Xerox Star Demo (1/2)

[KCJacksonMuz]

Also to note .. . even though Douglas' team and Xerox came up with the very core of the GUI, Apple improved on it, and made it a consumer product. Star and Alto were huge expensive machines. The original Mac could be lifted with one hand, fit on almost any table, and cost much less. Everyone had their part to play in the history of the computer. It's an amazing history!

[capricious71]

What's laughable is that Apple sued Microsoft for stealing their look and feel, when Xerox had come up with it... or was it Douglas Englebart?

[KCJacksonMuz]

@capricious71 Xerox bought and developed further on it, then Apple made a deal with Xerox to use the GUI to develop their own, in trade for stock. Microsoft didnt make any deals or buy anything (like both Xerox and Apple did), they just stole it outright.

[upiluften]

@capricious71 Xerox and Apple came up with an agreement which allowed Apple to use/improve the UI seen here, and allowed Xerox to buy Apple shares (stocks) at a low price.

[boomboomdrums]

To Xerox' defense, PC hardware at the time couldn't do this stuff. It was run on pretty stout hardware for the time. that's one of the reasons it cost so much. Since it did cost so much, only major corporations could afford to buy them.

Jobs and Woz saw this stuff at a tour of PARC and ran with it. They did get sued by Xerox for it too and had to pay Xerox for a long time.

[mspeter97]

anybody has develpped an emulator for it?

[cwilbr]

Apple have always stolen ideas from others so has MicroSoft - but Apple have NEVER been caught (when they should have esp with the recent tablet line - Ipad - that MS made nearly a decade ago...)

[mmille10]

@cwilbr

MS has never really made a tablet. They came out with a version of Windows XP that ran on a tablet. Hardware manufacturers made them. Tablet computers were around long before the Tablet PC came along. I was developing software for tablet PCs in the mid-1990s. They were made by Telxon, though they ran like a low-memory PC. They could run MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. MS made a pen extension to Win 3.1 you could add so you could write on the screen with a stylus.

[Kcon83]

Must be kicking themselves now,,,,

[rania3830]

xerox was sitting on a gold mind and didn't even know it.

[MadJack38]

This really deserve more view than it has right now.....

[tijs14tijs]

WOW, this computer has three magic keys on the keyboard that I still miss: Copy, Move and Paste button!!!

[mwdeaf9094]

I loved the Xerox system. Started using it in 1988 on the 6085 system. Xerox really had a great thing on their hands and it would have been interesting to know what might have happened if they could have sold it to the masses.

I made numerous flyers, brochures and so on using the 6085 and even had a book of custom made clipart to my clients.

Mike

designerandpublisher[dot]com

[BranislavDJ]

Whats CPU clock of that thing,and is there an emulator?

[noelio1974]

Xerox, at the time, owned 5% of Apple. They decided they would leak it to Apple as it was the only potential way to extract any sort of value from it. Xerox's leadership at the time wasn't interested in entering the computer business at the time. Who could blame him. They were a multi billion dollar company, Apple was barely 8 figures.

[Aqwert76]

1:05 that tower looks like my old Windows 98 machine.. o.o

[baneskrbic]

Amazing...

[robdun]

They were way before mac. Mac users should know so they dont brag about being first.

[favsncrap]

@robdun Jobs and MS ripped this off. I hate xerox but they were the beginning of GUI

[sousuke121]

@robdun The mac was the first to bring it into the market, Xerox brass didn't take the GUI Seriously, Also Apple Did make the software stable and allot more usable. But Apple did Steal it from Xerox.

[TheFri13]

@robdun Actually they can brag being first. Because Steve Jobs got it right away what Xerox had when Xerox presented the Star for them. Xerox leaders did not understand what they had in their hands and they did not push Star to the world. Instead they shown it to Apple what could after that use it to make LISA etc. Apple just was first to bring the GUI to the markets. Xerox only is the silent inventor anymore. Even it should have honor in eyes of all computer users!

[surflingo]

@robdun actually the creators at xerox parc worked on the macintosh. the macintosh was the first affordable and commercially succesful

[Sismiques]

@robdun

Also they have the advanced tech of 2 mouser buttons, something Apples usually lack.

[noagbodjivictor]

hehehe. i can't resist. have you seen the size of the keyboard relative to that of the mouse.

seems like keyboards have gotten smaller and mice bigger :)

[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..

[esteam]

el tipo habla como si fuera la presentacion de una dharma station XD

[Membrane556]

All the basic parts of a modern GUI are present apparently Microsoft and Apple invented jack.

Though apple did at least sell a GUI to the masses at an affordable price first.

[TokenLander]

All the basic parts of the modern GUI were already invented ~10 years earlier in Xerox PARC. Star was just an attempt to capitalize the earlier efforts.

[MCNOISE666]

Totally.

[vapourmile]

Good point. Most of the advances in the GUI can be explained by more powerful display hardware and greater memory resources rather than software innovation.

[Dilekz]

That was also based on UNIX ??

[bigkif]

No, AFAIK that wasn't based on UNIX. Applications were written in MESA and running on an Operating System called Pilot.

[nintentubeWii]

this is incredible.

Xerox wasn't a pioneer; they were THE pioneer

[MCNOISE666]

So few know & it's very sad.

[amoskowitz0103]

@nintentubeWii PARC baby.

[upiluften]

@nintentubeWii I know right, ever seen their copy machine ad from the 60's? They created a copy machine that was so easy to use, even women could use it!

25 years later, in 1985, they created a UI so easy that a bunch of coffee-sipping hipsters could use it!