This morning I read the recent Newsweek interview with Bill Gates regarding the launch of Vista. In the interview there was the now expected question about Vista containing many features already in place in OS X. To me, this issue is way overplayed. The question has just become an easy way for lazy journalists -- who have no idea what they are talking about -- to drum up a compelling sub-plot. Mr. Gruber gave his take on the whole who-stole-what debate and it's subsequent media play better than I could, so I'm not going to tread the same path. Instead I want to look at the often overlooked party in this debate: Xerox.

In John's post, he includes a link to some screenshots of the Xerox Star UI basically saying: If we want to get accurate about this, technically everyone stole from Xerox. And to take that a little further, I am basically saying: It's time to stop the juvenile "But, we were firrrrrrst." whining, and just focus on making the best possible product. Let us, the customers, decide the rest. Because really, Xerox was the true pioneer.
Look at the Xerox Star UI for a minute. Think about the feat of creating this completely new interface (I know this stuff evolved from PARC research, but that's not what I mean). Think about this, a file and a folder have a physical counterpart, but a cursor, or a scroll-bar? Imagine the process of creating the scroll-bar, something that never existed until that point. It has no real-world frame of reference. By all accounts, the easy solution would be pagination. Hey, that's how books do it. But the design of the scroll-bar went beyond that comfortable solution. It was designed specifically for the medium. And this seemingly small decision exponentially affected the applications and UI's of today. Think about that. The task of creating something completely new, with hardly any frame of reference. Situations like that don't come around too often.

For some reason, thinking about this really boggled my mind. Looking at those prehistoric (in computer time) UI screenshots is comparable to looking at the first aqueduct in Rome, or the first pyramid in Egypt. Both set the framework for all future innovation. Pretty impressive.

Side note: Imagine if Xerox capitalized on this innovation. How different would the whole industry be? Would it be better or worse? And seeing how Xerox is a North Eastern company, how would this affect the geography of the tech explosion? Could Rochester have been the capital of Silicon Valley (just without the sunny weather)? Add to the equation Kodak and imagine if they were more agile and progressive with new technology (see: digital). As someone from the area, saying you are from Rochester could've had a much different meaning.

But anyway, back to my point. I really think we spend far too much time squabbling and not enough time appreciating. Just take a minute and think about the design accomplishments achieved in the Xerox Star computer GUI. That was truly revolutionary. What we are doing now is merely evolutionary. When you think about it, the OS X vs. Windows debate is really pretty insignificant. Xerox already did all the hard work.