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Steve Jobs' friend Bill Gates cloned the Macintosh with Windows and his other friend Eric Schmidt cloned the iPhone with Android. I'm sure that felt bad but hi

Steve Jobs' friend Bill Gates cloned the Macintosh with Windows and his other friend Eric Schmidt cloned the iPhone with Android. I'm sure that felt bad but his primary feeling should have been pity. He created a company so much better than his competitors that their biggest successes are poor clones of his next-generation products. He showed Gates the future of PCs and he showed Schmidt the future of smartphones. But he was unable to get over the feeling of betrayal and he felt the need to use the terrible patent system against them. It's petty behavior that was always beneath him and Apple. These lawsuits against Samsung are part of that petty behavior. He could have been magnanimous and taken their pitiful cloning as a form of flattery. He knew that he could keep beating them indefinitely by creating superior products.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I thought Jobs borrowed the GUI from Xerox.
- staunch 8y ago
  I think it's more accurate to say the Mac was inspired by Xerox PARC's work and Windows was an attempt at cloning the Mac. There's a significant difference between creating a next-generation version of something and attempting to blindly clone someone else's work. The iPhone was inspired by work that Palm did but it wasn't an attempt at cloning it. Zune was an attempt at cloning the iPod. Google+ was an attempt at cloning Facebook. Facebook was inspired by Friendster/MySpace, but not a clone.
  - exodust 8y ago
    In no way at all is a galaxy phone a "clone" of an iPhone, so I don't know why you keep using the word "clone". Have you owned both phones? I have, and they are very different phones. Further more, icons are not new. And the task of displaying icons on a touch screen is obviously going to involve spacing them in a manner so you can tap them efficiently with a finger. There's very few options available to arrange the icons apart from a grid and paginated screens. Most designers and engineers would arrive at that obvious configuration after a short period of trial and testing.
  - tooltalk 8y ago
    Mac copied/cloned Xerox; Microsoft licensed Apple's UI. Apple sued Microsoft, but lost the lawsuit because Microsoft legitimately licensed Apple's UI patents; except for a few minor elements like "trash can" icon.
- sbuk 8y ago
  Jobs bought the rights to the intellectual property from Xerox.
  - tooltalk 8y ago
    Jobs never bought anything from Xerox. How do we know this? Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple in 1988 -- after seeing that Apple was suing Microsoft and others left and right for what was essentially derivative work based on Xerox's. Xerox feared that Apple was scaring off potential licensees with their on-going UI patents lawsuits. Their lawsuit however never went nowhere and dismissed on procedural matters. Xerox had a division that invested in tech companies like Apple in the late 70's. I believe Xerox had something to the tune of $1M in Apple, but contrary to popular belief, Apple never traded their pre-IPO stocks in exchange for two visits at Xerox PARC. Xerox PARC was actually open-house and at least several thousand people went to see their demo throughout the 70's. Jef Raskin, who had spent sometime at Stanford and intimately close to research and dvelopment done at PARC urged Apple engineers and Jobs to see what they ought to be doing.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

I thought Jobs borrowed the GUI from Xerox.

staunch 8y ago
I think it's more accurate to say the Mac was inspired by Xerox PARC's work and Windows was an attempt at cloning the Mac. There's a significant difference between creating a next-generation version of something and attempting to blindly clone someone else's work. The iPhone was inspired by work that Palm did but it wasn't an attempt at cloning it. Zune was an attempt at cloning the iPod. Google+ was an attempt at cloning Facebook. Facebook was inspired by Friendster/MySpace, but not a clone.
- exodust 8y ago
  In no way at all is a galaxy phone a "clone" of an iPhone, so I don't know why you keep using the word "clone". Have you owned both phones? I have, and they are very different phones. Further more, icons are not new. And the task of displaying icons on a touch screen is obviously going to involve spacing them in a manner so you can tap them efficiently with a finger. There's very few options available to arrange the icons apart from a grid and paginated screens. Most designers and engineers would arrive at that obvious configuration after a short period of trial and testing.
- tooltalk 8y ago
  Mac copied/cloned Xerox; Microsoft licensed Apple's UI. Apple sued Microsoft, but lost the lawsuit because Microsoft legitimately licensed Apple's UI patents; except for a few minor elements like "trash can" icon.
sbuk 8y ago
Jobs bought the rights to the intellectual property from Xerox.
- tooltalk 8y ago
  Jobs never bought anything from Xerox. How do we know this? Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple in 1988 -- after seeing that Apple was suing Microsoft and others left and right for what was essentially derivative work based on Xerox's. Xerox feared that Apple was scaring off potential licensees with their on-going UI patents lawsuits. Their lawsuit however never went nowhere and dismissed on procedural matters. Xerox had a division that invested in tech companies like Apple in the late 70's. I believe Xerox had something to the tune of $1M in Apple, but contrary to popular belief, Apple never traded their pre-IPO stocks in exchange for two visits at Xerox PARC. Xerox PARC was actually open-house and at least several thousand people went to see their demo throughout the 70's. Jef Raskin, who had spent sometime at Stanford and intimately close to research and dvelopment done at PARC urged Apple engineers and Jobs to see what they ought to be doing.