

So you think there's been progress in GUIs since 1981. - asciilifeform
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/xerox-star-8010/index.html

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oofoe
Actually, yes... As one example, Jef Raskin pointed out that Click-Drag was an
innovation of the Macintosh group (compare to Click-Drag-Click as used by the
Star). Also the single button mouse, which while it might have been too far in
the one direction, was certainly easier to use for a novice (which everybody
was at the time!) than the 3-button Parc brick.

There is more to a GUI than the screenshot, there's also the actions
associated with executing operations in the GUI. Consider the PC-GEOS vs.
Windows of the time (2.x or 3.x, I think). GEOS was lightning quick, and a
good deal of thought had gone into the interfaces for the major tools. The
same machine that would run GEOS so sprightly would crawl under the iron heel
of Windows. The interfaces looked very similar, but the quality of your
interaction with them was entirely different.

So yes, there's been progress -- unfortunately, a lot of it has been
backwards!

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DougBTX
This in particular: [http://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/xerox-
star-8...](http://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/xerox-
star-8010/xerox-star-8010-15.jpg)

Love the attention to detail.

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systemtrigger
mirror: <http://s3.amazonaws.com/01981/index.html>

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timcederman
...or in speech or gesture recognition.
[http://www.media.mit.edu/speech/papers/1980/bolt_SIGGRAPH80_...](http://www.media.mit.edu/speech/papers/1980/bolt_SIGGRAPH80_put-
that-there.pdf)

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anamax
It's not just GUIs. We're still typing (or cut&paste) into search boxes.

