6 ms·

This is a great quote: > In the middle of Apple’s case against Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple, hoping to establish its rights as the inventor of the desktop inter

This is a great quote: > In the middle of Apple’s case against Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple, hoping to establish its rights as the inventor of the desktop interface. The court threw out this case, too, and questioned why Xerox took so long to raise the issue. Bill Gates later reflected on these cases: “we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox ... I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that [Jobs] had already stolen it.”

manav 2y ago
Copying from Xerox, some irony there.
- lelandfe 2y ago
  Adds layers of irony to their “Redmond, start your photocopiers” dig https://www.padawan.info/en/images/photocopiers.html https://www.padawan.info/en/images/photocopiers.html
  - freetinker 2y ago
    I miss this flavor of advertising. It all feels too anodyne these days.
- karmakaze 2y ago
  It's also a lesson that always seems to fail to be learned. Xerox had the capital to set up a research arm, then failed to convert on any ideas because they were too focused on their current cash-cow. They eventually transitioned to "document company" where a document wasn't only paper, but it was too little/late.
  - razakel 2y ago
    The same thing happened to Kodak - they were a tech company that thought they were a chemical company.
  - kragen 2y ago
    you're talking about xerox parc in the 70s xerox parc in the 70s invented the laser printer. the laser printer has been almost all of xerox's business since last millennium. their current revenues are 7 billion dollars a year, almost entirely from laser printers (mostly in disguise.) so i'm not sure it was 'too little, too late' or even 'failing to convert' (right now i think xerox is unprofitable, but that's an issue of profit margins and management, not an issue of not having revenue) this article https://spectrum.ieee.org/xerox-parc https://spectrum.ieee.org/xerox-parc has this pullquote: > From a purely economic standpoint, Xerox’s investment in PARC for its first decade was returned with interest by the profits from the laser printer. and that was in 01985 you could posit an alternative history where xerox wasn't just making billions of dollars a year, for generations, out of laser printers, but also owned the entire market of laser printers, semiconductor foundries, guis with overlapping windows, ethernet, wysiwyg document editing, page description languages, and object-oriented programming, because all of those were indeed invented at parc the article does in fact implicitly posit that alternative history. but it isn't clear that it was ever a possible history. centrally planned economies are not good at innovation; decentralized ones are. the most significant invention on that list, the semiconductor foundry, isn't even technical; it's a business structure that decentralizes chip design very possibly they've made more money from their early stock in apple than they ever could have made by trying to exclude everyone else from the overlapping-window-gui market
    - karmakaze 2y ago
      The way I read this is that it's like how Microsoft missed out on mobile even after making Windows Phone by underestimating just how important it was as a future market.
      - kragen 2y ago
        maybe so? i'm not sure microsoft underestimated it; i think google and apple just beat them is all
wiz21c 2y ago
> I broke into his house Not fun at all. Microsoft is like Disney, they steal from others and trounce others for stealing from them. Absurd people.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  Sad to see this extremely historically accurate and relevant comment downvoted. And on the forum which should most know it to be true!
- zogrodea 2y ago
  I'm not doubting, but can you give a few examples of Microsoft trouncing others? I do recall Disney (a main reason copyright laws last so long, and who didn't want Steamboat Willie to enter public domain). I also think of Amazon (which the creator of the Elm programming language describes as having "the Jeff problem" because they steal smaller people's/team's ideas), although that's a different problem. I can't say anything comes to mind right now about MS, though, which is most likely a failure of my memory/knowledge. So I'd appreciate some examples.
  - lupire 2y ago
    Did you miss one of the largest antitrust cases in history, litigated for a decade?
    - jpc0 2y ago
      > ... they steal from others and trounce others for stealing from them. Explain how the antitrust case or its conclusion proves the quote above? Mozilla/Netscape had a browser that could have competed with Microsoft, they didn't litigate them for stealing. The antitrust case was about it being effectively impossible to overthrow their monopoly because of the platform being locked down. The current crop of litigation against Apple reeks more of the Microsoft antitrust case than any Disney cases.
turnsout 2y ago
This is such a frustrating misunderstanding of the history, and the history is fascinating. Xerox invited Apple to tour PARC in exchange for $1M worth of pre-IPO Apple stock, which today would be worth [checks notes] more than that. There was no theft. Apple engineers got to see the Alto, not the Star (the screenshot in the article is wrong, the chronology is wrong). The visit was so fast that Apple engineers thought they saw realtime overlapping windows when they didn’t. [0] So it’s possible Xerox was inspired by Apple with the Star, not the other way around. Meanwhile, Bill Gates totally outs himself as someone who would steal shamelessly. [0]: https://folklore.org/On_Xerox%2C_Apple_and_Progress.html https://folklore.org/On_Xerox%2C_Apple_and_Progress.html
- Hitton 2y ago
  Meanwhile Steve Jobs: "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Clip: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jeZ7m0ycw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jeZ7m0ycw
    - albumen 2y ago
      top comment: "The credit should be given to poet T S Eliot (1920): “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn.” and its reply: "So really it has nothing to do with stealing whatsoever"
- iczero 2y ago
  > There was no theft. I didn't know that touring somewhere meant you could copy all their designs. Was that explicitly stated?
  - 2y ago
opo 2y ago
This quote like many others are funny because people pretend that they can exactly remember things said decades earlier. Andy Hertzfeld later updated this entry on his website: "....Here is Mike Boich's recollection of the 'Xerox' story, which goes a little differently, and is likely to be more faithful than mine: The meeting was one of the quarterly meetings, where Steve, Mike Murray, Belleville, you and I all got together with the Microsoft crew, which at was usually Bill, Jeff Harbers, Jon Shirley, and sometimes Neil and/or Charles Simonyi. I don't recall whether Windows had been announced, or we were just concerned about it, but Steve was trying to convince Bill that having a "Chinese wall between the Windows implementers and the Mac implementors wasn't sufficient for us to work well together. He was trying to get them to forget about the OS business, since the applications business would be much bigger total dollars. He said, "It's not that I don't trust you, but my team doesn't trust you. It's kind of like if your brother was beating up on my brother, people wouldn't say it was just your brother against my brother, they would say the Gates are fighting with the Jobs." Bill responded that "No Steve, I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox, and you went in to steal the TV, and found that somebody else had stolen it. So you say, "hey, that's not fair. I wanted to steal the TV"." https://folklore.org/A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.html https://folklore.org/A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.html

manav 2y ago

Copying from Xerox, some irony there.

lelandfe 2y ago
Adds layers of irony to their “Redmond, start your photocopiers” dig https://www.padawan.info/en/images/photocopiers.html https://www.padawan.info/en/images/photocopiers.html
- freetinker 2y ago
  I miss this flavor of advertising. It all feels too anodyne these days.
karmakaze 2y ago
It's also a lesson that always seems to fail to be learned. Xerox had the capital to set up a research arm, then failed to convert on any ideas because they were too focused on their current cash-cow. They eventually transitioned to "document company" where a document wasn't only paper, but it was too little/late.
- razakel 2y ago
  The same thing happened to Kodak - they were a tech company that thought they were a chemical company.
- kragen 2y ago
  you're talking about xerox parc in the 70s xerox parc in the 70s invented the laser printer. the laser printer has been almost all of xerox's business since last millennium. their current revenues are 7 billion dollars a year, almost entirely from laser printers (mostly in disguise.) so i'm not sure it was 'too little, too late' or even 'failing to convert' (right now i think xerox is unprofitable, but that's an issue of profit margins and management, not an issue of not having revenue) this article https://spectrum.ieee.org/xerox-parc https://spectrum.ieee.org/xerox-parc has this pullquote: > From a purely economic standpoint, Xerox’s investment in PARC for its first decade was returned with interest by the profits from the laser printer. and that was in 01985 you could posit an alternative history where xerox wasn't just making billions of dollars a year, for generations, out of laser printers, but also owned the entire market of laser printers, semiconductor foundries, guis with overlapping windows, ethernet, wysiwyg document editing, page description languages, and object-oriented programming, because all of those were indeed invented at parc the article does in fact implicitly posit that alternative history. but it isn't clear that it was ever a possible history. centrally planned economies are not good at innovation; decentralized ones are. the most significant invention on that list, the semiconductor foundry, isn't even technical; it's a business structure that decentralizes chip design very possibly they've made more money from their early stock in apple than they ever could have made by trying to exclude everyone else from the overlapping-window-gui market
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    The way I read this is that it's like how Microsoft missed out on mobile even after making Windows Phone by underestimating just how important it was as a future market.
    - kragen 2y ago
      maybe so? i'm not sure microsoft underestimated it; i think google and apple just beat them is all

wiz21c 2y ago

> I broke into his house Not fun at all. Microsoft is like Disney, they steal from others and trounce others for stealing from them. Absurd people.

mandmandam 2y ago
Sad to see this extremely historically accurate and relevant comment downvoted. And on the forum which should most know it to be true!
zogrodea 2y ago
I'm not doubting, but can you give a few examples of Microsoft trouncing others? I do recall Disney (a main reason copyright laws last so long, and who didn't want Steamboat Willie to enter public domain). I also think of Amazon (which the creator of the Elm programming language describes as having "the Jeff problem" because they steal smaller people's/team's ideas), although that's a different problem. I can't say anything comes to mind right now about MS, though, which is most likely a failure of my memory/knowledge. So I'd appreciate some examples.
- lupire 2y ago
  Did you miss one of the largest antitrust cases in history, litigated for a decade?
  - jpc0 2y ago
    > ... they steal from others and trounce others for stealing from them. Explain how the antitrust case or its conclusion proves the quote above? Mozilla/Netscape had a browser that could have competed with Microsoft, they didn't litigate them for stealing. The antitrust case was about it being effectively impossible to overthrow their monopoly because of the platform being locked down. The current crop of litigation against Apple reeks more of the Microsoft antitrust case than any Disney cases.

turnsout 2y ago

This is such a frustrating misunderstanding of the history, and the history is fascinating. Xerox invited Apple to tour PARC in exchange for $1M worth of pre-IPO Apple stock, which today would be worth [checks notes] more than that. There was no theft. Apple engineers got to see the Alto, not the Star (the screenshot in the article is wrong, the chronology is wrong). The visit was so fast that Apple engineers thought they saw realtime overlapping windows when they didn’t. [0] So it’s possible Xerox was inspired by Apple with the Star, not the other way around. Meanwhile, Bill Gates totally outs himself as someone who would steal shamelessly. [0]: https://folklore.org/On_Xerox%2C_Apple_and_Progress.html https://folklore.org/On_Xerox%2C_Apple_and_Progress.html

Hitton 2y ago
Meanwhile Steve Jobs: "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
- lolinder 2y ago
  Clip: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jeZ7m0ycw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jeZ7m0ycw
  - albumen 2y ago
    top comment: "The credit should be given to poet T S Eliot (1920): “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn.” and its reply: "So really it has nothing to do with stealing whatsoever"
iczero 2y ago
> There was no theft. I didn't know that touring somewhere meant you could copy all their designs. Was that explicitly stated?
- 2y ago

opo 2y ago

This quote like many others are funny because people pretend that they can exactly remember things said decades earlier. Andy Hertzfeld later updated this entry on his website: "....Here is Mike Boich's recollection of the 'Xerox' story, which goes a little differently, and is likely to be more faithful than mine: The meeting was one of the quarterly meetings, where Steve, Mike Murray, Belleville, you and I all got together with the Microsoft crew, which at was usually Bill, Jeff Harbers, Jon Shirley, and sometimes Neil and/or Charles Simonyi. I don't recall whether Windows had been announced, or we were just concerned about it, but Steve was trying to convince Bill that having a "Chinese wall between the Windows implementers and the Mac implementors wasn't sufficient for us to work well together. He was trying to get them to forget about the OS business, since the applications business would be much bigger total dollars. He said, "It's not that I don't trust you, but my team doesn't trust you. It's kind of like if your brother was beating up on my brother, people wouldn't say it was just your brother against my brother, they would say the Gates are fighting with the Jobs." Bill responded that "No Steve, I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox, and you went in to steal the TV, and found that somebody else had stolen it. So you say, "hey, that's not fair. I wanted to steal the TV"." https://folklore.org/A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.html https://folklore.org/A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.html