Sam OliverOn the official Windows Blog, Brandon LeBlanc said that the widely circulated quote was "inaccurate." He flatly stated that the style of Windows 7 was not inspired by Mac OS X.
"Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7," LeBlanc said. "I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed."
The retraction came in response to an interview that Simon Aldous, partner group manager with Microsoft, gave to PCR, in which he said the graphical style of Windows 7 was inspired by Apple's Mac OS X.
"One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it's very graphical and easy to use," Aldous said. "What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 — whether it's traditional format or in a touch format — is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics."
Despite Microsoft's official retraction of the comments, many, prior to Aldous' statement, had noted similarities between Microsoft's latest operating system and Mac OS X. In particular, the Windows 7 taskbar and the Mac OS X dock act very much alike, by combining program icons for both launching an accessing open windows.
The similarities between the two were acknowledged by The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg in his review of Windows 7.
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Malcolm Owen
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172 Comments
Shame, I much preferred the honest approach .
Microsoft can deny all they want - for years they have been copying and imitating the Mac OS. To help you believe which statement is right, just look at both OS's and the proof is there that Windooz is imitating MAC.
OOOhh- a retraction.
MS knows how to keep Windows 7 alive in the news a month later. Pretty smart I think- this is obviously all planned PR.
All that anger, all that rage on here yesterday for what? NADA.
Just as I said yesterday , OSX has no touch features yet. So who's copying who? When does the Touch come out with SL Touch?
When I first read the original article I was thinking it was some kink of joke or hoax - of course then I realized that Windows is some kind of joke or hoax so it fits.
In fairness though I have used many operating systems for many years and I don't think any of them are as good or as bad as the some folks would have you believe - and overall each has improved over the years - my personal preference in Mac OS for overall ease of use, for it just works (except when it doesn't), and for the most part a lack of the pain and frustration of getting things to work in the first place and to keep them running well over time, Mac OS is far superior, especially for those who do not have an IT support staff.
Considering the original Windows was a reverse engineering job of the Mac's first OS in the first place and it hasn't got much further since the the 80's it seems a disingenuous discussion at best ....