访谈录 Interview 2007-02-06&08, Vista和Apple大撞车

So David you noticed some similarities there between Window's Vista 1 and Apple's operating system OS 10.

Oh, well, kinda like kicks you between the eyes. I don't mean to imply that Vista is nothing but copies from Apple. But there are some certain similarities that are unmistakable.

All right, so walk us through some of them here.

Well, for example, if you click the start menu you get the redesigned start menu with the search box at the bottom. And anything you type into that box Vista instantly finds every program, document, e-mail, address book entry from your entire computer in one second. Extremely useful.

Pretty handy.

Now, let me switch over to the Mac OS 10, it happens to be also not just extremely handy but extremely similar to the identical search feature that's been on Mac OS 10 for a year and a half or so.

But it's called something different.

Well, yeah, and also, I should say it's not identical. Apple's is in the upright corner. Though the Microsoft one is in the lower left. So, it's not the same thing at all.

Completely different.

Yeah, exactly.

All right. So what's another example?

Er, there's a great new photo gallery program in Window's Vista. This is a great way to organize your photos. You can touch them up, e-mail them, organize them. The only thing is, I'm gonna switch over to the Mac now. It's extremely similar to this program, I-photo which's been around on the Apple for years again; they can larger, smaller do whatever you need to do.

I have to say if I blinked I wouldn't have known that you switch between one and the other.

Here's Window Vista, highly touted 2 new feature, something called the Sidebar. Otherwise called Gadgets 3. These are individual single-purpose dedicated 4 little programs, one for the weather report, one for your stock portfolio 5, one for notes, so on, very useful, not bloated, not complicated to use. But also highly similar to the same thing on the Mac, of course these are called widgets, not gadgets. So you can see there're really nothing ( not exactly the same thing).

The same but different.

Exactly.

And, and I'm not saying, by the way, that Apple doesn't also steal from Microsoft on occasion. They do. And does it really matter? No, it doesn't. because what happens is both operating systems get better. And these definitely are improvements to Vista.

So, can the question be answered, who is copying who or who is first in something?

Um, it's very tricky 6, because you'll find people who even point out that these things came before Mac OS 10, there was a Shower Program that you could use on the Mac that did the same sort of things. So, who really began the idea, hard to say. But what you can say is who identified it first as a worthy 7 edition. And I have to say Apple is leading the race on that one.