3 ms·

Didn't they demo the Smalltalk system to him?

by lispm 3y ago

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?)
  - lispm 3y ago
    https://www.livingcomputers.org/Blog/What-Really-Happened-Steve-Jobs-@-Xerox-PARC-79.aspx https://www.livingcomputers.org/Blog/What-Really-Happened-St... What Really Happened: Steve Jobs @ Xerox PARC '79
    - turnsout 3y ago
      This is fantastic—thanks for the link. I always defend Apple when people say they "stole" their GUI from Xerox, but this post has a lot of great details, including what Xerox's VC arm did with their $1M of pre-IPO Apple stock (sold it for $1.2M :facepalm:)
      - coldtea 3y ago
        If they kept it at some point it would have been worth more than Xerox.
        turnsout 3y ago
        It's true, Xerox could have retired by now!
        AlbertCory 3y ago
        Even more amazing, in the 80s they finally realized they should capitalize on all this technology, and allowed a bunch of entrepreneurial employees to use it (although they didn't invest $$$). Several of these (Spectra Diode Labs, Synoptics) could have made them a rival to Berkshire Hathaway. https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight
        masswerk 3y ago
        To be fair, Star development started as about as soon as this had become a viable project. Compare the availability of D-processors, and things like Smalltalk76, the Gipsy editor, Mesa as the base operating system being less than a year old, then. I think, the narrative of Xerox just not knowing what they had doesn't add up with the timeline.

Didn't they demo the Smalltalk system to him?

by lispm 3y ago

Didn't they demo the Smalltalk system to him?

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?)
- lispm 3y ago
  https://www.livingcomputers.org/Blog/What-Really-Happened-Steve-Jobs-@-Xerox-PARC-79.aspx https://www.livingcomputers.org/Blog/What-Really-Happened-St... What Really Happened: Steve Jobs @ Xerox PARC '79
  - turnsout 3y ago
    This is fantastic—thanks for the link. I always defend Apple when people say they "stole" their GUI from Xerox, but this post has a lot of great details, including what Xerox's VC arm did with their $1M of pre-IPO Apple stock (sold it for $1.2M :facepalm:)
    - coldtea 3y ago
      If they kept it at some point it would have been worth more than Xerox.
      - turnsout 3y ago
        It's true, Xerox could have retired by now!
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        Even more amazing, in the 80s they finally realized they should capitalize on all this technology, and allowed a bunch of entrepreneurial employees to use it (although they didn't invest $$$). Several of these (Spectra Diode Labs, Synoptics) could have made them a rival to Berkshire Hathaway. https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight
        masswerk 3y ago
        To be fair, Star development started as about as soon as this had become a viable project. Compare the availability of D-processors, and things like Smalltalk76, the Gipsy editor, Mesa as the base operating system being less than a year old, then. I think, the narrative of Xerox just not knowing what they had doesn't add up with the timeline.