On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Paul wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Ronald J. Hall wrote:
>
> >Romanator wrote:
> >
> >> Let's take it a little further. Windows isn't original. Isn't it a
> >> derivative?
> >
> ><snip> Awe, c'mon Roman...its okay to say "blood-sucking leech" when
> >it comes to Windog! <big grin>
>
> A nice little thing I once read in a book (don't recall the title, I read
> too much :) is that at one time Apple wanted to sue Microsoft for copying
> the idea of the mouse-driven graphical interface.
>
> Then, from Palo Alto, Kodak (!!) came up and threatened to sue Apple for
> the same thing if they were going on with that. Old film and paper
> documents showed that Kodak had been experimenting with mouses etc.
> already long before Apple got the idea.
>
> (Could be that I am completely wrong with Kodak as the company, but that
> is how I remember it.)
>
> Paul
Paul, the company was Xerox (believe it or not!!!). At their Palo Alto research
lab they invented the mouse (the first one was made of wood!) and the GUI.
Apple tried numerous times to sue MS about copying their interface, failing
every time (since they themselves had ripped it from Xerox). In fact, part of
the deal Apple made with MS a few years ago (in which MS injected something
like $US150 million into the troubled company and promised to continue
developing MS Office for MacOS) involved Apple dropping all claims that MS had
copied their GUI.
--
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Sridhar Dhanapalan
Linux is like a wigwam...No windows, no gates.
Apache inside.
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