To hear Microsoft Corp. tell it, the official unveiling of Windows XP is the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel. But users of other operating systems -- even earlier versions of Microsoft's -- aren't nearly as excited. As the world's largest software company dispatched Chairman Bill Gates to New York and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to London for lavish XP launch events, there are those who remain Linux loyalists and believers that Microsoft is still little more than a highly efficient copycat of existing technology. "I truly believe Apple is the innovator and the creative force behind almost all the technology that comes out, and Microsoft is the big copier," said diehard Apple Computer Inc. loyalist Dan Doerner, a musician in San Francisco and owner of two Macintoshes. Of course, it's no secret in high technology that having the best 'mousetrap' doesn't translate to the biggest sales and market share. After all, it's Microsoft that's been ruled a monopoly and whose Windows operating system runs 90 percent of the world's personal computers. And the complaint that Microsoft borrows much of the innovation of others, and then incorporates that innovation and functionality into Windows, isn't anything new.