🚀 go-pugleaf

 
 
 
          The following  is from  my old buddy Ted Holden over at HTE.  The
          views contained herein are not necessarily my own  and in  no way
          represent any policy of IMS's.
 
 
          ...............................................................
 
               It  should  be  obvious  to  anyone  who has followed recent
          events that Apple  has  no  legitimate  claim  to  the mouse-icon
          interface,  and   that  their  present  atempts  at  intimidating
          MicroSoft and Hewlett Packard  are  probably  going  to  turn out
          about as  badly as  Iran's recent attempts to intimidate the U.S.
          Navy.  I would like to suggest to Apple, that  they could succeed
          in  life  to  a  significantly  greater  extent  (  i.e. win more
          courtroom cases, since I can't really picture Apple succeeding in
          the world  of business)  if they  were to concentrate their legal
          activities  on  defending  notions  and  developments  which  are
          palpably and provably their own.  The following short and partial
          list should get them (Apple) started on the right track:
 
 
               1.   Toy keyboards which look  like  something  you'd expect
                    from Toys  R Us  or Kmart.  Atari, which actually sells
                    at Toys R Us, uses real keyboards.
 
               2.   The 4" by 5" screen, the so-called "look and feel  of a
                    1946 TV set".  
 
               3.   The idea  of using  70% of a 68000 chip's compute power
                    to maintain  screen graphics,  as a  means of achieving
                    new levels of slowness, as well as whatever they did to
                    achieve  the  remarkable  slowness  of  their  diskette
                    drives.
 
               4.   Slowness generally.   While  it is true that Sperry and
                    IBM invented  this concept,  Apple could  claim to have
                    refined the  actual implementation of it to new levels,
                    and then be in a position to extract legal tribute from
                    several  entirely  new  classes  of victims rather than
                    just micro users; most notably, from  all manufacturers
                    of Ada compilers.
 
               5.   The true  "look and  feel" of the original MAC and LISA
                    computers,  i.e.  <dumb  and  ugly>.    If  Apple could
                    establish a precedence on the concept of marketing such
                    products generally, they  would  be  in  a  position to
                    extract tribute  from all  manner of victims, including
                    Swedish automotive firms, many  clothing manufacturers,
                    most American  house-building firms..... the only limit
                    on this  one  would  be  their  own  imaginations.   In
                    particular, patenting this concept would put Apple into
                    an admirable position for suing the denizens of Borneo,
                    the  Australian  outback,  and  a number of like places
                    when these later begin to manufacture  computers, since
                    those computers will undoubtedly resemble the MAC.
 
               6.   The concept of an assembler requiring two computers for
                    its use.  This was an  Apple exclusive  and represented
                    the only way for anyone other than Apple to program the
                    MAC for the first two years.
 
               7.   The concept of making  a mouse-icon  interface the only
                    way  of  doing  anything  whatsoever  with  a computer,
                    rather than simply an  intelligent  handle  on graphics
                    programs  as  per  GEM,  Windows,  DeskView etc. all of
                    which make sense.
 
 
               Like I said, this is a rather short and obviously incomplete
          list, to  which other  USENET viewers  with more Apple experience
          than mine could probably add a great deal.  I regard Apple as bad
          for the  American computer  industry in general, and am glad that
          they have finally shown their true colors to  the world,  so that
          nobody  who  reads  at  all  could  possibly be under any further
          illusions regarding them.
 
          Ted Holden
          HTE