Pair of Twiggys

[Chris Hanson]

On Mar 15, 2017, at 10:40 AM, Josh Dersch via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> The Star introduced the concept of icons representing files (and other
> things) in 1981.

According to “Inventing the Lisa User Interface,” Apple put emphasis on icons in the Lisa interface in its Marketing Requirements Document in 1979. They were also considering desktop icons for Lisa in 1980, and initially rejected them. They were led back to the model by the results of user testing as well as what they read about IBM’s PICTUREWORLD system (paper published in 1980).

Which isn’t to say they didn’t see predecessors of the stuff that shipped with Xerox Star. But there was a lot of contemporaneous work after Apple’s 1979 PARC visits.

>  Smalltalk invented scrollbars (they were clumsier than
> Apple's though) in the mid 70s.

Right. The typical desktop scroll bar as thought of today, however, like typical desktop windows and menus, are largely an Apple refinement if not invention.

> Also, don't forget that the Mac was designed by a number of ex-PARC
> researchers.  It may have been invented at Apple, but it was strongly
> influenced by what went on at PARC.

There were only a relative handful of ex-PARC folks involved in Macintosh itself, more were involved in Lisa from what I gather.

  -- Chris