With both Tiger and Longhorn, developers will be able to make various types of data available for searching. Ken Bereskin, Apple's senior director of Mac OS X marketing, said Apple also makes the code for Spotlight available to developers so they can add such searching directly into their applications.
I was here first
As to who stole whose idea, both companies are doing their fair share of finger-pointing.
Apple has been taunting Microsoft since it first showed Tiger last year, plastering its developer conference with posters trumpeting phrases such as "This should keep Redmond busy" and "Introducing Longhorn."
Allchin rejects the notion that Microsoft is a Tiger copycat, noting that the company demonstrated some of the virtual folder concepts in its Fall 2003 preview of Longhorn.
"They just might have copied us," Allchin said.
But Apple loyalists will certainly note that the search technology that powers the Spotlight search feature has been a staple of Mac applications for some time, beginning with iTunes, which debuted in January 2001.
"That was the spark of inspiration that led us to say, What if we brought that to the entire system?" said Bereskin.
Allchin does give Apple credit.
"Ever since (CEO) Steve (Jobs) has come back to Apple, they've been on my radar screen," Allchin said. "I think it's just good competition."
At the same time, he noted that the Mac's growth pales in comparison to the number of Windows users added each year. "Our growth this year in PCs is bigger than the entire Mac install base," Allchin said. And he added that much of the growth Apple has seen has come on the music side. The Mac, he said, "is now a peripheral to the iPod."
But similarities -- and the issue of who copied whom -- aside, there's a key difference between Tiger and Longhorn.
Apple is coming out with Tiger in two weeks; Microsoft hopes to have Longhorn out by the second half of next year.
Apple is "first out of the box," Jupiter's Gartenberg said. "We have to give credit where credit is due."
1%
8%
actually, most of the apple stuff is
copied from the GNOME desktop.
still, us linux people had better watch our
backs, with the DRM coming from microsoft
and the transparent videos coming from apple...