more explicitly -- read, in laptops (my solution would be to permit a tap of the trackpad to equal a right click as an option, something that is not available yet in MB Pros.)

Anyone else have any thoughts? Corrections?

[Banana]

I do know there are certain features that Apple borrowed from MS just as MS borrowed from Apple.

There's really nothing with it per se. It's only when you simply take it and do nothing or even worse, make a half-assed implementation is a problem.

As far as I understand it, Apple has generally a good track record of taking someone's features and actually improving on it to make it even more appealing. In that sense, it's a good thing. I really can't say the same for Mircosoft, as Ballmer himself has basically admitted that copying others' ideas without contributing your own is A-OK.

[ajebbatson]

You can only speculate what came from where and who copied who as there is very little evidence as to how a given feature came to be. In some cases, the idea is so obvious that it's unlikely it was copied but simply presented itself as the obvious solutions to multiple independent groups. Take your example of the menuing - holding the mouse button down whilst navigating the menu is fine when menus are simpler, but as the complexity of software increased, so the menus became deeper and wider. From an ergonomics/usability standpoint, it makes sense to switch to making menus toggle open and closed because the user is spending far more time navigating (or just staring at) the expanded menus.

[iCraig]

IIRC, Fast User Switching was on Windows XP first, and only came into being on Mac OS X with the introduction of Panther.

So I spose you could say Apple took that from windows, but in a much nicer way.

[Luca]

"Sticky" menus and contextual menus were both introduced in OS 8, and they were present in Windows long before that.

Mac OS's command-tab behavior has been around for a long time, but they recently added a little graphical indicator in the center of the screen in either 10.3 or 10.4. It looks very similar to Windows' alt-tab graphic. Also, I believe Windows had alt-tab before the Mac OS got command-tab (which has exactly the same key placement).

In 10.4, the Apple menu and Spotlight menu can both be activated by clicking anywhere in the corner of the screen. You can have the mouse pointer in the exact corner and it'll still bring up the menu. Windows has been doing this for a while with the Start button and with close boxes on maximized windows.

Having all three window controls next to each other could have been borrowed from Windows. OS 9 and earlier had window controls in both upper corners.

I think Windows had variable-width scroll bar indicators before the Mac OS did. That is, when you're looking at a page that's just barely larger than your screen, the draggable blue element in the scroll bar takes up a large amount of space, but when you're looking at a very long page, the same blue element takes up a small amount of room. Of course, the Mac OS borrows this behavior from NeXT as well, which assigned a minimum size to the draggable scroll bar element (whereas in Windows, it was often tiny and difficult to drag).

Steve Jobs openly said that Windows did fast user switching first. Then he demonstrated OS X's new fast user switching and showed how much better it was than the Windows implementation.

A lot of OS X is really just NeXT with a pretty face. Column view, the Dock, and the Finder in general is very, very similar to NeXT. So in many cases, we're now more than one step removed from Windows. But a few things were carried over from OS 9, which was basically just an evolution of the Mac OS going all the way back to System 1, and more directly opposite Windows.

[Mac Donald]

Originally Posted by ajebbatson Take your example of the menuing - holding the mouse button down whilst navigating the menu is fine when menus are simpler, but as the complexity of software increased, so the menus became deeper and wider. From an ergonomics/usability standpoint, it makes sense to switch to making menus toggle open and closed because the user is spending far more time navigating (or just staring at) the expanded menus.

There's really no doubt sticky menus was taken from Windows --- agreed it makes a lot of sense, but it was Microsoft that realized it. This was a big, big complaint about Macs v. Windows when I was starting college late 94, about a year before Windows 95 came out. My mom only just recently found out that you no longer had to hold down the button a la System 7 and before.

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by Luca In 10.4, the Apple menu and Spotlight menu can both be activated by clicking anywhere in the corner of the screen. You can have the mouse pointer in the exact corner and it'll still bring up the menu. Windows has been doing this for a while with the Start button and with close boxes on maximized windows.

IIRC, OS9 (and back) allowed triggering of the Apple menu from the corner. I seem to recall a minor storm about the *lack* of this in 10.0, and it wasn't until 10.4 that we got it back.

[Hobbes]

Taken outright from Windows:
- Sticky menus.
- Icon badging.
- Relative scroll bars.
- "Favorites."
- [modifier]-tab for application switching (but improved).
- Fast user switching (but looks nicer )
- Copying files in the file manager via [modifer]-C.
- Clicking a file in an open/save dialog to "grab" the name. (Thank you Steve.)

Inherited from NeXT:
- Dock.
- Heavy use of contextual menus.
- Browse-in-place file navigation.

Windows Influences:
- The Taskbar (minimizing windows).
- Window widgets grouped together on a window.
- IE's web rendering part of a shared library loaded with the OS instead of just an app (but Apple made it an open API and open-sourced).


Just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's lots more.

Note: edited to reflect helpful feedback.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Hobbes Broswer-based file navigation.

I'd actually credit NeXT for this one since Mac OS X's column view is virtually unchanged from NeXT's.

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by Hobbes IE's web rendering engine integrated into the OS.

ACK!

IE's engine *IS NOT* integrated into the damned OS. That was the big lie MS kept spouting in the trial, and it's just not true. It's a shared library, same as any other.

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by Brad I'd actually credit NeXT for this one since Mac OS X's column view is virtually unchanged from NeXT's.

You can also credit NeXT for relative scroll bars, the taskbar, contextual menus, and several others.

[Franz Josef]

Originally Posted by Kickaha ACK! IE's engine *IS NOT* integrated into the damned OS.

Absolutely right. Lies, damned lies and MS comment on IE / Windows integration.

[dfiler]

Originally Posted by Mac Donald There's really no doubt sticky menus was taken from Windows ... <snip>

Actually, there is.

Certainly, Windows had sticky menus before the Mac OS. Yet Windows was far from the first program to exhibit this behavior.

The same is true for innumerable other features which one OS might initially look to have copied from the other. Few technologies or GUI elements have ever made their debut as part of a mainstream operating system. I suppose you could argue which OS was first to implement a technology. Being second though doesn't mean that the second OS's implementation was copied from the first. Generally, by the time a feature makes it's way into an OS, it is already been used in academia and other company's products for years. At that point, there are plenty of places to "copy" from.

[Mac Donald]

Originally Posted by Kickaha ACK! IE's engine *IS NOT* integrated into the damned OS. That was the big lie MS kept spouting in the trial, and it's just not true. It's a shared library, same as any other.

During which "trial." The Apple v. Microsoft case never went to trial -- thrown out on summary judgment (rightly, I might add -- ideas are not protected in copyright (which is what Appled sued in, not patent), only the expression thereof). Further, the opinion in Apple v. Microsoft from the Ninth Circuit (the appeals court -- a very important decision for those of us lawyers who practice copyright law) is dated 1994, so discovery, etc., in district court (trial court) would have been at least a year or two earlier. At the time, the IE rendering engine was not incorporated into either OS.

Now, I'm realizing you must be talking about another "trial" or something?

[Kickaha]

Oh, I dunno, maybe the DOJ vs. MS monopoly trial that was all the talk for what, two years?

[Franz Josef]

Originally Posted by Mac Donald During which "trial." The Apple v. Microsoft case never went to trial -- thrown out on summary judgment (rightly, I might add -- ideas are not protected in copyright (which is what Appled sued in, not patent), only the expression thereof). Further, the opinion in Apple v. Microsoft from the Ninth Circuit (the appeals court -- a very important decision for those of us lawyers who practice copyright law) is dated 1994, so discovery, etc., in district court (trial court) would have been at least a year or two earlier. At the time, the IE rendering engine was not incorporated into either OS.

Jeez I just have no idea what you're talking about. Fancy that.

[ZachPruckowski]

Mac Donald, this is the MS anti-trust suit we're talking about. Basically the US gov't was going on about how MS had used it's advantages in one arena (OSes) to dominate another arena illegally (browsers). MS said that they couldn't decouple IE from Windows without destroying everything in Windows and starting over, so the gov't let them get away with it.

[Mac Donald]

Originally Posted by Franz Josef Jeez I just have no idea what you're talking about. Fancy that.

Never heard of when Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement -- you must be pretty young. The allegations were that Windows infringed the copyright in the Mac OS (and the Lisa OS). Microsoft won. But MS and Apple settled all their differences over any other similarities between the Mac OS and Windows (and future similarities I think) in 1997 when Gates nominally bought a piece of Apple for a lot of cash, promised to continue development of Office for 5 more years and Apple in turn agreed to make Internet Explorer the default browser in the Mac OS -- that was one of the final nails in the coffin for netscape as it would naturally thrive in the Mac platform because of natural hostility towards Microsoft. (Of course, in some ways Netscape has now had the last laugh, see Firefox.)

[mrmister]

I think we're all speaking of the DOJ antitrust action against Microsoft, which was ever-so-slightly more memorable.

[Franz Josef]

Originally Posted by Mac Donald Never heard of when Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement

Very drole

[Hobbes]

Originally Posted by Kickaha IE's engine *IS NOT* integrated into the damned OS. That was the big lie MS kept spouting in the trial, and it's just not true. It's a shared library, same as any other.

Ah, sorry, I writing quickly (and vaguely). Yes. Shared library, I mean. Still very likely a significant influence on the development of WebCore.

Originally Posted by Brad Originally Posted by Hobbes Broswer-based file navigation. I'd actually credit NeXT for this one since Mac OS X's column view is virtually unchanged from NeXT's.

True 'nuff. I actually meant browse-in-place, not browser. Browse-in-place debuted as the *default* mode in OS X, and that was certainly a NeXT inheritance and probably some degree a Windows influence.

Originally Posted by Kickaha You can also credit NeXT for relative scroll bars, the taskbar, contextual menus, and several others.

Good points. I knew NeXTStep .8 and Windows 3.0 were released roughly around the same time, but I forgot just how primitive Windows 3.0 was. Yeesh.

(However, I'm counting relative scroll bars taken from Windows because I suspect the MacOS 8 designers were still at that point looking at Windows more than NeXT.)

Adjusted!

[Kickaha]

Well, you're right in that the Mac developers were looking more at Windows... and laughing... 3.0 (and 3.1) were pretty damned simplistic. You want a real chuckle? Go back and look at Windows 1.0. Now consider it came out just after the Mac. Talk about not even a fair comparison.

And actually, it was NeXTstep 4.0 (never released, IIRC) that was the template for most of Windows 95 and MacOS X. The Taskbar and Dock, for instance, more or less came from there. (Edit: Man, that took some digging, but here's a screenshot: http://homepage.mac.com/troy_stephen...ta-Desktop.jpg His page has some other neat stuff on it: http://homepage.mac.com/troy_stephen...reenShots.html)

No, IE and its use of shared libraries likely had about zilch to do with WebCore. Apple has a history of creating new libraries for their developers to use, based on their apps. This has only increased with MacOS X. Heck, just within the browser realm, look back at Cyberdog - a full browser (for the time, it was cutting edge), usable as an OpenDoc unit by any developer, for free.

MS's model has traditionally been to develop new apps, kill off competitors, then dribble out hobbled versions of the internal app engines as breadcrumbs for the third parties to fight over. Frequently the APIs they publish aren't used internally at all.

Apple's model has traditionally been to develop new apps, use them as proving grounds for new technologies, then offer them to developers as supported APIs and shared libraries. Usually, the APIs used internally and externally are extremely close, if not identical. All of Cocoa and Carbon are based on this model.

Now... explain to me again how the concept of a shared library was 'borrowed' from MS?

[bassplayinMacFiend]

Originally Posted by iCraig IIRC, Fast User Switching was on Windows XP first, and only came into being on Mac OS X with the introduction of Panther. So I spose you could say Apple took that from windows, but in a much nicer way.

Yup, el-Steveo even credited XP when he mentioned this new feature in OS X.

Alt-Tab switching (with the graphic) has been around in Windows since at least Win 3.1.

Right-click (i.e. contextual) menus were taken from OS/2 or maybe even something predating OS/2. Contextual menus did not exist in Win 3.1, and IBM harped this ability in OS/2 as a big deal when pushing Warp, even though this ability also existed in OS/2 2.11.

[Hobbes]

Just to be clear: I'm not making any claim that the MacOS took as much from Windows as vice versa. I'm simply interested in UI design and interested (in a passing way) who came up with what first, and (more interestingly) how UI designs influenced one another.

Thus, the idea to divide into outright borrowings from Windows, and the much more fuzzy "infleunces."

Originally Posted by Kickaha Well, you're right in that the Mac developers were looking more at Windows... and laughing... 3.0 (and 3.1) were pretty damned simplistic. You want a real chuckle? Go back and look at Windows 1.0. Now consider it came out just after the Mac. Talk about not even a fair comparison.

Heh, yeah, Windows 1 is just amazing.

Originally Posted by Kickaha And actually, it was NeXTstep 4.0 (never released, IIRC) that was the template for most of Windows 95 and MacOS X. The Taskbar and Dock, for instance, more or less came from there.

Yes, I quite agree that Windows 95 copied *HUGE* amounts from both (primarily) MacOS and (to a lesser degree) NeXT. I'll give Microsoft credit for copying from the best (if shamelessly), though, esp. just as Apple's OS design was about enter a long, dim period of stagnation and trouble. I do think that the Taskbar was Microsoft's one brilliant GUI creation. (No, it's not perfect, and showing its age more than ever, but it's served users well for over a decade now.)

Originally Posted by Kickaha MS's model has traditionally been to develop new apps, kill off competitors, then dribble out hobbled versions of the internal app engines as breadcrumbs for the third parties to fight over. Frequently the APIs they publish aren't used internally at all. Apple's model has traditionally been to develop new apps, use them as proving grounds for new technologies, then offer them to developers as supported APIs and shared libraries. Usually, the APIs used internally and externally are extremely close, if not identical. All of Cocoa and Carbon are based on this model.

There's a lot of truth here, though I think it's only fair to point out that MS has bent over backwards to maintain compatibility across OS revisions for developers, while Apple has pushed relentlessly forward, making for often a very bumpy ride.

Originally Posted by Kickaha No, IE and its use of shared libraries likely had about zilch to do with WebCore. Apple has a history of creating new libraries for their developers to use, based on their apps. This has only increased with MacOS X. Heck, just within the browser realm, look back at Cyberdog - a full browser (for the time, it was cutting edge), usable as an OpenDoc unit by any developer, for free.

I do remember Cyberdog. Fascinating and wildly ambitious (and, as an aside, saddled with a truly clueless name), but it was slow and limited and (be it by design or management folly) not a success. It's almost hard to remember now, because IE has been stagnant for so many years, but IE, on the other hand, was a great success for MS. Browsing on older PCs was a magnitude of order faster than Macs of a similar era, as MS's (occ. ruthless) drive to optimize web browsing for Windows paid off. This was no secret either -- for a while there was much discussion why web browsing was so much better on Windows and what Apple could do about it.

So no, I'm not crediting MS with, say, the invention of shared libraries -- far from it. I'm saying using a shared library for the OS's browser engine is a tactic that influenced the development of Apple's WebCore.

Anyway, I'm just trying to give credit where credit is due. FWIW, there's people in the notorious Ars Battlefront forum who refuse to see just what a *massive* influence on Vista OS X has been (hello!??), which to my mind is just as laughable as saying that the Mac OS has *never* taken inspiration from Windows.

[Hobbes]

Originally Posted by Kickaha (Edit: Man, that took some digging, but here's a screenshot: http://homepage.mac.com/troy_stephen...ta-Desktop.jpg His page has some other neat stuff on it: http://homepage.mac.com/troy_stephen...reenShots.html)

Neat site, thanks.

I highly recommend the wonderful site the GUIdebook for some enjoyable OS research.

[Kickaha]

I don't think anyone with half a brain would ever say that Mac OS X has *never* taken inspiration from Windows... one of the main differences, that I see, is that Apple is up front about it. "We thought it was a good idea, but we did it one better."

Seems reasonable, instead of "We thought it was a good idea, so we took it, ran it through four committees, and came up with something that is half as good, looks awful, and guarantees user pain for years to come." Hmm, I guess I understand why MS doesn't bother trying to credit anyone...

As for backwards compatibility for developers... er... MS kinda has to. Without it, they have a serious problem. Why do you think Apple has been beating the drum so loudly to get devs onto Xcode, Carbon, Cocoa, et al? Because once you get cleanly abstracted code on cleanly abstracted tools, the sky's the limit. MS never did that, and ended up with an ad hoc ecosystem of code out there that now they rely on in this twisted mutually abusive symbiotic relationship. Face it, if the Windows development sphere were a human couple, they'd both be thrown in jail for partner abuse. If they break backwards compatibility, they're screwed. If they don't move forward, they're screwed. I kinda like this position they put themselves in.

[Banana]

The way you describe it, it almost describe 69...

only worse.

[Kickaha]

Oh *GOD* why did you have to put that image in my head???

Ballmer and some unnamed sweaty Windows hacker, locked in... in...

*RAAARRRHHHHHLLLLLGGGGLLLLORRRRRP*

I can almost smell the Doritos dust caught in the sweaty crevices, you bastard.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Kickaha *RAAARRRHHHHHLLLLLGGGGLLLLORRRRRP*

Still not over that food poisoning, eh Kick?

[Kickaha]

Oh no, this is strictly pure, unleavened disgust.