4 ms·

10 Developments That Changed The Face Of Computing

• edw519 18y ago
  There a lesson here; if you invent a sensational, high tech product, don’t invite competitors to come and have a good look at it. Does that still apply? How about to software?
  • DLWormwood 18y ago
    I do think the article writer's conclusion was a bit misleading. Yes, Apple did integrate much of the Alto's UI into the Mac, but Xerox, as a parent company, had little idea what to do with the technology (being myopically focused on paper copiers at the time) and hadn't pushed the PARC project forward much over that decade. If Apple hadn't bought (read: gave shares) access to that hardware, the arrival of the GUI probably would have been 5-10 years later than it ended up being. (And to this day, many in our profession still seem to cling to the command line way too much in development circles... Was I the only Mac user to feel a little betrayed when OS X shipped with a shell?)