Geoff Spick15 November 2009, 1:55 PM
A lot of tech sites were reporting an admission from Microsoft that it was "inspired by" Mac OS X. That's not the case according to an actual Windows 7 designer.
Browsing the web in the last few days, you may have been forgiven for looking out the window to check for aerial porcine creatures. Headlines along the lines of "Microsoft admits Windows 7 inspired by Mac" screamed out of
quite a few sites.
In fact, the comments came from a Microsoft exec who had nothing to do with Windows design and it was up to an actual designer, Brandon LeBlanc to clarify those comments today, on the
Windows 7 blog. He says, "An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed."
Windows 7, all Microsoft's own work, no leaning over Apple's shoulder in classHe goes on to cite some articles where you can read more about the actual process. Now, regardless of who did what with that pixel, this icon, the other background, menu system and so on, there are only so many ways to show and manipulate stuff on a screen using the current mouse-based system. Basically, designers have nicked stuff from each other for over 30 years in the quest for the best desktop and they all do roughly the same thing in slightly different ways. Hopefully this argument will go away until the next generation of 3D holofaces that we'll enjoy in a decade or so.