The only thing innovative Apple has created recently (and I'm thinking post-Lisa, really) is a very nice, effective system for marketing their products. Oh, that and the iPod.
OS X would have been innovative, had it been released as version 8 of the MacOS instead of version 10. UNIX on the home desktop was still a new idea back in the 90s, but Linux is the platform that really pushed multiuser operating systems into use by consumers, not the Mac. OS X was catchup, a way for Apple to avoid losing what little market share they had, no more.
However, I'm in complete agreement with your comments about Microsoft and Bill Gates. He has stolen at least half of what they sell, and the other half leaves me with the same feeling I get when I look at a Kia - it works, but I wouldn't be caught dead driving one!
I have to use XP on my laptop for work - have to, because the very small company I work for is dependent on a legacy system written to run in MS Access. Between other projects, I'm working on replacing that entire system, and I'm really happy about that and can't wait until I can replace XP with something else. _Anything_ else. :madashell:
amigadave wrote:
Where would we be today if DOS and Windows had not held back innovation and creativity by killing dozens, if not hundreds of competing companies with unethical and many times illegal business practices? What would computing be like if we had choices and developers were free to create without being forced to use DOS/Windows crippled tools because there was no other financially viable choice to make?
That's a good question, and one to which we may never know the answer. No one with power seems interested in doing anything about Gates's crimes, probably because he pays his taxes. Personally, I think it'll take an act of god to get rid of him and his legions of bottom of the barrel programmers. (That's not to say they're all like that, I'm sure there are a few good hackers up there in Redmond, but the quality of their products reflects poorly on them as a group.)
I think it'd be hilarious if some group of people out there just started ripping off MS's stuff right back. A great place to start would be designing a kernel for the PC that could use Windows device drivers. Forget about coding them, just steal them from Gates! :idea: