It looks even worse when viewed in that light. Is "we're going to try to rip Apple off, badly" really the pitch they're giving HP and their other OEM's?
Oy. I'm _so_ sick of people talking of one software company "copying" another as if it's a bad thing.
Look around in the rest of the world mate. Look at the checkout lines at Target! They're exactly like Walmart! Which are exactly like Safeway! Look at the layout of every grocery store you've ever been in. Look at each boutique in the shopping mall. All the same!
When people say "intuitive" they mean "familiar." They may not realize it, but that's what "intuitive" _actually_ means.
You've got an e-commerce site? You should liberally borrow/steal from Amazon's checkout process. You've got an OS? Take from Apple who've been setting a baseline for OS usability.
Christ. "X is copying Y" is about as inane as it gets to me.
It's not the copying that's the problem. It's the part where they're doing it badly.
If the best Microsoft can do is to struggle to keep up with what Apple was doing two years ago they're not going to look very impressive to OEM's like HP as they decide to move forward with their products, with our without Microsoft.
If that's the case then it's just a question of implementation. Why does the "copying"/"stealing" meme even introduce itself? It confuses your point IMO.
However, your "doing it badly" is a matter of opinion, no? I use a mac at work as I mentioned elsewhere. I enjoy it a great deal. It's hard to go back and forth between the Mac there and Windows at home because the way the mouse moves is just... different. But I do it...
I was planning on dumping my Vista laptop at home for a macbook but then I gave Win7 a try. You can scoff at my experiences if you'd like, but Win7 is the only OS i've ever purchased. I think Vista is one of the worst OS experiences I've ever had (2nd to ME) and hands-down I think Win7 is the best.
It's built-in keyboard shortcuts for moving and docking windows across multiple monitors are invaluable to me. I installed the 3rd party app to give me similar function on my mac and it was... dismal.
My Win box is as reliable as my Mac. I restart them both on average once a month or so.
There are several places Mac kills Win7. Tasks like adding a network printer, for example. But those are rare, relatively speaking.
The Win7 taskbar is no doubt inspired by the Dock but it's far more useful IMO. The context menu per taskbar item is brilliant.
And once my cache is warmed (a day after restarts maybe) it's faster to/from Hibernate/Sleep than is the Mac.
If you've not used Win7 and you're criticizing, eh, you're entitled. But as an analytical guy, as a software developer, it seems odd to me.
Wait some months and see if the experience is still the same. Much to my surprise, a lot of people still say that windows 7 has the age old "bit rot" problem of Windows 95, i.e. the longer you use it without rebooting the worse it starts performing.
Except there are almost no Apple features listed in this deck. The only thing they really copy from Apple is to create brand loyalty. I'm not sure any company in the world would argue against trying to get the brand loyalty that Apple has.
