Subject:
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Xerox GUI ideas vs. Apple GUI ideas (Was: Perl rules!)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Thu, 9 Sep 1999 00:23:20 GMT
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Reply-To:
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JSPROAT@IO.nomorespamCOM
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Viewed:
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1445 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> > It's probably as likely that PARC "borrowed" the most popular GUI concepts
> > (windowing and menus) from a scientist they were "borrowing" from Apple; he
> > brought his ideas in with him from Apple, who liked the idea but liked being
> > able to use XEROX's resources even better. (Arg. I have the guy's name, but
> > it's in a book on my shelf at work...grumble.)
> I wanna hear more about that!
I finally got around to remembering to report on this. Of all places, I saw
this theory posed in (my autographed copy of :-) the book _Just Java_, 4th
Edition by Peter van der Linden, on page 341 (light relief after chapter 13
on Applets).
To review the popular theory, Steve Jobs of Apple toured Xerox PARC (Palo
Alto Research Center) just before coming up with a "totally new and radical
new user interface" for the Macintosh computer. Thus, your basic Window /
Icon / Mouse / Pointer (WIMP) interface was introduced by Apple to the mass
market, the product of theft of intellectual property from Xerox.
So anyway, PvdL points out that Apple lost a lot of imaginative spark when
Jobs was kicked out, and regained some of that when they took him back in.
It's PvdL's contention that this proves Jobs was an innovator.
Furthermore, PvdL credits the start of the Macintosh project to one Jef
Raskin, back in 1979 -- before Jobs ever toured the WIMP part of Xerox
PARC. Later, when Xerox had a working GUI system, Raskin wanted Jobs to see
it
as proof that it would work and be marketable, so Jobs took this trip to
Palo Alto...
Now for the nitty-gritty: Raskin was a UCSD prof who worked at SAIL (the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab), and visited PARC regularly before his
tenure at Apple. His 1967 thesis was that an all-graphic, WYSIWYG UI would
be the future of computing. The name of his thesis was "The Quickdraw
System", a name used later in the Macintosh product. Pull-down menus, a
gimmick to reduce the amount of clutter on-screen, were eventually added by
a former student of Raskin's, Bill Atkinson. (1)
A point of contention is the selection-based editor, or the editor box with
a cursor and standard set of editing tools (presumably cut and paste?).
Larry Tesler is one of many who left PARC and joined Apple, and it can be
argued that he brought this editor design with him. However, PvdL hints
that Raskin had originally designed the thing in 1973 -- and, having
discussed the idea with folks at PARC, gave it to them in the first place.
Presumably, PvdL could have made the argument that the whole WYSIWYG / GUI
thing was all Raskin's idea, and Xerox PARC stole the idea wholesale, but he
unfortunately doesn't come out and say just that.
There are some interesting references at the end of the chapter, which I
will peruse at my earliest inconvenience:
"Down With GUIs!" by Jef Raskin, on page 122 in the December 1993 issue of
_Wired_.
"Intuitive Equals Familiar" by same, on page 17 of the September 1994 (Vol.
37:9) issue of _Communications of the ACM_.
"Holes in the Histories" by same, on page 11 of the July 1994 issue of
_Interactions 1.3_. (?!?)
Cheers,
- jsproat
1. But where was Atkinson before his UCSD days, or between UCSD and Apple?
PvdL doesn't say.
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Perl rules!
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| (...) Yah, no argument there. I prefer the Windows 4 GUI over almost anything else (1), and I can run a wide range of apps on my NT box. But, I know the difference between reliability and popularity, and for mission-critical apps where down time (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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