InfoWorld Declares Apple and Microsoft Thieves

With the recent launch of Snow Leopard and the very, very fresh launch of Windows 7, John Rizzo of InfoWorld put together a list of 20 areas in which Apple and Microsoft stole from each other (that would be 10 each, for those of you who suffer poor reading comprehension). The list is pretty good, and from what I can tell well balanced and accurate. Though, I do take exception to two items InfoWorld claims Apple stole from Microsoft:

6. Time Machine: Backup and Restore

Apple didn't steal Time Machine from Windows -- just the concept of including backup capability with the operating system. Time Machine is far easier to use and than the Backup and Restore utility in Windows 7, and some would say, more flexible. But Windows had backup first.

While, sure, Windows had some sort of system backup and restore capability starting with XP, I wouldn't place Time Machine and Microsoft's Backup and Restore utility in the same ballpark, let alone the same league. Time Machine backs up all a users data, not just system components. At least, my experience with the Backup and Restore feature was such that the user stood to lose their data when the system was restored unless there was a separate backup. I could be wrong, and frankly, I've never gotten the Backup and Restore functionality to actually work for me. But, hey, I could be doing something wrong.

The other item I disagree with is the following:

10. Terminal: Command Prompt

Old-timers will remember that Windows began as a GUI running on top of the MS-DOS command-line OS. Today's Command Prompt is no longer DOS, but it does give command-line access to Windows itself. Apple eschewed a command-line interface in versions 1 through 9 of the Mac operating system, but finally gave in and added Terminal to provide access to Mac OS X's powerful Unix underpinnings. In 2006, Microsoft released Windows PowerShell, which includes a scripting language and supports some bash (Unix) shell commands.

Here I think John is just plain wrong. Mac OS X being based on NeXTSTEP, and NeXSTEP being based on UNIX, well, it would naturally come with a Terminal. It's free functionality, handed down by the OSes pedigree. Kind of like genetics. I believe that the reason Apple included the Terminal app is that without it you lose your ability to interact with the UNIX core, especially if you're a keyboard jockey ("Damn them new-fangled GUI's! Why, in my day you had to code all your commands in Assembly, compile them, and hope you didn't make a spelling error!") and I believe Apple is very proud of the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X. Why else would they bother to get it certified? It also doesn't hurt Apple's marketing department to be able to say "See, we're a UNIX shop. Mac OS X is solid, stable, and has a long history of security vetting. We're the awesome, inexpensive, user-friendly UNIX your users have been dreaming about for decades."

I have a few other nitpicks, but honestly, those are really the biggest ones. If you want to read more of griping, Keep-It-Accurate-Bub rhetoric, drop me a comment. A little begging and pleading might get you somewhere.