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Re: [TCLUG:144] Microsoft invented the GUI! (was: Re: Meeting Minutes)



On Fri, 8 May 1998 22:17:43 -0500 (CDT) Christopher Reid Palmer wrote
>On Thu, 7 May 1998, Larry Greenwald wrote:
>
>> And Apple ripped their GUI off Xerox Palo Alto.
>
>The idea of the GUI came from Xerox PARC, as everyone knows. It was Apple
>that evolved and developmed the idea to where we know it today, and
>Apple's GUI is still irrefutably the best.

Actually, I wouldn't quite say that Xerox originated the GUI idea.
Windowing systems have been the subject of research since the
pre-Unix days.  Xerox was the first to market a computer whose
operating system sported a GUI.  Apple was the first to make it
(more or less) affordable.

>Please don't people think that I'm an Apple loyalist; I happen to think
>the company is run like shit, the OS is meeting its limitations, and that
>Apple's own products (i.e., not the processors) are mostly crap, 
>specifically the monitors and printers. Apple the company deserves to die,
>but their innovations remain unmatched, and that is my point.

True.  As far as I can see, there have really only been two OS
products which captured people's imaginations in a very profound
way.  The first was Unix.  The second is MacOS.  Neither of them
were *original* ideas -- there were several pre-Unix CLIs, as well
as pre-Mac GUIs.  Nevertheless, they were both innovative products,
and great improvements upon many of their successors.

-- 
Chris Mikkelson         	mikk0022@maroon.tc.umn.edu
"Economics is a zero-sum game -- anyone who tells you otherwise 
is trying to sell you something."  -- Me