In another clear-cut case of Apple’s innovation being borrowed by the Wintel camp, Sharp has unveiled a laptop that includes an amazing "new" feature that is just like something that Apple has been doing for years. Observer Brutno noticed in a PCWorld magazine article that Sharp was touting the ability to use its MM1-1 laptop series as an external hard drive through a USB 2.0 connection.
This is one of the features Apple built into its product line long ago, including almost every Mac with built-in FireWire except the Blue & White G3, and the Yikes! PowerMac G4. FireWire "target disk mode" allows Mac users to use their FireWire-equipped Macs as an external hard drive when connected to another Mac via a FireWire cable. Unlike Sharp’s MM1-1, doing this on a Mac doesn’t require a cradle (see below), relying instead on holding the "t" key down during start up. From the PCWorld article:
Sharp unveiled last week for corporate users a notebook PC that also functions as an external hard drive. When the notebook computer is powered off and placed in its cradle, a desktop computer has direct access to the notebook’s internal hard drive via a USB 2.0 interface.
The new machine is part of Sharp’s MM1-1 series, which was released to the consumer market in October. This series has been popular among Japanese consumers, according to Masaaki Takeda, a spokesperson for Sharp.
"Using a notebook PC as a hard disk drive is something new [emphasis added] and consumers are choosing the MM1-1 series because of this function," he said. The Osaka, Japan, company plans to keep the MM1-1 series’ hard drive function in future products, he said.
You can find more information in the PCWorld magazine article.
The Mac Observer Spin:
Don’t get us wrong: We are happy to see new features coming to the PC world, but it is a tad annoying to see yet another thing that Apple brought to market being bandied about as "new" with nary so much as a thanks to the gearheads in Cupertino. We give no credence to the idea that the gearheads at Sharp were unaware of Apple’s feature, and feel the company should give a bit of credit where credit is due.
Still, this is business as usual, especially from the Wintel camp. Michael Dell tried to claim that Dell was the first PC company to integrate 802.11b support in a portable (Apple beat Dell by more than a year), Microsoft chairman Bill Gates called MovieMaker, a feature being included with Windows XP, "new and innovative" (apple had come out with iMovie more than a year earlier), and we all know how that "Windows" thing worked out. Indeed, this is just par for the course.