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Are you sure about this? Have you seen what the Xerox Star could do in 1981 (http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html)? Or how
by BaronSamedi 10y ago
Are you sure about this? Have you seen what the Xerox Star could do in 1981 (http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html)? Or how about Symbolics Genera? Both of these systems had UI functionality in some ways more advanced than what we have today.
They tried to build smart workstations, where today we have essentially "dumb" operating systems and rely on applications to make them useful. The price we pay for this choice is the poor integration across applications. Web applications are even worse: zero integration across applications coupled with huge security problems.
- Arizhel 10y ago>Are you sure about this? Have you seen what the Xerox Star could do in 1981 Yes, I'm quite sure. I was alive in the 80s, and I remember what things were like. I sure as hell don't remember any Xerox Stars, but I do remember lots of mainframe terminals at places like banks. I never even heard of the Star until I saw your link, similar to how I only learned about the Xerox Alto many, many years later and only saw one in the Smithsonian museum, never in actual use. Computers like that were rare research projects, not at all representative of how things were in the 80s. Macs are as close as you're going to get to today's UIs for computers which normal people had access to and were actually in any kind of widespread use, and these weren't really popular until the mid/late 80s (and even then were pretty limited as they were expensive). You are correct about integration and how shitty web applications are though.