>"Apple was hurt by MS's outright theft of Apple's GUI design,...
>
>Jerry,
>
>This statement always tends to amuse me. "...Apple's GUI design..."?? Where did Apple get that from? Xerox, that's who. Apple paid Xerox nothing. Further, Microsoft wasn't even the first to utilize the GUI after Apple introduced Lisa. Commodore did it, and so did Atari.


The account by the person (a women whose name escapes me at the present) at the Palo Alto labs of Xerox indicated she was pleased when Jobs and his crew visited their lab and saw their pioneering work, but stunned when Xerox let Jobs have the technology because they didn't see a hugh market in desktop computers that would be useful in a business environment. No vision at the top.

Your point about Commodore and Atari is correct, but Apple didn't hire either Commodore or Atari to write their GUI desktop, they hired Microsoft. Commodore and Atari did not have insider information on Apple GUI code. Gates did.


>
>Fact of the matter is that Apple was hurt more by Apple's own actions than by Microsoft's so-called theft.

It's probably true that Jobs did as much damage to Apple by the introduction of such a poor PC as the Lisa (I had my own computer store at the time and had to keep four in stock to support each one in the field. Poorest PC ever made, IMO. That klutzy heat sink on the back was not in good thermal contact with the motherboard.) "So-called" theft is another matter. If you were hired by a company to work on their propritary code, which you then 'exported' to your own office modified it for your business and then began marketing it in competition to the company that originally hired you... would you call your actions "so called" theft? In todays 'IP' environment you'd be in jail awaiting a court date.



>
>Next thing people will try to tell me is that Microsoft's SQL Server was stolen from Sybase.

No need for exaggeration. It is common knowledge that Sybase sold it to Microsoft.