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This is also nothing new. Connectix essentially functioned as an unwilling experimental lab for Apple OS features for a long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik

by _jal 7y ago

This is also nothing new. Connectix essentially functioned as an unwilling experimental lab for Apple OS features for a long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix And of course Microsoft did it too, and worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...

scarface74 7y ago
Nothing in the Wikipedia article shows anything that Connectix developed that Apple copied. I was very much a Mac user and a Connectix customer back then. Everything that could charitably be called “copied” was a natural evolution. Mode 32: The original Mac OS wasn’t “32 bit clean”. After Apple introduced an OS that required newer Macs, Connectix filled in the gaps for older Macs that Apple dropped support for. RAM Doubler : Classic MacOS had horrible memory management. This made it much better. This wasn’t really made obsolete until OS X. Speed Doubler: A better 68K emulator for PPC Macs. Was Apple not suppose to come out with a better emulator - ever? Even when it did, Speed Doubler was still better. Virtual PC: Apple never came out with a software x86 emulator. At one point it bundled Insignia’s SoftPC. It did come out with a hardware solution called the DOS Compatibility Card. None of the other products were ever “copied” by Apple.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  The Apple of the 90's is a poor example since they actually legit bought out several existing utilities to bundle in the OS (SuperClock, WindowShade, Stickies, Hierarchical Apple Menu). "Sherlocking" developers didn't come until Steve Jobs returned. That said... Connectix Desktop Utilities/Connectix Powerbook Utilities had several features that were later added the OS. > Speed Doubler The best feature of Speed Doubler for me is Speed Copy, which adds multitasking to file copies (Finder wouldn't get this until MacOS 8, before that a file copy would monopolize the Finder and you couldn't browse your disk or launch any apps)
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    That is a truly strange "feature" when people without running X or even tmux can cp on one tty and ls on another.
    - kalleboo 7y ago
      Mac System 7 wasn't so much an operating system as a collection of utility functions (half of which were burned in ROM on each machine). There was no kernel, everything was completely cooperatively multitasked - software ran it's code and then called a function that would jump to the next running process. It was designed originally to run off a 400K floppy drive within 128K of RAM. "Copying files" originally meant swapping back and forth between two floppies in the single internal drive and the system had to evacuate as much code as possible from that 128K RAM to minimize the number of floppy swaps. It took Apple a long time to try to bring that early primitive OS to modern standards while keeping software compatibility, and eventually they gave up and bought NeXT The Lisa, before the Mac, had a proper multitasking OS, but it cost 3 times as much as the already-expensive Mac so it had the luxury of 1 MB(!!) of RAM and a MMU. It was an utter flop.
drudru11 7y ago
Wow - never knew that history. I thought they just made the USB camera.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by _jal 7y ago

scarface74 7y ago

Nothing in the Wikipedia article shows anything that Connectix developed that Apple copied. I was very much a Mac user and a Connectix customer back then. Everything that could charitably be called “copied” was a natural evolution. Mode 32: The original Mac OS wasn’t “32 bit clean”. After Apple introduced an OS that required newer Macs, Connectix filled in the gaps for older Macs that Apple dropped support for. RAM Doubler : Classic MacOS had horrible memory management. This made it much better. This wasn’t really made obsolete until OS X. Speed Doubler: A better 68K emulator for PPC Macs. Was Apple not suppose to come out with a better emulator - ever? Even when it did, Speed Doubler was still better. Virtual PC: Apple never came out with a software x86 emulator. At one point it bundled Insignia’s SoftPC. It did come out with a hardware solution called the DOS Compatibility Card. None of the other products were ever “copied” by Apple.

kalleboo 7y ago
The Apple of the 90's is a poor example since they actually legit bought out several existing utilities to bundle in the OS (SuperClock, WindowShade, Stickies, Hierarchical Apple Menu). "Sherlocking" developers didn't come until Steve Jobs returned. That said... Connectix Desktop Utilities/Connectix Powerbook Utilities had several features that were later added the OS. > Speed Doubler The best feature of Speed Doubler for me is Speed Copy, which adds multitasking to file copies (Finder wouldn't get this until MacOS 8, before that a file copy would monopolize the Finder and you couldn't browse your disk or launch any apps)
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  That is a truly strange "feature" when people without running X or even tmux can cp on one tty and ls on another.
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    Mac System 7 wasn't so much an operating system as a collection of utility functions (half of which were burned in ROM on each machine). There was no kernel, everything was completely cooperatively multitasked - software ran it's code and then called a function that would jump to the next running process. It was designed originally to run off a 400K floppy drive within 128K of RAM. "Copying files" originally meant swapping back and forth between two floppies in the single internal drive and the system had to evacuate as much code as possible from that 128K RAM to minimize the number of floppy swaps. It took Apple a long time to try to bring that early primitive OS to modern standards while keeping software compatibility, and eventually they gave up and bought NeXT The Lisa, before the Mac, had a proper multitasking OS, but it cost 3 times as much as the already-expensive Mac so it had the luxury of 1 MB(!!) of RAM and a MMU. It was an utter flop.

drudru11 7y ago

Wow - never knew that history. I thought they just made the USB camera.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]