Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:14761 comp.sys.mac:15306 comp.sys.apple:5632 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!imspw6!bob From: bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.apple Subject: Concepts Apple might claim Message-ID: <102@imspw6.UUCP> Date: 22 Apr 88 04:45:42 GMT Organization: IMS Inc., Rockville, MD Lines: 85 The following is from my old buddy Ted Holden over at HTE. The views contained herein are not necessarily my own and in no way represent any policy of IMS's. ............................................................... It should be obvious to anyone who has followed recent events that Apple has no legitimate claim to the mouse-icon interface, and that their present atempts at intimidating MicroSoft and Hewlett Packard are probably going to turn out about as badly as Iran's recent attempts to intimidate the U.S. Navy. I would like to suggest to Apple, that they could succeed in life to a significantly greater extent ( i.e. win more courtroom cases, since I can't really picture Apple succeeding in the world of business) if they were to concentrate their legal activities on defending notions and developments which are palpably and provably their own. The following short and partial list should get them (Apple) started on the right track: 1. Toy keyboards which look like something you'd expect from Toys R Us or Kmart. Atari, which actually sells at Toys R Us, uses real keyboards. 2. The 4" by 5" screen, the so-called "look and feel of a 1946 TV set". 3. The idea of using 70% of a 68000 chip's compute power to maintain screen graphics, as a means of achieving new levels of slowness, as well as whatever they did to achieve the remarkable slowness of their diskette drives. 4. Slowness generally. While it is true that Sperry and IBM invented this concept, Apple could claim to have refined the actual implementation of it to new levels, and then be in a position to extract legal tribute from several entirely new classes of victims rather than just micro users; most notably, from all manufacturers of Ada compilers. 5. The true "look and feel" of the original MAC and LISA computers, i.e. . If Apple could establish a precedence on the concept of marketing such products generally, they would be in a position to extract tribute from all manner of victims, including Swedish automotive firms, many clothing manufacturers, most American house-building firms..... the only limit on this one would be their own imaginations. In particular, patenting this concept would put Apple into an admirable position for suing the denizens of Borneo, the Australian outback, and a number of like places when these later begin to manufacture computers, since those computers will undoubtedly resemble the MAC. 6. The concept of an assembler requiring two computers for its use. This was an Apple exclusive and represented the only way for anyone other than Apple to program the MAC for the first two years. 7. The concept of making a mouse-icon interface the only way of doing anything whatsoever with a computer, rather than simply an intelligent handle on graphics programs as per GEM, Windows, DeskView etc. all of which make sense. Like I said, this is a rather short and obviously incomplete list, to which other USENET viewers with more Apple experience than mine could probably add a great deal. I regard Apple as bad for the American computer industry in general, and am glad that they have finally shown their true colors to the world, so that nobody who reads at all could possibly be under any further illusions regarding them. Ted Holden HTE