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Comment by joebadmo | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs: "Picasso had a saying, 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

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Exactly. This is the man who stole the mouse (and the UI?) from Xerox 20+ years ago. Boo hoo.

Here's the thing. Apple took the desktop metaphors and input technology from PARC. But it then made its own interface. The Xerox PARC machines don't look like a Macintosh. I don't think you can compare that to what Google did with Android.

Android basically stole the iPhone interface in its entirety. Right down to the screen resolution and icon placement (bottom of the screen on each app).

In fact, to put an even finer point on it, Google scrapped its version of Android (see here: http://techcrunch.com/2007/12/17/android-prototype-lets-hope...) and went to work on a full on copy of the iPhone.

I'm glad Android's out there to provide competition. But there's no doubt Android's theft of the iPhone interface is more brazen than any other example I can think of.

I doubt this is really about ideas. It's probably more about feeling betrayed by a friend and former member of the board.

Xerox invested $1 million in Apple by purchasing 100000 shares at $10 each.

Apple stole ideas and made them better.

Google and MS stole ideas and made them worse.

No offense, but you sound like a bit of a fanboy.

I won't argue that Apple has done some amazing things through the years, but I wouldn't say that Android or Microsoft have made anything they've done worse.

Besides, some of the stuff that Android has been doing for years is now showing up in iOS, so it can't all be bad.

no offense taken. I guess you can call me a fan boy. but that doesn't mean i'm wrong.

Android = crappy poor man's iOS Windows = crappy poor man's Mac

"Besides, some of the stuff that Android has been doing for years is now showing up in iOS, so it can't all be bad."

what? like multitasking, copy/paste, widgets? if you want to be technical, iOS is a derivative of MAC OS X/NextStep, and MAC OS X/NextStep had multitasking, copy/paste and widgets years/decades before Android.

Actually, you're wrong. Windows is far from the a poor man's OS X. The dock in OS X is copy of Stardock, which was originally done for Windows. NeXTStep was not definitley not the first OS to have multitasking. In fact, Windows 2.0 which was released 1 year had it first. Once Apple released a development environment and office toolkist that is as widely used as either Visual Studio or Office 2010, then maybe you can make that claim. Or when the company creates it owns command line processor, or IDE for a phone. I realize many people such as yourself like to believe Apple is some innovative company, but they're just as guilty of stealing ideas as every other tech company in the Valley. Apple's strength is taking those ideas and weaving into a consistent and polished UX.

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