Desktop Metaphor

[Rick Bensene]

Curious Marc wrote:

>Curiously, the Xerox Alto has quite advanced GUI and object oriented programming (including the smalltalk windowing environment), >but no desktop metaphor or icons that I have seen. I believe desktop metaphors appear later in the Alto commercial successor, the >Xerox Star, and in the Apple Lisa, which bears strong Xerox influences. Xerox’s desktop metaphor pushes the object concept a bit far, >while the Lisa got what would become the modern ubiquitous version of the concept almost dead on. Did I get this approximately >right? Are there any other GUI desktop metaphors that predates this?

Marc is correct here.  My memory was faulty in my original posting about the "Desktop Metaphor".  The Alto, at least in its initial incarnation didn't really have a true desktop metaphor, though prototypes of the desktop environment may have run on it internally to PARC.   The Star, which was a commercial product (as opposed to Alto), definitely did, and that's where my memory was faulty.    Thanks, Marc, for pointing out my error.

A place I worked for many, many years ago was involved with Smalltalk and OO database development.   They had a working Xerox Smalltalk machine, and  that's what I remembered the desktop metaphor from, but was thinking it was an Alto.  After doing a little digging through old notes, I realized my memory of the machine was incorrect, and that the machine they had was a Star.

I remember tinkering around with the Star, which by the time I was at the company, had been pretty much put out to pasture.   The environment was quite intuitive, and easy to use, though it took me a little while to get my mind wrapped around the concept of Smalltalk, because I had no exposure to object environments prior to playing with the machine.   I was surprised at how responsive the machine was considering that the tech in it by that time was pretty old.   It was definitely an education playing with it.   I wonder whatever happened to that machine?  Hmmm...maybe I should send out some Emails to folks that I worked with back then.....

The only other desktop metaphor environment that existed around this same time was at Tektronix, though the work at Tektronix was slightly behind the work  at Xerox,  was heavily based on the developments at Xerox, and the work was done under license from Xerox with regard to the Smalltalk-80 implementation used on the machine.

Tektronix created a machine called Magnolia that used a Smalltalk environment like the Alto/Star, had a bitmapped display and a desktop GUI.   Prototypes of the machine were running in early 1981, and it was quite refined by '82.  The machine never became a product, though it did pave the way for a couple of generations of Smalltalk-based workstations introduced by Tektronix beginning in late '84.   

-Rick