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Between laser printers and photo copiers (built on laser printer tech) Xerox did just fine. If anything, Xerox's "willingness" (intentional or not) to allow th

Between laser printers and photo copiers (built on laser printer tech) Xerox did just fine. If anything, Xerox's "willingness" (intentional or not) to allow the root ideas to grow in various places has been a blessing to the IT industry as a whole. What you are suggesting is they could, or should, have become all the companies you listed. But that would gave been both impossible, and counter productive. Steve jobs saw the GUI, and Ethernet, and object orientated programming, and laser printers, and office software, and yet Mac is famous for just the GUI. Others would run with networking, programming, MS with office and do on. And in addition to those major players there were lots of others competing too. So no I don't think Xerox management needs to be embarrassed. They saw the value printing and ran with that. They left others to develop the other ideas. And in the long run we are much richer for that. So, from me anyway, there's no shame on them, rather a tip of the hat, and a nod to the vision they had to create PARC in the first place. They are the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

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musicale 3y ago
> Steve jobs saw the GUI, and Ethernet, and object orientated programming, and laser printers, and office software, and yet Mac is famous for just the GUI. Others would run with networking, programming, MS with office and do on. In the 1980s Apple adopted/commercialized: GUI -> Lisa (later Mac) Desktop LAN -> AppleTalk (NBP lookup eventually influenced mDNS) OOP -> Object Pascal (still exists in Delphi/Lazarus); arguably HyperTalk (messages/events/handlers) Laser Printers -> LaserWriter Office Software -> Lisa Office System; MacWrite, MacDraw, MacPaint And of course Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint debuted on the Mac. But your point is well taken - PARC alumni (and ideas) did not only land at Apple; for example, most of us have probably used Ethernet, Microsoft Word, PDF (derived from PostScript), etc.
- bruce511 3y ago
  Oh, I agree, Apple did ultimately make use of those technologies. They built on those ideas, but the again so did lots of others. I'm not suggesting Apple didn't (ultimately) embrace those technologies, but rather that they weren't the "driving force" behind them. Whereas you could say Apple was the "driving force" of the GUI. Microsoft would go on to drive Office software. There were word processors, and spreadsheets before Office, but Office integrated all those tools together and became the gold standard. Adobe would drive desktop publishing, PDF and so on. Sooo much of today's world is built on PARC, SRI, Bell Labs, and a couple others. It was an explosion of development and research seldom seen in any field outside times of war.

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musicale 3y ago

> Steve jobs saw the GUI, and Ethernet, and object orientated programming, and laser printers, and office software, and yet Mac is famous for just the GUI. Others would run with networking, programming, MS with office and do on. In the 1980s Apple adopted/commercialized: GUI -> Lisa (later Mac) Desktop LAN -> AppleTalk (NBP lookup eventually influenced mDNS) OOP -> Object Pascal (still exists in Delphi/Lazarus); arguably HyperTalk (messages/events/handlers) Laser Printers -> LaserWriter Office Software -> Lisa Office System; MacWrite, MacDraw, MacPaint And of course Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint debuted on the Mac. But your point is well taken - PARC alumni (and ideas) did not only land at Apple; for example, most of us have probably used Ethernet, Microsoft Word, PDF (derived from PostScript), etc.

bruce511 3y ago
Oh, I agree, Apple did ultimately make use of those technologies. They built on those ideas, but the again so did lots of others. I'm not suggesting Apple didn't (ultimately) embrace those technologies, but rather that they weren't the "driving force" behind them. Whereas you could say Apple was the "driving force" of the GUI. Microsoft would go on to drive Office software. There were word processors, and spreadsheets before Office, but Office integrated all those tools together and became the gold standard. Adobe would drive desktop publishing, PDF and so on. Sooo much of today's world is built on PARC, SRI, Bell Labs, and a couple others. It was an explosion of development and research seldom seen in any field outside times of war.