Quote:
Originally Posted by Kubizo
Thanks for the clarification!
I'm not an expert and, although I mentioned Xerox in my post, I have never seen an Alto switched on. From the little knowledge I have, though, its GUI was only partially graphic. Copying a file still required a text command and the mouse was only used for text and graphics editing. Prototypes of mouses were in use since the 1960s, but were not used the way we use them today.
Again, I might be wrong and I would appreciate further corrections.
In general my point was: Steve Jobs is not just iPhone and iPad. He played a key role in the history of operating systems and movie graphics.
Ciao!
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Xerox had a research center designed to do cutting edge research in human computer interfaces (among other things) in the mid to late 1970's) They had ordinary people try out various ways to interact with computers, to see what worked best. They used $100,000 mini computers called Doradus's (custom build for Xerox) as their test computers, and spent years determining what was best (foot pedals, mice, all sorts of things) What most people think of the mouse/GUI interface was pioneered and smoothed out by the research center (PARC). Steve Jobs toured PARC around 1980, played with the interface, and decided to use it for a high end micro computer, which were just beginning to have enough computing power to support such an interface. (This was all discussed in an old magazine called BYTE, in the issue announcing the release of the first Mac.)
Apple was only a few miles from PARC, while Microsoft was up in Seattle, a thousand miles away....