Microsoft nicking Apple ideas again

NOT CONTENT with just borrowing software ideas and then investing $150 million in the company to get rid of outstanding lawsuits, Microsoft has decided that Apple's basic business plan is nice enough to nick too. They've ganged up with HP to start turning PCs into Apple clones.

You can find the full story over at The Seattle Times but, as with so many American news pieces, the real story is closer to the end than the beginning. After years of watching it do what it does so well, Microsoft has decided that Apple's co-ordination of developing machines with the software they'll run is just what the industry needs.

The machine on show is an Apple look-alike and an HP exec has the gall to say that, "Apple is on a similar track in that they're designing with the end-user in mind." As far as everyone else in the industry is concerned, Apple actually designed and built that track many, many years ago. But the real cheek is yet to come.

That same exec, Louis Kim by the way, told The Seattle Times that the new systems were designed for functionality and not for fashion. That has to be a direct stab at Apple's renown for producing stylish machines. But it almost certainly backfires as it is an effective admission that HP and Microsoft were only capable of getting one out of two right.

Kim tried to wriggle out of the whole thing by saying that there was "no intent to try and mimic Apple" but the similarities are a little too obvious to be accidental. µ