Windows 7 Was ‘Inspired By Mac’? No, No Says Microsoft!
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Yesterday, November 11, 2009, many of the news services were reporting on an interview with Microsoft partner group manager, Simon Aldous. The article, which has been quoted around the Internet, is titled ‘Microsoft’s New Vision.’ Microsoft claims that the statement is being misquoted by the Apple fanboy sites that seem to be enjoying themselves at the expense of Microsoft. In the interview it is stated that:
Is Windows 7 really a much more agile operating system, in terms of the specific uses it can be moulded to?
The interesting thing is, it’s basically the next version of Vista. Vista was a totally redesigned operating system from XP. We’ve improved upon Vista in that way. We’ve stripped out a lot of the code, we’ve made a lot of it much more efficient, it sits on a smaller footprint, it operates far more quickly, it’s far more agile and effective in terms of the calls it makes. I saw an article recently that described it as ‘Vista on steroids’, and in some ways you can absolutely relate to that.
One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We’ve significantly improved the graphical user interface, but it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.
According to one site it alleges that Microsoft actually copied the look of Mac. Microsoft has responded with its own blog article, which states that:
An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.
Not being a Mac user I haven’t a clue how much Windows 7 looks like OS X or not. Maybe our readers can enlighten us as to the statements being made that Microsoft stole the look of a Mac or not.
Comments as always are welcome.
Microsoft Blog site source from Brandon LeBlanc
3 Comments
Zompaq
November 13th, 2009
at 4:20am
Hehe, what if Microsoft was all about copying the mac? And microsoft talked about it so much in front of their workers that one of them simply blogged about what he heard. And why would he lie about this? Haha if it were the truth it would make microsoft look bad so they have to say no NO! we didn’t do that
Ken
November 13th, 2009
at 10:44am
Windows has been looking at the Mac interface ever since both Apple and Microsoft took the GUI idea from Xerox. Every competitor in every industry looks at each other and tries to incorporate the best parts of each other’s products into their own, it’s nothing new.
To me it’s no big deal, but to try and deny it I think is a mistake. I think it’s fair to say that MS’s GUI’s are starting to look more like copies of the Mac GUI with every release. Is that a bad thing? Nah, if it works better then good, but some real innovation and not just innovation would be a better route.
Gary Bing
November 14th, 2009
at 5:54pm
Microsoft is right. Windows 7 didn’t copy Mac. Several of their OS’s previously did. Some times saying little or even nothing can say a lot. Microsoft should be giving tips to the Republican Party via expensive conferences as a new source of profits, maybe even exceeding that of OS”s in the near future. Silence may be deafening but it IS golden. Just ask President Clinton and he”ll tell you all about the word “is.” An expert “spin doctor” if there ever was one. And he isn’t even Republican!