

How Steve Jobs acquired the mouse and GUI (video) - ukdm
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/104661-how-steve-jobs-stole-the-mouse-and-gui-video

======
melling
Wonder why the story for decades was that Apple stole it from Xerox then
Microsoft stole it from Apple while developing for the Mac? For most of my
life, that's the story people would say to me.

~~~
nirvana
Because, for decades, Apple haters have been curiously following the strategy
of claiming that Apple is not innovative at all, and thus, by "stealing" from
Xerox, it justifies Microsoft's theft of the UI.

The fact that Apple compensated Xerox with pre-IPO stock, and more
importantly, had a license agreement from Xerox, and even more importantly,
Xerox didn't' have the GUI to steal (that being an invention of Apple made
based on being awakened to the possibility by Xerox) is still ignored or
claimed to be false, even here on hacker news.

In fact, it was only a couple months ago, on this very site, where a bunch of
fandroids were attacking Apple on this same issue, and despite responding,
with a citation to the real story, showing that Apple had licensed the
technology, I was down voted to oblivion and repeatedly people asserted I was
wrong (yep, just asserted.) I remember one, memorable response: "Just stop,
its been widely accepted by us that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox". Its rare
that someone uses the popularity of a myth as justification for its truth, but
there it was.)

Already, the same people are claiming that multi-touch has existed for years
before the iPhone, and pointing to single-touch panels of the crossed wired
style, or stylus driven interfaces as "proof".

From this I conclude that most people who oppose patents and innovation do not
understand technology well enough, or do not have any engineering background,
and thus cannot tell the difference between two sheets of plastic with a grid
of intersecting wires where pressure causes the wires to connect, and a
capacitive touch panel, that maps out the shape of each picture, uses an
accelerometer to determine the orientation of the device and then figures out
which finger of the hand is touching it and thus from that, which pixel in the
amorphous blob of contact the user is intending to touch.

To them, they're both the same, and thus Apple's not innovative because its
all been done before, and we should shut down the patent system.

I just wouldn't expect that kind of ignorance on a site dedicated to High Tech
Startups where, you pretty much have to have at least one founder who knows
how to write software.

~~~
smackfu
"that being an invention of Apple made based on being awakened to the
possibility by Xerox"

I'm so curious what you mean by this, unless you have redefined what GUI
means.

~~~
Someone
I would guess
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt)
describes what he means. Also note
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface),
which states

 _"There is still some controversy over the amount of influence that Xerox's
PARC work, as opposed to previous academic research, had on the GUIs of
Apple's Lisa and Macintosh, but it is clear that the influence was extensive,
because first versions of Lisa GUIs even lacked icons"_

That seems to imply that the Xerox machines did not have icons.

I do not know whether the folklore.org description is accurate, but believe it
to be essentially correct. If it is, the Xerox UIs looked were very different
from the Macintosh that shipped in 1984 (no icons, no menu bar, no object-verb
metaphor, no dragging of objects)

