3 ms·

Ha, guess you're right. I was thinking about mainframe clients, but I guess in those days they didn't even have their own CPU? This was way before my time. The

Ha, guess you're right. I was thinking about mainframe clients, but I guess in those days they didn't even have their own CPU? This was way before my time. The Alto becomes more impressive the more time one spends thinking about it, you have to actively compare it to the state of the art back then to see the innovations that we now take for granted.

Animats 10y ago
It was impressive. I got a tour of PARC in 1975, when the Alto network was just coming up. The PARC vision then was to find out what the future of computing looked like by throwing money at the problem. The Alto/file server/laser printer network was insanely expensive, but someday it would hopefully become cheaper. Making the technology cost-effective took a while. Around 1980, the UNIX workstations started to appear. Those tended to run around $20K each. By 1982 or so, you could have workstations, file servers, and printers from several vendors. Apollo, Three Rivers, and later Sun got into the business. The big problem was that, in the UNIX command-line tradition, none of these companies could do a decent GUI. (Most windows were either a terminal or an editor. Or a clock. Everybody had a GUI clock, with animated clock hands.) There was very little commercial software. One of the best pieces of software of the era was Interleaf, which was a very good WYSIWYG document editor, sort of like Microsoft Word. But it was sold as a $60,000 system including a workstation and a laser printer. There was no software mass market yet. So all the key hardware was available years before the Macintosh came out. It just cost too much. And nobody had a good GUI. Except Xerox, with the Xerox Star, 1981. But they had a different corporate vision - a dedicated system for word processing and document handling. The idea of tens of millions of people having to learn about the internals of complicated computers, just to do ordinary office tasks, was scary. How could Xerox support that? Xerox was into support; copiers were rented and service was part of the rental. So the Xerox system was a closed environment. Users could only run the Xerox-provided applications. What Xerox didn't envision was a society in which computer literacy was widespread. Society backed into that, via the IBM PC, DOS, and open systems.
- MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
  Fascinating. It is indeed very easy to judge, with the benefit of hindsight, but - who could ever expect computer literacy to become mainstream? Especially since GUIs were bad and the command line still ruled, as you've pointed out. It still seems unlikely.
  - kens 10y ago
    Well, Alan Kay expected computer literacy to become mainstream, or more accurately for computers to become easy enough for everyone to use. He was one of the driving forces behind the Xerox Alto. His 1972 paper on the Dynabook basically describes a vision of the modern laptop or tablet computer. (Starting around page 6, he describes exactly what technology improvements would be necessary, which is pretty interesting.) The Xerox Alto was the "Interim Dynabook", a system to try out his personal computing ideas before the technology was available. His paper is at http://history-computer.com/Library/Kay72.pdf http://history-computer.com/Library/Kay72.pdf
    - e12e 10y ago
      Also see the OOPSLA talk I've linked upthread.
- e12e 10y ago
  I recently (re)discovered Alan Kay's 1997 OOPSLA talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY For others that have been following his work (and talks), it doesn't really contain much new stuff, but the context of a talk to an audience of programmers brings out some different contexts. He touches on the the fact that they didn't "just" spend extra money to prototype the dynabook in the form of the Alto - but they built 2000 machines - and part of that is of course so they could invite (among others) whole classes of school children to come and play with the tech.
- j_s 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing your impressions; so much has been re-discovered / re-prioritized in computing over the decades!

Animats 10y ago

It was impressive. I got a tour of PARC in 1975, when the Alto network was just coming up. The PARC vision then was to find out what the future of computing looked like by throwing money at the problem. The Alto/file server/laser printer network was insanely expensive, but someday it would hopefully become cheaper. Making the technology cost-effective took a while. Around 1980, the UNIX workstations started to appear. Those tended to run around $20K each. By 1982 or so, you could have workstations, file servers, and printers from several vendors. Apollo, Three Rivers, and later Sun got into the business. The big problem was that, in the UNIX command-line tradition, none of these companies could do a decent GUI. (Most windows were either a terminal or an editor. Or a clock. Everybody had a GUI clock, with animated clock hands.) There was very little commercial software. One of the best pieces of software of the era was Interleaf, which was a very good WYSIWYG document editor, sort of like Microsoft Word. But it was sold as a $60,000 system including a workstation and a laser printer. There was no software mass market yet. So all the key hardware was available years before the Macintosh came out. It just cost too much. And nobody had a good GUI. Except Xerox, with the Xerox Star, 1981. But they had a different corporate vision - a dedicated system for word processing and document handling. The idea of tens of millions of people having to learn about the internals of complicated computers, just to do ordinary office tasks, was scary. How could Xerox support that? Xerox was into support; copiers were rented and service was part of the rental. So the Xerox system was a closed environment. Users could only run the Xerox-provided applications. What Xerox didn't envision was a society in which computer literacy was widespread. Society backed into that, via the IBM PC, DOS, and open systems.

MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
Fascinating. It is indeed very easy to judge, with the benefit of hindsight, but - who could ever expect computer literacy to become mainstream? Especially since GUIs were bad and the command line still ruled, as you've pointed out. It still seems unlikely.
- kens 10y ago
  Well, Alan Kay expected computer literacy to become mainstream, or more accurately for computers to become easy enough for everyone to use. He was one of the driving forces behind the Xerox Alto. His 1972 paper on the Dynabook basically describes a vision of the modern laptop or tablet computer. (Starting around page 6, he describes exactly what technology improvements would be necessary, which is pretty interesting.) The Xerox Alto was the "Interim Dynabook", a system to try out his personal computing ideas before the technology was available. His paper is at http://history-computer.com/Library/Kay72.pdf http://history-computer.com/Library/Kay72.pdf
  - e12e 10y ago
    Also see the OOPSLA talk I've linked upthread.
e12e 10y ago
I recently (re)discovered Alan Kay's 1997 OOPSLA talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY For others that have been following his work (and talks), it doesn't really contain much new stuff, but the context of a talk to an audience of programmers brings out some different contexts. He touches on the the fact that they didn't "just" spend extra money to prototype the dynabook in the form of the Alto - but they built 2000 machines - and part of that is of course so they could invite (among others) whole classes of school children to come and play with the tech.
j_s 10y ago
Thanks for sharing your impressions; so much has been re-discovered / re-prioritized in computing over the decades!