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The answer to your question is a quote from Lucas that I read in a hardback book covering the history of Pixar from around that time. He essentially said as mu

by nirvana 15y ago

The answer to your question is a quote from Lucas that I read in a hardback book covering the history of Pixar from around that time. He essentially said as much. Also, at that time, Industrial Light and Magic was a practical shop, they were not doing "digital filmmaking" and Lucas wasn't yet a proponent of digital filmmaking, as this really didn't exist yet. So, Pixar was very much an odd duck there, they didn't have shared backgrounds with the other groups and operate in a way that was difficult for the existing management to manage. For the past 30 years I've been reading people denigrating Apple based on innumerable falsehoods and misrepresentations. Ever since the Apple II had competition, there have been fans of competing systems who felt the need to attack Apple, at that time, because it was the dominant system. During the windows era, because Windows fans felt vaguely insecure about the computer they were talked into by a salesman, and nowadays, by google fans because they want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system. All of these people have both a motivation to denigrate Apple and, since they know that Apple is one of the few genuinely innovative companies in the industry, they end up having to make up stories to try and make Apple's innovations less significant than they are. One of the ways people denigrate Apple is to pretend like there is really no difference in usability or performance of Apple products, while also claiming that they are more expensive (even when they aren't) and thus that anyone who buys them is obviously a victim of a Reality Distortion Field. For these people they cannot debate the purely pragmatic reasons that people choose Apple products, and so they attempt to portray Apple users as part of a cult, and often speak using religious terminology. Ironically, it is those who talk about the "Reality Distortion Field" who have actually substituted ideology for pragmatism, otherwise they'd have pragmatic arguments to make.

nitrogen 15y ago
...by google fans because they want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system. Here you go too far. You don't have to like Android, MeeGo, or any other non-Apple OS, but calling any of them counterfeit is highly inaccurate. Google isn't stealing Apple's software and repackaging it as their own. In the form of the oft-used car analogy: you're accusing Hyundai of selling "counterfeit" cars because they slightly resemble a Jaguar.
- nirvana 15y ago
  Google is, in fact, stealing Apple's patented inventions and repackaging it as their own. Hence the sudden flare up in "patents are all bogus and a bad idea" propaganda. Before the announcement of the iPhone the Android phones looked a whole lot like blackberries. Google didn't spend 7 years coming up with a multi-touch operating system, and the underlying technology. They spent one year copying what Apple did, right down to the icon placement, and then started licensing it to manufacturers who sell it to consumers who genuinely think they are getting iPhones. I know google fans don't like to admit this, and so they claim that because in the past there was a touch screen somewhere, therefore, Apple didn't invent anything, but the standards of law are much higher and disprove this claim.
  - MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
    Hi, welcome to the 90s, when patents were already "bogus and a bad idea." Remember GIF? JPEG? LZW? RAR? S3TC? MP3? MPEG-2? AAC? MPEG-4? h.264? I'll understand if you've forgotten all of these. After all, when a software patent only inconveniences people making Free Software, it doesn't really count as "bogus and a bad idea," right?
    - nirvana 15y ago
      I'm always at a loss as to whether I should try to parse thru these snide comments to try and figure out what the argument you're trying to make is, or if I should just ignore them. At the very least, your putting words in my mouth so I don't have to defend them.
      - vacri 15y ago
        Please don't make snide comments and then complain when others reply in kind.
      - MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
        You have implied that patents have only recently been something seen as problematic, and that patent warfare is something invented by Google and Android vendors to attack Apple. The reality, however, is that there have been several highly litigious patents in computing which have been used to threaten people. Let me expound on some of the more infamous ones. The modern GIF format, GIF89a, used a compression algorithm called LZW. This algorithm was patented by a company named Unisys. Unisys threatened ISPs and large websites with legal action if they didn't agree to license the patent. This directly led to the creation of the PNG format as a free and open alternative. S3TC, the S3 Texture Compression algorithm, is patented by a group of graphics vendors known as S3, and licensed to Microsoft under terms which let MS sublicense it under the name DXTC, (DirectX Texture Compression). The patent holders have been very mean about enforcement, and the patent is broadly written, so it applies to nearly every possible S3TC implementation, software or hardware. To this day, MS still makes money off of every graphics card sold, from licensing fees, and free 3D libraries, like Mesa, cannot safely ship S3TC decoders for fear of legal repercussions. h.264 is covered by a big portfolio of patents, held by MPEG-LA (Motion Picture Experts Group Licensing Authority). They have been very proactive about getting licensing fees any time they can, and using fear tactics to suppress free codec libraries like x264. One member of MPEG-LA is Apple, by the way. That's right, Apple has been conducting patent warfare since before the conception of Android. (Since I'm expecting a [citation needed]: x264 development started in 2004 at the latest; Android was acquired by Google in 2005.)
mcantelon 15y ago
>[Google fans] want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system I love how in one breath Apple fanboys call Android a copycat and in the next claim it's so much harder to use than iOS. Which is it?
- nirvana 15y ago
  Where's the contradiction? Google didn't spend 7 years working out the kinks to get the usability right. Also, since they license to anyone, most of the hardware is crap hardware, thus the pointing accuracy is way off. Also, Apple takes a 72 pixel, roughly, finger contact area and turns it into a touch point with pixel level accuracy. That's not easy and that's not easy for Google to copy (probably because Apple hasn't patented it, or the patent didn't give enough away.) That right there is probably a large reason why they don't work as well.
  - vacri 15y ago
    Figuring out the precise centroid of a 'blob' has been around for at least 20 years - this calculation was used in optical research to determine where the centroid of the pupil was in video taken of someone's eyes. To suggest that this kind of algorithm is something special and new that Apple invented for the iPhone is just plain insulting.
  - mcantelon 15y ago
    I find the notion that Android is a copycat silly, given the significant differences between Android and iOS. Apple has liberally incorporated the ideas of others throughout its history: everyone from Xerox Parc to Braun... and that's a good thing because it has helped consumer computing evolve. If Android is a copycat of iOS then iOS is a copycat of PalmOS. The real underlying issue seems to me that Apple is bitter about anyone competent daring to compete with them.
- technoslut 15y ago
  Not to argue but you can imitate something poorly. I'll leave it up to others to argue which OS is better.

by nirvana 15y ago

nitrogen 15y ago

...by google fans because they want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system. Here you go too far. You don't have to like Android, MeeGo, or any other non-Apple OS, but calling any of them counterfeit is highly inaccurate. Google isn't stealing Apple's software and repackaging it as their own. In the form of the oft-used car analogy: you're accusing Hyundai of selling "counterfeit" cars because they slightly resemble a Jaguar.

nirvana 15y ago
Google is, in fact, stealing Apple's patented inventions and repackaging it as their own. Hence the sudden flare up in "patents are all bogus and a bad idea" propaganda. Before the announcement of the iPhone the Android phones looked a whole lot like blackberries. Google didn't spend 7 years coming up with a multi-touch operating system, and the underlying technology. They spent one year copying what Apple did, right down to the icon placement, and then started licensing it to manufacturers who sell it to consumers who genuinely think they are getting iPhones. I know google fans don't like to admit this, and so they claim that because in the past there was a touch screen somewhere, therefore, Apple didn't invent anything, but the standards of law are much higher and disprove this claim.
- MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
  Hi, welcome to the 90s, when patents were already "bogus and a bad idea." Remember GIF? JPEG? LZW? RAR? S3TC? MP3? MPEG-2? AAC? MPEG-4? h.264? I'll understand if you've forgotten all of these. After all, when a software patent only inconveniences people making Free Software, it doesn't really count as "bogus and a bad idea," right?
  - nirvana 15y ago
    I'm always at a loss as to whether I should try to parse thru these snide comments to try and figure out what the argument you're trying to make is, or if I should just ignore them. At the very least, your putting words in my mouth so I don't have to defend them.
    - vacri 15y ago
      Please don't make snide comments and then complain when others reply in kind.
    - MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
      You have implied that patents have only recently been something seen as problematic, and that patent warfare is something invented by Google and Android vendors to attack Apple. The reality, however, is that there have been several highly litigious patents in computing which have been used to threaten people. Let me expound on some of the more infamous ones. The modern GIF format, GIF89a, used a compression algorithm called LZW. This algorithm was patented by a company named Unisys. Unisys threatened ISPs and large websites with legal action if they didn't agree to license the patent. This directly led to the creation of the PNG format as a free and open alternative. S3TC, the S3 Texture Compression algorithm, is patented by a group of graphics vendors known as S3, and licensed to Microsoft under terms which let MS sublicense it under the name DXTC, (DirectX Texture Compression). The patent holders have been very mean about enforcement, and the patent is broadly written, so it applies to nearly every possible S3TC implementation, software or hardware. To this day, MS still makes money off of every graphics card sold, from licensing fees, and free 3D libraries, like Mesa, cannot safely ship S3TC decoders for fear of legal repercussions. h.264 is covered by a big portfolio of patents, held by MPEG-LA (Motion Picture Experts Group Licensing Authority). They have been very proactive about getting licensing fees any time they can, and using fear tactics to suppress free codec libraries like x264. One member of MPEG-LA is Apple, by the way. That's right, Apple has been conducting patent warfare since before the conception of Android. (Since I'm expecting a [citation needed]: x264 development started in 2004 at the latest; Android was acquired by Google in 2005.)

mcantelon 15y ago

>[Google fans] want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system I love how in one breath Apple fanboys call Android a copycat and in the next claim it's so much harder to use than iOS. Which is it?

nirvana 15y ago
Where's the contradiction? Google didn't spend 7 years working out the kinks to get the usability right. Also, since they license to anyone, most of the hardware is crap hardware, thus the pointing accuracy is way off. Also, Apple takes a 72 pixel, roughly, finger contact area and turns it into a touch point with pixel level accuracy. That's not easy and that's not easy for Google to copy (probably because Apple hasn't patented it, or the patent didn't give enough away.) That right there is probably a large reason why they don't work as well.
- vacri 15y ago
  Figuring out the precise centroid of a 'blob' has been around for at least 20 years - this calculation was used in optical research to determine where the centroid of the pupil was in video taken of someone's eyes. To suggest that this kind of algorithm is something special and new that Apple invented for the iPhone is just plain insulting.
- mcantelon 15y ago
  I find the notion that Android is a copycat silly, given the significant differences between Android and iOS. Apple has liberally incorporated the ideas of others throughout its history: everyone from Xerox Parc to Braun... and that's a good thing because it has helped consumer computing evolve. If Android is a copycat of iOS then iOS is a copycat of PalmOS. The real underlying issue seems to me that Apple is bitter about anyone competent daring to compete with them.
technoslut 15y ago
Not to argue but you can imitate something poorly. I'll leave it up to others to argue which OS is better.