Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!iuvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucdcsp!gillies
From: gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple Challenges HP New Wave, MS-Wi
Message-ID: <76000164@uiucdcsp>
Date: 22 Mar 88 01:45:00 GMT
References: <5480@well.UUCP>
Lines: 30
Nf-ID: #R:well.UUCP:5480:uiucdcsp:76000164:000:1465
Nf-From: uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Mar 21 19:45:00 1988


Clearly there is some kind of copyright on a user interface and you
should not be allowed to completely clone an interface (so I could
walk up to a PC an operate it using my knowledge of the Macintosh).
This is especially true because professional graphic artists are used
by today's workstation vendors to make their graphics aesthetically
pleasing.

HOWEVER, most industries thrive on reverse-engineering and technology
copying.  Why do you think DRAMs are so cheap?  Because whoever gets a
4Mb part to work will have a 6-month head start before the other
companies can copy the ideas, if not the lithography itself.  If NEC
can clone an 8088 with impunity, why can't Microsoft Clone a Mac
interface?  The answer is that they can.

As was said earlier, MANY ideas of the macintosh cannot be protected
because they don't come from Apple.  In fact, you could say that
Apple's innovations were mainly related to 1-button mouses, and the
look of scrollbars and fonts.  That would just about summarize
everything.

I for one believe someone will call Apple's bluff in the next few
years and Apple will lose big in court.  Then it will be open-season
on the macintosh interface.  And rightly so.  Apple should not be
applauded so much for its innovation, as it should be applauded for
bringing high-end technology to a low-end machine.  This is the main
innovation in the macintosh.

Don Gillies {ihnp4!uiucdcs!gillies} U of Illinois
            {gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu}