Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) was yesterday. This is essentially Apple's version of Microsoft's PDC.
As with almost all Apple-related media events, Apple spent a good amount of time bashing Microsoft and claiming that everything that Microsoft does is a copy of Mac OS. This year's tag line was "Introducing Vista 2.0". Uh huh.
But who is really copying whom? It is very true that Microsoft has taken many UI cues from Apple over the years, but the copying is definitely
not a one way street.
One particularly glaring example is one of the most prominent new features in OS X.5, the "Time Machine". This is basically a feature that lets you retrieve old version of any file or folder. Aside from a much cooler name and a pretty interface, this feature has been in Windows for over 3 years. It's called
Shadow Copy.
Apple is obviously preaching to the choir at these events, so I can understand their desire to bash the evil empire. But the fact of the matter is that while Apple turns out releases far faster than Microsoft, Microsoft is often the one to create the features first. It's easy to claim innovation when you're the first to market, but it's also easy to copy features that have been publicly announced for several years.
UpdateLooks like Paul over at WinInformant
agrees with me. Or I agree with him. Or whatever.
