3 ms·

History of the Graphical User Interface (GUI): A Wonderful Curse [video]

62 points by msephton 3y ago

msephton 3y ago
A comprehensive overview of the evolution of the GUI and what was lost along the way. Comfortable to watch at x1.25 speed. Xerox 00:47:00 Apple 01:21:00
dtagames 3y ago
This was quite enjoyable and well done. Definitely don't watch at faster than 1x, though, or you'll miss a lot visual details, especially in the first chapter.
- msephton 3y ago
  I didn't miss anything at 1.25x but I was giving it my undivided attention.
  - hermitcrab 3y ago
    >I didn't miss anything How would you know? ;0)
    - msephton 3y ago
      It's a skill. :)
smallstepforman 3y ago
How did Xerox (Parc) fail to capitalise on such a technology lead compared all other computer companies at the time is the one of greatest business mysteries of how defeat was barely snatched away from the strong grip of victory.
- hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
  I suspect companies such as Xerox are never very good at commercializing new techs on new hardwares.
  - dtagames 3y ago
    They were certainly good at commercializing xerography. The problem comes when you make all your money from one tech and then another comes along to sweep that tech away. You're disincentivized to walk away from your sunk costs and current revenue. Steve Jobs called the Xerox execs "toner heads" for exactly this reason. The same is true of today's gas engine car companies.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 8bitsrule 3y ago
  Xerox had already become a very big company since the 1959 intro of Xerox 914 "the most successful single product of all time." An industry leader. IBM had a similar, 'Snow White' problem when 'personal computing' came along. Also, Jobs hired Parc's engineers.
  - KerrAvon 3y ago
    No, it wasn’t a brain drain issue. Apple didn’t hire many PARC engineers; one or two, maybe a few more. Microsoft also hired some PARC folks.
AlbertCory 3y ago
this is the standard air-brushed Hollywood tale, where PARC had this great stuff (true), then Jobs came and stole it and made the Macintosh. It's called the "Prometheus myth." (In fact, Jobs didn't "orchestrate" the visit; he was almost dragged to it.) Largely a myth, although the research that brought the GUI into being is mostly correct. In fact, Xerox WAS commercializing it, and Wikipedia has the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star Star was introduced in Chicago in May, 1981. I was there, and Jobs himself came to see it. At the time, the Lisa was Apple's main GUI effort. Dave Smith, who appears to be talking about his icon research (it doesn't sound like his voice, though) was one of the architects of the Star. That's his son on the cover of my book, Inventing the Future. It's a novel and no hindsight is allowed, i.e. the characters don't know how it ends. Jerry Morrison and I wrote a paper https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight where we ask what went wrong and what Xerox should have done.
- Rochus 3y ago
  Not quite. In contrast to other documentaries about the same topic the author takes a lot of time with the relevant earlier origins of graphical user interfaces. Concerning Jobs and Apple the documentary doesn't follow the narrative you suppose. I didn't notice (significant) errors. Thanks for the link to the paper, which I will read.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    OK, you're right, I thought it was going to be the usual Prometheus myth. They do show the Star and even Dave Smith talking about it. It's much better than I thought it was going to be. Some notes: The first successful iteration of Windows was not Win 95. It was Win 3.1. "Microsoft Bob" -- yay. Don't knock it /s I think you find almost everywhere that people who originate a concept that takes off are not happy with what the world does with it. Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart (not featured in this, but I know he wasn't happy with GUIs as they evolved), Tim Berners-Lee have all said a variation on "No! That's not what I meant!" Usually, it's too late for them to fix it, though. You get your one shot, and that's more than most of us get.
ksec 3y ago
Posting this without obviously going through the 2 hour video. But I always thought it is interesting in Sci-Fri movies or our wildest imagination of future computing in the 80s and 90s, UI were always going to be some new 3D interface. Turns out the fundamental hasn't changed at all. Tables ( or Rows and Columns ), Cards, Menus, Files, Icons ( Or Buttons ). Excel ( Spreadsheets ) is still Excel. Side Notes: Puts a smile on my face every time when someone say G-U-I rather than Glue-ee.
- msephton 3y ago
  There's a section of the video the shows various 3D or spatial systems, someday old as the Xerox work.
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  Turns out text is really, really good at conveying symbols serially. If anything, the big gripe I have with GUIs as a general technology is the fixation on hierarchies, aka graphs with single directed dimensions. You make this abstraction of files>folders>cabinets>desktops, then you make an interface that requires another abstraction - the mouse pointer - to deal with the first abstraction[0]. A mouse + graph computing environment[1] / file browser seems like . . I dunno . . a paradigm that maybe more closely aligns with the underlying essence of computing. But you know what? Computers are all abstraction, and if the desktop metaphor is so durable, that must be an abstraction that works for enough people. [0] Boy, do you see this pattern all the time. My day to day work is with XML schema that abstracts some real world quality, but then that abstraction is so poor it needs its own layers of abstraction in order to be manipulated by humans, and then those layers need some handle that relates it to the original thing being abstracted. [1] Which I realize, thinking about it for more than five seconds, is far, far, far beyond the computing capabilities of anything, say, pre-2004ish. Even if the user manually coded metadata for the graphing algorithm, not even considering dynamically extracting topics/ontologies, which is something that's still strenuous in real time applications.
airbreather 3y ago
Interesting title, I have to use an in house package for electrical/instrument engineering and it is 100% ride the mouse, no key short-cuts or macro/scripting facilities. So it looks great at the demo, but once you start really using it the GUI is just a PIA and you wonder when you are going to get RSI. Plus when you have to do something repetitive it becomes mind-numbing and it becomes easy to make errors. Often it seems GUI has a much faster start from zero, but then limits you at a fraction of possible productivity with nowhere to go.

62 points by msephton 3y ago

A comprehensive overview of the evolution of the GUI and what was lost along the way. Comfortable to watch at x1.25 speed. Xerox 00:47:00 Apple 01:21:00

dtagames 3y ago

This was quite enjoyable and well done. Definitely don't watch at faster than 1x, though, or you'll miss a lot visual details, especially in the first chapter.

msephton 3y ago
I didn't miss anything at 1.25x but I was giving it my undivided attention.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  >I didn't miss anything How would you know? ;0)
  - msephton 3y ago
    It's a skill. :)

smallstepforman 3y ago

How did Xerox (Parc) fail to capitalise on such a technology lead compared all other computer companies at the time is the one of greatest business mysteries of how defeat was barely snatched away from the strong grip of victory.

hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
I suspect companies such as Xerox are never very good at commercializing new techs on new hardwares.
- dtagames 3y ago
  They were certainly good at commercializing xerography. The problem comes when you make all your money from one tech and then another comes along to sweep that tech away. You're disincentivized to walk away from your sunk costs and current revenue. Steve Jobs called the Xerox execs "toner heads" for exactly this reason. The same is true of today's gas engine car companies.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
8bitsrule 3y ago
Xerox had already become a very big company since the 1959 intro of Xerox 914 "the most successful single product of all time." An industry leader. IBM had a similar, 'Snow White' problem when 'personal computing' came along. Also, Jobs hired Parc's engineers.
- KerrAvon 3y ago
  No, it wasn’t a brain drain issue. Apple didn’t hire many PARC engineers; one or two, maybe a few more. Microsoft also hired some PARC folks.

AlbertCory 3y ago

this is the standard air-brushed Hollywood tale, where PARC had this great stuff (true), then Jobs came and stole it and made the Macintosh. It's called the "Prometheus myth." (In fact, Jobs didn't "orchestrate" the visit; he was almost dragged to it.) Largely a myth, although the research that brought the GUI into being is mostly correct. In fact, Xerox WAS commercializing it, and Wikipedia has the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star Star was introduced in Chicago in May, 1981. I was there, and Jobs himself came to see it. At the time, the Lisa was Apple's main GUI effort. Dave Smith, who appears to be talking about his icon research (it doesn't sound like his voice, though) was one of the architects of the Star. That's his son on the cover of my book, Inventing the Future. It's a novel and no hindsight is allowed, i.e. the characters don't know how it ends. Jerry Morrison and I wrote a paper https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight where we ask what went wrong and what Xerox should have done.

Rochus 3y ago
Not quite. In contrast to other documentaries about the same topic the author takes a lot of time with the relevant earlier origins of graphical user interfaces. Concerning Jobs and Apple the documentary doesn't follow the narrative you suppose. I didn't notice (significant) errors. Thanks for the link to the paper, which I will read.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  OK, you're right, I thought it was going to be the usual Prometheus myth. They do show the Star and even Dave Smith talking about it. It's much better than I thought it was going to be. Some notes: The first successful iteration of Windows was not Win 95. It was Win 3.1. "Microsoft Bob" -- yay. Don't knock it /s I think you find almost everywhere that people who originate a concept that takes off are not happy with what the world does with it. Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart (not featured in this, but I know he wasn't happy with GUIs as they evolved), Tim Berners-Lee have all said a variation on "No! That's not what I meant!" Usually, it's too late for them to fix it, though. You get your one shot, and that's more than most of us get.

ksec 3y ago

Posting this without obviously going through the 2 hour video. But I always thought it is interesting in Sci-Fri movies or our wildest imagination of future computing in the 80s and 90s, UI were always going to be some new 3D interface. Turns out the fundamental hasn't changed at all. Tables ( or Rows and Columns ), Cards, Menus, Files, Icons ( Or Buttons ). Excel ( Spreadsheets ) is still Excel. Side Notes: Puts a smile on my face every time when someone say G-U-I rather than Glue-ee.

msephton 3y ago
There's a section of the video the shows various 3D or spatial systems, someday old as the Xerox work.
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Turns out text is really, really good at conveying symbols serially. If anything, the big gripe I have with GUIs as a general technology is the fixation on hierarchies, aka graphs with single directed dimensions. You make this abstraction of files>folders>cabinets>desktops, then you make an interface that requires another abstraction - the mouse pointer - to deal with the first abstraction[0]. A mouse + graph computing environment[1] / file browser seems like . . I dunno . . a paradigm that maybe more closely aligns with the underlying essence of computing. But you know what? Computers are all abstraction, and if the desktop metaphor is so durable, that must be an abstraction that works for enough people. [0] Boy, do you see this pattern all the time. My day to day work is with XML schema that abstracts some real world quality, but then that abstraction is so poor it needs its own layers of abstraction in order to be manipulated by humans, and then those layers need some handle that relates it to the original thing being abstracted. [1] Which I realize, thinking about it for more than five seconds, is far, far, far beyond the computing capabilities of anything, say, pre-2004ish. Even if the user manually coded metadata for the graphing algorithm, not even considering dynamically extracting topics/ontologies, which is something that's still strenuous in real time applications.

airbreather 3y ago

Interesting title, I have to use an in house package for electrical/instrument engineering and it is 100% ride the mouse, no key short-cuts or macro/scripting facilities. So it looks great at the demo, but once you start really using it the GUI is just a PIA and you wonder when you are going to get RSI. Plus when you have to do something repetitive it becomes mind-numbing and it becomes easy to make errors. Often it seems GUI has a much faster start from zero, but then limits you at a fraction of possible productivity with nowhere to go.