History of the gui http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/511

but doesn't get going until http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/511/29

Gives good coverage - from Vannevar Bush & Engelbart up to the present day, including the "infamous" trip to Xerox by Steve and his crew.

My first GUI was that of a Research Machines pc - I programmed Noughts&Crosses in basic. In fact, that was my first program.

I've often had the fancy that poems have the features of an interface.

My attempts at self-publishing have been more costly than I'd care to admit. Usually too ambitious with too few tools.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lawrence Upton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 21:03
Subject: Re: Self-publication -- a costing.


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 24 August 2001 18:06
> Subject: Re: Self-publication -- a costing.
>
> | Hm ... Think both Jobs and Gates ripped this. Who "invented" the iconic
> | environment?
>
> It was developed at XeroxPARC and like many things developed there not
> greatly developed after going further than anyone else - it seems they did
> the same with genuine networks years before anyone else, developed the idea,
> prototyped it, ran it, dropped it
>
> I bet the iconic idea could be traced back into prehistory; but I think
> Xerox were the first to demonstrate the electro-mechanical nous to actually
> produce one... 20 + years ago
>
> I once (89 - 92 or 3) had extended use of a Xerox Documenter of unknown age
> which is one of the most wonderful machines I have ever used, a dedicated
> machine, producing high quality camera ready prints. I was told that it
> would take weeks to learn but managed to pick it up in a few hours, not out
> of cleverness but because it was so like the basic Mac - this was in an
> otherwise PC environment and I was the only one who had used a Mac
>
> It was way beyond the PC and the laser printer / photocopier produced copies
> better than anything I have ever seen - It was eventually thrown on a skip
> by a Director of I.T. who bought WordPerfect over WfW because he was told
> that WP was the best wordprocessor in the world by ...er... WordPerfect
>
> But that's what happens when you promote salespersons on the basis of their
> patter
>
> The only thing bad about it - the Documenter - was its slowness. It took a
> long long time to boot and fully load; and it seemed to me that the files
> were more or less serial so that one character change required the whole
> thing to be rebuilt, & very slowly. Apple always says that it did its own
> coding to achieve the effect it had seen at PARC but time efficiently - and
> it was object oriented from the start I think - and my little experience
> would bear that out. The first and many versions of Windows were always
> hamstrung because of the hardware and software they were running on
>
> It was the iconic concept coming from PARC that holed the "look and feel"
> suits
>
> since which there have been endless interviews in which one or other of the
> many involved in the many teams says "Ah yes but we invented fluffy menus"
> etc
>
> One of the big guys, Wozniak perhaps, said he always thought graphics should
> be part of it; but the fact is that Xerox did it first
>
> I think with Apple it was the design qualities which attracted them to the
> desktop environment and with MS it was the money-making (I'm thinking of the
> apparently true stories of Gates & Co persuading the makers of Altair that
> they had a BASIC for the machine before writing a line of code and buying
> someone else's code to be the first version of DOS - the apple people talk
> of always wanting to do it better, more elegantly. I think it's Wozniak who
> said if he could build a board with 200 chips that just made him want to
> make one with 100 chips... I never get that kind of feeling out of Gates. I
> think with him it's the one upmanship that gives him the buzz and the love
> of machines is a consequence of that warp
>
> L
>