4 ms·

Jobs and co. no doubt took inspiration from Xerox PARC but I think the narrative that they just copied the Alto or the Star is a bit ahistorical and does the Ma

by wk_end 2y ago

Jobs and co. no doubt took inspiration from Xerox PARC but I think the narrative that they just copied the Alto or the Star is a bit ahistorical and does the Macintosh team a disservice. If you sit down with each of them, it quickly becomes apparent just how much work went into making the Macintosh’s iteration of the GUI friendly and intuitive compared to Xerox’s drafts - to say nothing of the accomplishment of squeezing it into a desktop micro.

deaddodo 2y ago
Firstly the comparison should be Lisa to Alto/Star, Macintosh is a degree removed. That being said, I've sat down with both and it's pretty clear both A) how very similar a significant chunk of the elements / components / systems are. And B) how much more advanced the Xerox system was from the Lisa one. The argument isn't that Lisa (and Macintosh, by proxy) were a direct copy of the Xerox system. It's that by Apple's own arguments against Microsoft in court, the similarity to Xerox is even greater than that between Windows 1.0-3.1 and early Macintosh versions. The context of the argument matters, it doesn't exist in isolation. It's not like one day people just decided Apple plagiarized Macintosh.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  I have to add that the Star is quite clunky when compared to the Lisa (and the Mac). For instance, you'd need to select an icon and press the "Copy" key on the keyboard in order to copy it to another folder (rather than just dragging it like the Lisa, and later Mac did). Same for moving files. You also couldn't directly edit a file stored in a floppy - floppies were strictly for moving data to other computers. IIRC, you couldn't even drag a window to another place on the screen, or drag the lower-right corner to resize it.
  - deaddodo 2y ago
    Sure, the Star was the prototype and the Lisa refined. But Microsoft made the exact same arguments about utilizing the right mouse button and context menus, where Macintosh didn't; Apple countered that those were mere "interfacing changes". Again, the point isn't "I would sit down and accidentally think I'm using a Mac" (though, you certainly would more likely think that than Windows), it's "how much of this exists because of the other one, and how similar is it in concept".
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      Sadly, the most interesting pattern of the Lisa was how it hid the applications (kind of the same way the Star did) behind the stationery metaphor. It was a bit like the "Create New" menu on Windows that I don't remember seeing after some time after Windows 95 and NT4. I think there was a "Templates" folder where you could add files to show up on that menu.
- musicale 2y ago
  "A visual history of the development of the Lisa/Macintosh user interface" https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html see also: "Origins of the Apple Human Interface” (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4
karmakaze 2y ago
Calling the Xerox system 'drafts' is a disservice to its invention. As noted by deaddodo (thanks), I was merely referencing how Apple tried to sue Microsoft, raising eyebrows of Xerox who then called Apple out--who 'took inspiration' from who and how much all came out into public record. While we're at it may as well credit Douglas Engelbart for "The Mother of All Demos" (1968) for conceiving of such devices. It's merely lighthearted amusement to see Xerox 'credited' on the docs. The Macintosh was the greatest thing to happen in 1984, I still remember reading and rereading my SciAm issue where I first saw it. I was already into graphics/gaming on the Atari but seeing WYSIWYG was something else. Xerox, Apple, Microsoft all get some credit for invention, refinements, and bringing it to the consumer masses.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Microsoft couldn't have copied dragging windows and icons from the Star because it wasn't there - that would come straight from Apple (or, at least, from someplace else other than Xerox).
musicale 2y ago
> took inspiration from Xerox PARC Apple also took several people from Xerox PARC, including Larry Tesler (cut and paste, Object Pascal, Apple Lisa, Newton, etc.) who had demonstrated the Alto to Steve Jobs. In 2017 Tesler recorded a demo with the Computer History Museum on their restored Alto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z43y94Dfzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z43y94Dfzk And of course Charles Simonyi went from PARC (Bravo) to Microsoft (Word).

by wk_end 2y ago

deaddodo 2y ago

Firstly the comparison should be Lisa to Alto/Star, Macintosh is a degree removed. That being said, I've sat down with both and it's pretty clear both A) how very similar a significant chunk of the elements / components / systems are. And B) how much more advanced the Xerox system was from the Lisa one. The argument isn't that Lisa (and Macintosh, by proxy) were a direct copy of the Xerox system. It's that by Apple's own arguments against Microsoft in court, the similarity to Xerox is even greater than that between Windows 1.0-3.1 and early Macintosh versions. The context of the argument matters, it doesn't exist in isolation. It's not like one day people just decided Apple plagiarized Macintosh.

rbanffy 2y ago
I have to add that the Star is quite clunky when compared to the Lisa (and the Mac). For instance, you'd need to select an icon and press the "Copy" key on the keyboard in order to copy it to another folder (rather than just dragging it like the Lisa, and later Mac did). Same for moving files. You also couldn't directly edit a file stored in a floppy - floppies were strictly for moving data to other computers. IIRC, you couldn't even drag a window to another place on the screen, or drag the lower-right corner to resize it.
- deaddodo 2y ago
  Sure, the Star was the prototype and the Lisa refined. But Microsoft made the exact same arguments about utilizing the right mouse button and context menus, where Macintosh didn't; Apple countered that those were mere "interfacing changes". Again, the point isn't "I would sit down and accidentally think I'm using a Mac" (though, you certainly would more likely think that than Windows), it's "how much of this exists because of the other one, and how similar is it in concept".
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Sadly, the most interesting pattern of the Lisa was how it hid the applications (kind of the same way the Star did) behind the stationery metaphor. It was a bit like the "Create New" menu on Windows that I don't remember seeing after some time after Windows 95 and NT4. I think there was a "Templates" folder where you could add files to show up on that menu.
musicale 2y ago
"A visual history of the development of the Lisa/Macintosh user interface" https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html see also: "Origins of the Apple Human Interface” (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4

karmakaze 2y ago

Calling the Xerox system 'drafts' is a disservice to its invention. As noted by deaddodo (thanks), I was merely referencing how Apple tried to sue Microsoft, raising eyebrows of Xerox who then called Apple out--who 'took inspiration' from who and how much all came out into public record. While we're at it may as well credit Douglas Engelbart for "The Mother of All Demos" (1968) for conceiving of such devices. It's merely lighthearted amusement to see Xerox 'credited' on the docs. The Macintosh was the greatest thing to happen in 1984, I still remember reading and rereading my SciAm issue where I first saw it. I was already into graphics/gaming on the Atari but seeing WYSIWYG was something else. Xerox, Apple, Microsoft all get some credit for invention, refinements, and bringing it to the consumer masses.

rbanffy 2y ago
Microsoft couldn't have copied dragging windows and icons from the Star because it wasn't there - that would come straight from Apple (or, at least, from someplace else other than Xerox).

musicale 2y ago

> took inspiration from Xerox PARC Apple also took several people from Xerox PARC, including Larry Tesler (cut and paste, Object Pascal, Apple Lisa, Newton, etc.) who had demonstrated the Alto to Steve Jobs. In 2017 Tesler recorded a demo with the Computer History Museum on their restored Alto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z43y94Dfzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z43y94Dfzk And of course Charles Simonyi went from PARC (Bravo) to Microsoft (Word).