[Article author here]

You're missing the real core point.

Apple sued to protect its features.

So, Microsoft had to do things differently.

Apple: drive icons on the desktop. GEM, Windows: drive icons in folders.

Apple: global system menu at top left. Clock at top right. Windows: start menu at bottom left; clock at bottom right.

Apple: start apps by browsing to their folder. MS: separate app launcher menu.

Apple: no graphical way to switch apps, because classic MacOS multitasked poorly. MS: the task bar, with buttons for each running window.

The point is not the broad general similarities. The point is the differences.

No, I think you're missing the point. Intellectual property is a joke and none of this belongs to anyone. All any of this did was waste resources. Also, what a terrible article, I think you should apologize. Stop trying to reply with "No" in every comment and take in what people are saying to start with.

I actually largely agree with most of that.

I do think that being able to patent relatively minor UI stuff is absurd. I do think it was a total waste of resources, and I have said so, in print, for instance here: https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft...

However, I was there as an active industry watcher and commentator at the time, and it seems to me that the main focus of comments here are simple incredulity. I have seen very very few people responding with any kind of citation or reference or anything else.

I do not accept simply argument from authority. The founder of the GNOME project says "no" is not a counter-argument. [1] I am not sure that he was involved in GNOME 3. [2] He then became an MS employee and therefore has (literally) vested interest.

Denial is not refutation.

Furthermore, as I have said, if anyone involved publicly confessed to it, that would constitute an admission of liability.

Good, serves them right. Apple shamelessly stole their interface from Xerox, so I don't see why we have to put everyone on blast here.

Steve Jobs said it himself: "Good artists copy; great artists steal"

Hell, arguably Apple wouldn't exist as it does today if they hadn't brazenly appropriated companies that worked in fields they were interested in. There's nothing new (or shameful) about stealing UI motifs if they're effective.

Apple took resizable overlapping windows from Xerox; in return, Xerox got shares in Apple. Not stole: bought, with stock.

Then, on the Lisa, Apple invented from scratch:

Standarised dialog boxes; a global menu bar; window title bars with global controls on them; standardised icons and functions and buttons (OK, Cancel, etc).

None of this stuff was in Xerox Smalltalk.

Xerox invented 3 things: overlapping resizable windows; an object-oriented programming language to create and manipulate them; ubiquitous networking to connect the machines.

Apple took the windows, missed the rest.

Source: Steve Jobs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHaTRWRj8G0

But Apple invented most of the standard GUI controls that we all know and use today. They weren't in the original Xerox system at all.

> Apple took resizable overlapping windows from Xerox; in return, Xerox got shares in Apple

This is sort of backwards. Xerox already had taken a stake in Apple before any of the demonstrations (and, in part, this is why the demonstrations happened at all). It was the Lisa team that came for the second of the legendary demos, including the engineer -- formerly of the LRG team at PARC -- who would go on to invent the Finder.

Well, there's nothing new under the sun really. And I should have framed it differently because, even though I was a Mac user, I wasn't exactly a fanboi. I don't care so much to champion Apple products as I do to point out that claiming the UI features of Windows 95 were original is inaccurate. And also that they weren't seen as being original at the time they arrived on the scene by certain cohorts.

Apple licensed the interface design from Xerox.

The only thievery involved was on Microsoft's part. They should have gotten smacked down in that lawsuit.

> "Good artists copy; great artists steal"

If Jobs said that, he stole it; the original was Pablo Picasso.

I didn't attribute the quote to him (very few good things can be directly attributed to Jobs), but it was one of his favorite quotes so I think it directly refutes the Apple Apologism mindset that everything good in modern OSes came from MacOS. Apple didn't invent the mouse or the cursor, and they didn't come up with the keyboard or the floppy drive. The pastiche of a mid-90s computer doesn't resemble a Mac at all.