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Lickable Screens For All (1/29/01)
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Just because Bill Gates is busy mining Steve's keynote addresses for material for his own little speeches, don't worry-- his minions are working overtime to swipe ideas at the product level, too. Everyone who registers more EEG activity than a turnip knows that Windows was a baldfaced theft of the original Macintosh interface-- and according to an article in Windows 2000 Magazine forwarded to us by faithful viewer David Triska, history is about to repeat itself, big-time.
The article itself focuses primarily on Microsoft's struggle to build support for its .NET strategy (which we've taken to calling "Microsoft Java") into the Windows operating system. But the really interesting part to the drama fiends out there is the off-the-cuff mention of how Microsoft's programmers are "having 'panic attacks' about Mac OS X's new Aqua UI." Apparently the simplicity of the new Finder, in particular, has the best and brightest of Redmond reaching for a clean change of britches. A "source close to Microsoft" reports that Microsoft's user interface folks are "suddenly playing catch-up-with-the-Mac again," and you know what that means: expect Windows 2002 to contain as much of Aqua's lickability as Microsoft's UI team can successfully steal.
Indeed, faithful viewer Mike recently ranted to us about the Aquafication present in beta versions of Whistler, Microsoft's next operating system. We went scrounging around the 'net and found a SlashDot article that points to several screenshots, and while we notice a certain candy-style quality to the look and feel (not to mention a healthy helping of soft drop shadows and translucency effects), we have to admit that the "homage" is less blatant than we expected. Then again, the most recent of those screenshots were posted back in October, so perhaps Microsoft's look-and-feel team have managed to craft a more faithful representation by now. But hey, even if they're not quite there yet, they've still got plenty of time-- and fear is a great motivator...
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SceneLink (2828)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/29/01 episode: January 29, 2001: "1984" loses the Super Bowl, but at least the Mac helped the winning team. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has been rehearsing Steve's last keynote address for his own public speeches, and sources close to Microsoft indicate that Mac OS X's Aqua interface has struck mortal fear into the Redmond Horde...
Other scenes from that episode: 2826: We Had Money On That! (1/29/01) Wait, yesterday was the what bowl? Oh, that's the thing with all the commercials, right? Yeah... well, whoever scheduled it against a night of Sunday night Fox reruns seriously misforecast our viewing habits, but hey, there's always the distant possibility that we weren't the target audience anyway... 2827: Did He Wear A Turtleneck? (1/29/01) Everybody knows that when it comes to copying Steve Jobs and Apple, Mike Dell is the undisputed king. However, his Steve emulation appears to be primarily pathological in nature; clearly the man is obsessed, can't control his actions, and is a danger to himself and others...
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