5 ms·

"Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. By 1982 PARC had Dorado-based systems

"Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. By 1982 PARC had Dorado-based systems on Cedar. "The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto" -- except that the Alto had many different programs, each with their own interface, so I don't know what you're referring to. I guess you're talking about Smalltalk, but that was a tiny part of what people at Xerox were doing. It had a negligible influence on the Star.

coldtea 3y ago
>"Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? TFA ( https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-weird https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-wei... ). >Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. Not in desktop GUI land, since nobody did anything interesting commercially in desktop GUIs for those next 4 years. And of course in those 4 years Apple started the project, designed the hardware and implemented the OS, GUI, and basic programs. Lisa actually began in 1978 itself, so it took all those years until its release in 1983. By which time they'd probably also had a look at the Star's ongoing developments. Doesn't mean they didn't take a lot of their inspiration from that demo. >"The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto" -- except that the Alto had many different programs, each with their own interface, so I don't know what you're referring to. He's referring to the GUI concepts as implemented in it (and exhibited in those programs), not necessarily some overall GUI shell or some particular individual program. >I guess you're talking about Smalltalk, but that was a tiny part of what people at Xerox were doing. It had a negligible influence on the Star. TFA mistakenly talks about the Smalltalk GUI as if the common understanding is that Smalltalk-80s' GUI was what Apple saw and copied from Xerox. TFA then goes on to reject that Apple copied Xerox, because he finds that Smalltalk-80 GUI was hardly like a Desktop, but more like an IDE. That description of Smalltalk-80 GUI is of course correct, but he missed the crucial part: people don't say Apple copied Xerox because of Smalltalk-80, but because of Alto's (and perhaps Star's) GUI concepts. So it's not the parent who is confused, he merely replies to TFA.
- lispm 3y ago
  Didn't they demo the Smalltalk system to him?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Yes, but in addition to the other stuff they had: "Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, where he was shown the Smalltalk-80 object-oriented programming environment, networking, and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto." "According to Jobs, “I thought it would be an interesting afternoon, but I had no real concept of what I’d see.” What he and his Apple engineers did see was the Alto with its bitmapped display and mouse-driven GUI, the graphical word processor, Bravo, and a few demo applications in Smalltalk, PARC’s revolutionary object-oriented programming language. This was a carefully curated demonstration created by PARC’s researchers to give a taste of what they had created without giving away any secrets deemed too precious. “It was very much a here’s-a-word-processor-there's-a-drawing-tool demo of what was working at the time,” according to PARC researcher Adele Goldberg. “What they saw everyone had seen.”"
    - masswerk 3y ago
      > "and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto" This should be better, "available on the Alto". Neither was this in the/any OS, nor was Smalltalk or Bravo/Gipsy for the matter the sole software available on the Alto. The wording suggests a consistency, which simply wasn't there. Notably, what was going on at PARC wasn't a secret: PARC published papers and key developers at Apple, like Bill Atkinson, were familiar with at least some of them. The latter were also those, who wanted Jobs to see this in real live and who accompanied him on the trip, and they came prepared. Moreover, numerous tours to PARC and its software had been given to outsiders before (compare A. Goldberg), some of these tours even more complete. However, Jobs was the first – at least in part (he later said, he totally missed out on the network and its importance) – to grasp what he was shown, which in turn convinced some of PARC personal like Larry Tesler (who was giving part of the presentation) to switch to Apple, in order to see this technology become a reality. (Jobs getting the GUI must have been some of an experience.) Obligatory link in this context (a series of polaroids from Lisa development): https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.... (Mind bitmapped graphics being documented before the visit and, probably also before this, a first prototype of a windowed document. It is also interesting to see how the influence of the PARC visit shows also as some of a distraction, and it's only when they gradually inch back towards the original window design that things start to come together. May we interpret this as a process of emancipation from PARC's influence?)

coldtea 3y ago

>"Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? TFA ( https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-weird https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-wei... ). >Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. Not in desktop GUI land, since nobody did anything interesting commercially in desktop GUIs for those next 4 years. And of course in those 4 years Apple started the project, designed the hardware and implemented the OS, GUI, and basic programs. Lisa actually began in 1978 itself, so it took all those years until its release in 1983. By which time they'd probably also had a look at the Star's ongoing developments. Doesn't mean they didn't take a lot of their inspiration from that demo. >"The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto" -- except that the Alto had many different programs, each with their own interface, so I don't know what you're referring to. He's referring to the GUI concepts as implemented in it (and exhibited in those programs), not necessarily some overall GUI shell or some particular individual program. >I guess you're talking about Smalltalk, but that was a tiny part of what people at Xerox were doing. It had a negligible influence on the Star. TFA mistakenly talks about the Smalltalk GUI as if the common understanding is that Smalltalk-80s' GUI was what Apple saw and copied from Xerox. TFA then goes on to reject that Apple copied Xerox, because he finds that Smalltalk-80 GUI was hardly like a Desktop, but more like an IDE. That description of Smalltalk-80 GUI is of course correct, but he missed the crucial part: people don't say Apple copied Xerox because of Smalltalk-80, but because of Alto's (and perhaps Star's) GUI concepts. So it's not the parent who is confused, he merely replies to TFA.

lispm 3y ago
Didn't they demo the Smalltalk system to him?
- coldtea 3y ago
  Yes, but in addition to the other stuff they had: "Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, where he was shown the Smalltalk-80 object-oriented programming environment, networking, and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto." "According to Jobs, “I thought it would be an interesting afternoon, but I had no real concept of what I’d see.” What he and his Apple engineers did see was the Alto with its bitmapped display and mouse-driven GUI, the graphical word processor, Bravo, and a few demo applications in Smalltalk, PARC’s revolutionary object-oriented programming language. This was a carefully curated demonstration created by PARC’s researchers to give a taste of what they had created without giving away any secrets deemed too precious. “It was very much a here’s-a-word-processor-there's-a-drawing-tool demo of what was working at the time,” according to PARC researcher Adele Goldberg. “What they saw everyone had seen.”"
  - masswerk 3y ago
    > "and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto" This should be better, "available on the Alto". Neither was this in the/any OS, nor was Smalltalk or Bravo/Gipsy for the matter the sole software available on the Alto. The wording suggests a consistency, which simply wasn't there. Notably, what was going on at PARC wasn't a secret: PARC published papers and key developers at Apple, like Bill Atkinson, were familiar with at least some of them. The latter were also those, who wanted Jobs to see this in real live and who accompanied him on the trip, and they came prepared. Moreover, numerous tours to PARC and its software had been given to outsiders before (compare A. Goldberg), some of these tours even more complete. However, Jobs was the first – at least in part (he later said, he totally missed out on the network and its importance) – to grasp what he was shown, which in turn convinced some of PARC personal like Larry Tesler (who was giving part of the presentation) to switch to Apple, in order to see this technology become a reality. (Jobs getting the GUI must have been some of an experience.) Obligatory link in this context (a series of polaroids from Lisa development): https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.... (Mind bitmapped graphics being documented before the visit and, probably also before this, a first prototype of a windowed document. It is also interesting to see how the influence of the PARC visit shows also as some of a distraction, and it's only when they gradually inch back towards the original window design that things start to come together. May we interpret this as a process of emancipation from PARC's influence?)