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[Thomas Hudson]

tomg wrote:
> 
> > > Take your pick most companies are guilty of this. Most notably Apple and Microsoft. Almost the
> same
> > > situation of buddy-up, infiltrate and rip-off. How about a Apple/Microsoft boycott until they
> > > compensate the people they ripped-off?
> >
> > Which company did Apple ripp-off (besides Xerox ppl in Palo-Alto) ? Just curious...
> >
> > jbv
> 
> Their original product was a blue-box for ripping the Bell system. Woz built most of
> the Apple I stuff at HP and you mentioned Xerox the Lisa and Mac. After Woz saw
> MS basic he wrote Applesoft (he did write integer before then). I think that covers
> most of their product line. Don't get me wrong. They stole the golden key and changed
> the way we live, work and play in this world. The drive was Steve Jobs' the ideas
> belonged to others. There isn't anybody suing them and I love my Mac. What else is
> there to say?

I often wonder what would have happened if Jobs hadn't stole these ideas. It doesn't
seem like Xerox would have done anything with them. And if Apple hadn't created the
Mac, M$ would have never ripped them off and created Windows (which may be a good
thing).

Though, had I been one of the guys at Parc, I'd be pissed at Apple AND Xerox.
At Parc, they invented:

The mouse.
The GUI.
Smalltalk and object-oriented programming.
Ethernet and networking.

But I have to make a big distinction between being inspired by ideas and a complete
total ripoff. Apple wrote their own code for the Mac. If this Scott Hunter had
developed his own design from scratch it might be different. But lying about
being interested and watching one being built, this is just scum. Buying a product
and taking it apart to reverse engineer it is still pretty lowlife, 
but this guy was even too cheap to purchase a unit. 

Thomas