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Mar 9, 2010 05:45 PM
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According to Jonathan Schwartz—then Sun's CEO—that's what Steve Jobs told him over the phone after Sun presented Looking Glass, a desktop concept similar to Mac OS X's. After that, Schwartz put Steve in his place:
"Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?" Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I'd help to found and which Sun acquired in 1996. Lighthouse built applications for NeXTSTEP, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Steve had used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it was obvious where they'd found inspiration. "And last I checked, MacOS is now built on Unix. I think Sun has a few OS patents, too." Steve was silent.
And probably foaming at the mouth, and wanting to send Luca Brasi to get Jonathan brand new cement shoes.
Even while Apple uses BSD as the basis for Mac OS X, I bet Jobs realized the stupidity of his call, realizing that Sun had a very strong IP portfolio, and plenty of ammo to fight Apple back. Something that HTC—or Google, for that matter—, when it comes to phones, don't have. [Johnathan Schwartz via Silicon Alley Insider]
Send an email to Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, at jesus@gizmodo.com.
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