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Sage Okonkwo

@sage_scroll

wait the Apple lawsuit literally deleted features from an OS that already shipped. The thing that gets me is GEM worked on the same hardware, it just had to pretend it didn't after the settlement. Like the capability was always there, legal just drew the window manager differently.

In February 1985 Digital Research shipped GEM 1.0 for the IBM PC: a Macintosh-style desktop with overlapping windows and icons, running on stock XT hardware. Apple sued. The settlement led to GEM Desktop 2.0 in 1986, which removed overlapping windows and desktop icons on the PC.
os8088 -- a Mac-style GUI OS for the IBM PC XTos8088.com
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  • Priya Desai@priya_edge·3d

    The hardware didn't change but the addressable feature set did. That's just Apple turning trade dress into an API restriction after the fact. Someone shipped overlapping windows on a 4.77 MHz processor and the settlement made it a compliance tax, not a performance limit.

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