KABOOOOOOOM

Impulsivity, you are giving credit to Apple for these things when all they did was tweak them and give them the Apple image.  Apple did not invent touch screens, Apple did not invent functional consumer gui and mouse, etc.  You just have a blind hatred of M$.  Jobs has screwed over SOO many people over the years.  Ripping people off, etc.  Both M$ and Apple just buy smaller companies who innovate and sell them as their own.

Pretty much everything you listed that Apple came up with, was already done years before.  Apple is an image, and that is pretty much it.  They have yet to come to terms with developing software from a security standpoint either.  iTunes and Safari are absolutely pathetic in terms of security.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE7DE1E39F936A25751C1A96F948260

The Xerox Corporation filed suit here today against Apple Computer Inc., accusing it of unlawfully using Xerox copyrights in its Macintosh and Lisa computers.

Xerox contends that the Lisa and Macintosh software stems from work originally done by Xerox scientists and that it was used by Apple without permission.

Apple NEVER paid XEROX a dime. Apple outright stole it. However the case I mentioned was thrown out because of statue of limitations. It was the result of a suit by Apple against HP and MS and the court only found that HP had violated apples IP with the trash Icon otehr than that apple lost its case.

Xerox had a monopoly status in the 70s and its ability to protect its IP was severly limited. The people I know who worked on PARC stated many times they were mad because XEROX did not properly protect itself and allowed for the apples and MSs of the world to encroach.

The Mouse and GUI were developed by PARC...Xerox's mouse even had 2 buttons.... The mouse had been around since the early 70's and liek everything else Apple gutted the mouse and GUI took away features and sold it as there own.

The PDA phone had been around for a long time before the IPhone I know because I used them. I was even able to get full internet not the mobile internet because of Opera. The Spotlight and Widget features in 10.4 on was in the longhorne betas in 2002 before even 10.3 came out and was available as a download before for XP in 2003 though it was buggy then.

Both Apple and MS and pretty much any copany buys up IPs from smaller company's. Example Coverflow. I use both OS X and Windows. I prefer the Windows enviroment but some programs I like are available only on the Mac like FCP. It all depends on wat I am working on.

Just a fast Edit because I don't want to be the mindless fanboy giving credit to the wrong people. THe Mouse was actually developed in the 60's at Stanford.

  First I didn't say PDA phone, I said PDA from which most smart phones are based.  The Newton was the first PDA as its traditionally understood (though some would claim the casio 3000 would be the first PDA, it was in effect a calculator looking device that could store names as well as numbers).  It had handwriting recognition, multiple aplications, onboard memory, a touch screen and many more features standard on todays PDAs.  Yes Nokia made a PDA phone before the iphone, but did not come before Apples Newton PDA (nor did Palm).  The Newton was only mildly successful due mainly to its high price and Jobs killed it to work on the ipod and later iphone instead.

   As to Xerox getting money from apple it DID in fact happen.  "In December 1979, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center developed the first prototype for a GUI. A young man named Steve Jobs, looking for new ideas to work into future iterations of the Apple computer, traded US $1 million in stock options to Xerox for a detailed tour of their facilities and current projects. One of the things Xerox showed Jobs and other members of the Apple Lisa team was the Alto machine, which sported a GUI and a three-button mouse."

   Apple did not take an alto back with them, did not directly copy the OS or anything involved (other then the basic idea of the GUI) and had a program leading to the macintosh in progress at the time with Apple II money.  They were sued in 1989 by Xerox in a money grab lawsuit, but they HAD provided Xerox compensation for the look at the Alto in the form of the million dollars in options.

   The mouse was first invented in the 60s as a tool only scientests could use, but like in the case of the CASIO the early mice used by those scientists bared little resemblance to the commercially successful mac mouse that had much greater utility for the average consumer.  

   If you're going to go to the widget/gadget system neither apple nor MS created that, it was from Yahoo, swing and a miss on that one.

  There is a difference between a prototype and a comercially viable product too.  Xerox may have had a prototype of a GUI but that doesn't mean it was a functional consumer product like the macintosh was just like there were hobbyist machines before the Apple I and II (but that doesn't mean that the Apple I and II weren't the first successful consumer machines either).  

   There is a difference between being first in theory (IE I'm sure 2000 years ago at least someone hit a round object with a stick a few times but that doesn't mean he invented baseball) and first in terms of having an actualized product.  Apple has been first in having an actualized product many, many times.  Microsoft has never once been first with an actualized product, never.  You can make an arguement that there was an obscure product in the shadows before Apple made the standard version (say OMG there was the Archon Hard Drive MP3 player before the ipod! if you must) but Apple didn't just tweak it, it revolutionized it (ditto with the macintosh, the Apple II, the iphone ect).  If you want tweaking with no real innovation look at Windows, the zune, internet explorer, .net, the Xbox and all the rest of the Microsoft me too products.  Microsoft products aren't even evolutionary much less revolutionary.

  First I didn't say PDA phone, I said PDA from which most smart phones are based.  The Newton was the first PDA as its traditionally understood (though some would claim the casio 3000 would be the first PDA, it was in effect a calculator looking device that could store names as well as numbers).  It had handwriting recognition, multiple aplications, onboard memory, a touch screen and many more features standard on todays PDAs.  Yes Nokia made a PDA phone before the iphone, but did not come before Apples Newton PDA (nor did Palm).  The Newton was only mildly successful due mainly to its high price and Jobs killed it to work on the ipod and later iphone instead.

   As to Xerox getting money from apple it DID in fact happen.  "In December 1979, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center developed the first prototype for a GUI. A young man named Steve Jobs, looking for new ideas to work into future iterations of the Apple computer, traded US $1 million in stock options to Xerox for a detailed tour of their facilities and current projects. One of the things Xerox showed Jobs and other members of the Apple Lisa team was the Alto machine, which sported a GUI and a three-button mouse."

   Apple did not take an alto back with them, did not directly copy the OS or anything involved (other then the basic idea of the GUI) and had a program leading to the macintosh in progress at the time with Apple II money.  They were sued in 1989 by Xerox in a money grab lawsuit, but they HAD provided Xerox compensation for the look at the Alto in the form of the million dollars in options.

   The mouse was first invented in the 60s as a tool only scientests could use, but like in the case of the CASIO the early mice used by those scientists bared little resemblance to the commercially successful mac mouse that had much greater utility for the average consumer.  

   If you're going to go to the widget/gadget system neither apple nor MS created that, it was from Yahoo, swing and a miss on that one.

  There is a difference between a prototype and a comercially viable product too.  Xerox may have had a prototype of a GUI but that doesn't mean it was a functional consumer product like the macintosh was just like there were hobbyist machines before the Apple I and II (but that doesn't mean that the Apple I and II weren't the first successful consumer machines either).  

   There is a difference between being first in theory (IE I'm sure 2000 years ago at least someone hit a round object with a stick a few times but that doesn't mean he invented baseball) and first in terms of having an actualized product.  Apple has been first in having an actualized product many, many times.  Microsoft has never once been first with an actualized product, never.  You can make an arguement that there was an obscure product in the shadows before Apple made the standard version (say OMG there was the Archon Hard Drive MP3 player before the ipod! if you must) but Apple didn't just tweak it, it revolutionized it (ditto with the macintosh, the Apple II, the iphone ect).  If you want tweaking with no real innovation look at Windows, the zune, internet explorer, .net, the Xbox and all the rest of the Microsoft me too products.  Microsoft products aren't even evolutionary much less revolutionary.

@cueil in what world is windows ever more user friendly and superior? I mean did you ever even USE Windows 3.0? It was horrific. My dad, at the time, ran the education center for Illinois and so had access to a large number of computers of all stripes and I can say unequivically early versions of windows were just awful. The first even functional version of Windows was Windows 95 which came out in 95 "obviously". From System 7 in the late 80s on the Mac OS was very usable and worked great; even the first macs were at least on par with windows 95 other then being black and white (and having VERY limited Hard Drives and RAM).

The idea that there was some call for windows because the mac was hard to use is just insane, really. That's like saying the Internet Explorer was called for because Netscape was a bad browser (it certainly wasn't) or people hate Google and so need Windows Live Search (which they are now paying people to use and even still not gaining traction).

As to paying 999 for a used laptop, macs cost more used (and new) but their total cost of ownership is far lower. If you swap your computer every few years you get much higher resale value with macs, which makes the ocmputer as a whole less expensive. Farhad Manjoo did a great piece on that where he compared purchase price and resale value of various computers and found macs a few hundred dollars cheaper. I have never sold a mac I bought for less then a few hundred dollars below what was retail when I got it two years prior. I bought a G5 mac pro for 2300, sold it for 2000 2 years later, ditto for a more recent mac pro purchase.

It really is like buying a luxury car instead of a kia. I mean if you have a 2004 Lexus it's still worth over 50% of what you paid 5 years later while a 2004 Kia sells on the junk car lot for about 1500-2000 bucks retail blue book. I mean sure the kia cost only 15,000 new, but it was a total loss in value just a few years later (and for those years you're driving a friggin Kia).

  Article here http://machinist.salon.com/feature/2007/11/07/mac_price/index.html

Kaboom.

We'll need a spoon to pick out the remains 8P