"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
Richard Crowley wrote:
....Apple and MS
both derived the idea of windows from Xerox. That is why
Apple's suit against MS for "stealing windows" was a big
steaming crock, and the courts agreed.

Yes, but Apple paid licensing to Xerox for the use of the
concept, and Microsoft did not.

In which case Apple had no legal standing. It should have
been Xerox vs. MS. OTOH, their "acquisition" of DOS
from Digital Research was no less questionable.

Bringing the topic around, some companies are much more
marketing organizations than technical ones. Monster and
Microsoft come to mind, but at least Microsoft does more
of their own work these days.

Does Monster have *any* real technological innovations to
its name? "Bigger wire is better" doesn't really seem like a
huge technology accomplishment. But then where I work we
put several hundred million transistors on a chip the size of
your thumbnail, so I may have a jaded perspective?

And Monster and Apple seem to share the marketing concept
that "expensive is better". Apparently there is a loyal (although
dwindling) segment of customers that go along with that scheme.

That said, my department had a Xerox Star in college, and I
thought the whole GUI notion was a lousy one. Much more
cumbersome than a command line. But then, I still think so.

Indeed. I am just adding the "after-the-fact" features that the
customers (VPs) want on my web-based project (approaching
10,000 lines of code). But there are some things for which
GUIs are either awkward or just not capable of doing.