cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ?

The assertion that Xerox did not "invent" the GUI and that many of the concepts had existed separately prior to their fusion at PARC is both true and completely irrelevant, in exactly the same way that a similar assertion could be made for the Wright Brothers, etc. No invention springs wholly formed from teh forehead of the inventor, everything builds on previous innovations. Xerox invented the GUI for all practical purposes. Likewise, whether Apple was "planning" on implementing a GUI is completely facetious. To return to the Wright Brothers analogy, lots of people were planning on inventing an airplane. And besides, the GUI wasn't even a spark in Apple's eye in 1979, they were just introducing the Apple II+ at that time! The Xerox Star was introduced in May, 1981, and the Apple Lisa 1 wasn't announced until January, 1983. It shipped in June of that year, more than two years after the Xerox. Two years is a freaking LIFETIME in the computer industry. What is this columnist smoking? In regard to Windows being a clone of the Macintosh, that's also false. The intended competitive target for Windows 1.0 was somebody's PC based product which in turn was intended as a competitor to IBM's TopView. I was here in the Windows 2.x/3.0 days, in fact, I was the beta administrator for 3.0, and I can tell you that competing with the Macintosh was the furthest thing from our minds. Nobody in the dev group had worked on a Mac, we didn't have any Macs anywhere in the area, and nobody ever mentioned the Mac as we made product decisions. In those days, our competitor was Quarterdeck's DesqView, partly GEM too, and some other things most people have forgotten like VM/386, not the Mac. We were not trying to compete with or clone the Mac. We were trying to (and this is not a corporate 'line', I'm serious, I was there) 1. make the PC easier to use, and 2. break the '640K barrier'. We didn't do a graphical user interface because it was graphical, we did it because it was WYSIWYG -- note that the first real Windows app was Aldus PageMaker, a desktop publishing application. People think Windows was successful because of some big Microsoft master plan, which is ridiculous. It didn't sell hardly at all until it really took off with 3.0, and that's just because the incredibly small dev team (like 25 including management) just wanted to do some really cool software. Hell, at launch, we all had buttons that said "Windows 3.0 - It's Cool." We weren't, and aren't, Orwellian characters, just folks trying to write software that people want to buy. Gee, I guess it worked! So sue us! Remember that Windows back then wasn't remotely similar to the Mac apart grew over time was the result of tons of usability studies with people who had never used a computer before. If implementing features via usability studies makes Windows more like the Mac, that only means that Apple's user interface must be genuinely easy to use and that doing things that way are natural. There's this misperception that there's some bad blood between Microsoft and Apple because they sued us, which couldn't be farther from the truth. When the lawsuit came through, we weren't saying "Those bastards!", we were saying "Huh? Why would they do that to their buddies?" And we never held a grudge either, up to and including our recent financial investments in Apple and our continuing successful software line for the Mac. Kai (my opinions, not my employer's) -----Original Message----- From: Max Eskin [mailto:maxeskin@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 21, 1998 4:17 PM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ? I am curious as to the veracity of the article at http://www.MacKiDo.com/DarkSide/Coates.html It is a criticism of another article, partly quoted. The original article says the Apple got their idea from xerox in 1979, and MS got their ideas from Apple, and now they have copied the Mac w/Win98 The article in the link argues that Win98 is much worse than the mac, which I agree with. I am wondering about its statement that Apple knew all about GUI before 1979 with their Lisa. AFAIK, the lisa is ~1982... The author argues that the other one should get his facts and MS propaganda in check. Is he practicing hypocrisY? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com