The Xerox Alto Computer

[itsnobody]

Nearly 40 years later and we have better graphics, faster processors, and new applications.....what progress for nearly 40 years!!!!

[midnightfapper]

what a bunch of garbage, i can't watch porn on that shit. no wonder it failed.

[67tr876]

@midnightfapper shut up fag troll ass

[BennyB5555]

In 1973 I remember my coworkers and I had the Xerox Alto complete with a mouse. It was WAY ahead of it's time! I remember "GUI's" - I loved how I could email and whatever was on your screen was how it looked laser printed! So - I guess when the gradual Personal Computer came along in the 1980's we had already been using them all along. Miss those machines!

[suhailmishlawi]

Apple did not rob Xerox, nor did Xerox try to sue Apple because Apple PURCHASED Alto from Xerox for 1 Million dollars worth of Apple stock.

Xerox's ceo at the time made it clear that they weren't in the business of computers and that they were to focus only on Xerography.

As you see from the video, there were no menu bars, graphics, charts, trash can, or any of the things the first Mac OS had. it only had a pointing device.

[o0zeroeffect0o]

@suhailmishlawi maybe you should do some research. the xerox os had icons, folders, windows, mouse,charts, graphics,copy and paste, scrolling etc stop being a fanboy with no knowledge of true information on the matter

[capricious71]

Triumph of the Nerds was a very good series.

[vorkev1]

yes it was

[GrandmasMan]

too bad it would cost like 14,000 dollars to buy... in 1975

[Megaloth13]

This is not the first system with a pointer on the screen, look up Douglas Engelbar, he demoed a mouse and a great user interface several years before the alto

[yaglourt]

not only the GUI and the mouse, but the A4 screen and the WYSIWYG word processing are also brilliant

[siemenstraffic]

The top brass at Xerox are still kicking themselves in the ass to this day by letting this system out of there hand for some stock. This was the OS system that made Apple became what it is today.

[6364gg2]

The alto in this video is off,and the computer screen is just playing a video tape. IF the alto was on,it'd be much louder and putting up a hell of a racket to get the mail.

[pchapman905]

@6364gg2 No it's not, the sound is just edited.  The monitor used isn't even remotely compatible with broadcast standards.

[6364gg2]

@pchapman905

*is looking at the displayout schematic* I see. LOL.

[pchapman905]

@6364gg2 Don't need to do that man, just take a look at the resolution. Does that look like a 15KHz interlaced signal to you?

[weinerschnitzelboy]

Instead of widescreen display, a long time ago, people used tallscreen displays :)

[Chintendoeddman]

Then apple took the GUI, then Microsoft. ahhhh bloodsucking leeches

[deba94]

lol gooey

[pcfxer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Apple was not given the source code for the Xerox...or were they?

[pacificoceanside]

@pcfxer Xerox traded the technology of Alto for 40,000 shares of Apple stock, so technically Apple got the rights to the software systems of Alto for stock exchange.

[pcfxer]

@pacificoceanside Cool I didn't know that. I can see why Apple was pissed. "We gave you STOCKS wtf? Your OS is incomplete so we'll make it usable!"

[Nortekman]

Fuck MAC

[Ffiti2]

Aaroninclub is right

[aaroninclub]

@Ffiti2 thanx man for agreeing with me.. wow.. u have NO IDEA how good it makes me feel..

[aaroninclub]

yea.. i can see why Apple came along and created the Mac OS..... sure xerox had the 1st GUI but.. look at it? then compare it to the Mac OS..... Apple were the 1s who neatened things up... then the Mac OS came out, all neatened up, all the hard work of figuring out how to make a GUI good, and then MS just copies from Apple... Apple deserved the credit that it got! !

[BrendaQG]

@aaroninclub Did you ever use or see Mac os 1. I doubt it. (just based on the average age of youtube users being way too young). It was not all that different.

[aaroninclub]

@BrendaQG I know what Mac OS 1.0 looks like and it looks alot better than the XeroX Operating System. it actually looks like an operating system of today in certain ways.. like, in a dialog box, it has the "OK" button where u'd expect it to be but with Xerox its all in the tool bar which is weird and the Mac OS has a menu bar just like ALL modern OSs of today...

[workman845]

@aaroninclub The first car didn't look as good as the cars today. I don't see your point.

[pji1979]

What's amazing is how close the PARC researchers' vision of the future office matches the current reality of it.

[kinmanyuen]

YOU GOT MAIL ^^

awesome

[ab330]

i believe apple gave xerox stock for the rights to the gui.. of course it was a pittance..don't forget, apple stole the mp3 from creative technologies and settled out of court ..

[jimwg1]

The Apple "stole" Xerox's idea notion is a misnomer. After PARC folks saw the NYC HQ honchos were clueless of taking their Alto office technology anywhere, they might've well been inclined to "leak" the fruits of their sweat and toil for someone else to fulfill than see it die on the vine from incompetence (echoes of Amiga). That Apple was slipped into PARC after the NYC visit -- and that nothing leaked about Alto before hints such. A similar situation occurred at Grumman where Dad worked..

[popster2233]

this i proof that Apple stole the ide from xerox and i wouldnt be suprised if they stole the code aswell, mac os is based on smalltalk gu interface,, yet apple to be the real innovators of ui interface,, what a bunch of losers

[Craptron2000]

I just think Apple con people into thinking they're some kind of nice-guy alternative to Big Evil Microsoft when they're get up to exactly the same tricks and end up in court as well. Macs are poser toys anyway.

[jebug29]

@Craptron2000 But wasn't the Xerox lawsuit against Apple denied after Apple tried suing Microsoft?

[Lworld63]

@Craptron2000 true but in terms of a business model, they are way ahead of our time. they have simplified computing, and most choose apple because they preform better than most PCs. 

[jojje302]

If XEROX didn't make the Alto computer, todays computers probably would not have a nice computer graphic interface. Maybe, we would not have a mouse either?

[SeltsamerAttraktor]

@jojje302 The computer mouse was invented in the late 60s.

[MasterTxJ]

@jojje302 Yea only green text with black background. No someone would have developed GUI it's quite inivitable, If you've ever watched Douglas Engelbarts demo. He used a mouse pointer and had tables and folders (textbased though) and simple polygones and that was in 68.

The next step in GUI is augmented virtual reality. If only someone could invent display glasses that covers all of ones visual field. Here is great concept of this: watch?v=EhZ-nROf1Po

[workman845]

@jojje302 If researchers at Xerox did not make the Alto than we would not the personal computers we do today. That means no laptops, no desktops, no cellphones(The way we see them) no ipods, no ipads. Etc. Apple ripped xerox off. As did Microsoft.

[Serpico261]

@workman845 "If researchers at Xerox did not make the Alto than we would not the personal computers we do today."

This sounds like if xerox wouldnt exist, i wouldnt be able to use a cellphone or a GUI today?

are you serious?

[workman845]

@Serpico261 Uh, yes. Computers as we know them would be different. I'm not saying we wouldn't have these things, but it wouldn't be the way we know them. We could have been 10 years behind, or 10 years ahead.

[Serpico261]

@workman845 ups my interpretation was wrong. i agree with you 100%

[sprucepantherkmt]

@jojje302 ur an idiot

[mmille10]

@jojje302

We wouldn't have a lot of the features computers, or office networks, have today w/o what was developed at PARC. The mouse might still have come along, since it was developed by Doug Engelbart at SRI in 1968. Look up the Doug Engelbart Institute on Google. You can see his demo in action on their website.

[lodogby]

@jojje302 the mouse was invented in 1963 by Douglas C. Engelbart who worked at SRI. he owned the licence and sell it to Apple for 40,000 dollars He also crated hyper-links. But his employees left him and went to Xerox, when they began to have different views about computer technology (and may be different wages ^^). 

[bwillwall]

@jojje302 Yes, but apple was actually the first ones to put a keyboard and mouse into a computer that does everyday tasks. Otherwise people would think the mouse was a printing tool.

[JoeEkaitis]

The film's narrator is the legendary Alexander Scourby, for many years the voice of the National Geographic TV specials.

[Revenge1986]

Oh cool

;)