
Creation Myth – Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation (2011) - curtis
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/creation-myth
======
vezzy-fnord
_Jobs’s software team took the graphical interface a giant step further. It
emphasized “direct manipulation.”_

And this right here is a major point of contention.

The standard WIMP GUI that is taken for granted today (and that evidently DE
designers have a hard time shaking off even when supposedly attempting to
"break new ground" \- see GNOME 3 and Unity) might have ended up being the
lesser approach.

The PARC conception of a GUI (later emulated by Niklaus Wirth/ETH Zuerich's
Oberon, as well as Rob Pike's 8 1/2, rio, help and acme) really had this knack
for actually enforcing composability.

In present GUIs, windows are mostly dumb, isolated and unable to talk. In
addition, they are very difficult (if not outright unfit) for automation.
Acceptance testing frameworks like Selenium which run as headless browsers
show this isn't a problem if there's a common serializable representation
(HTML, DOM...), but not so for desktop GUIs.

All text on screen is modifiable, regardless of where it is. Text is
executable. A lot of common scenarios where people cook up quick scripts for
task automation are effectively made obsolete, given that the desktop itself
is one big programming environment without the user really being told it is.
Task launchers/run dialogs are no longer needed.

More recent research, like Bluebottle OS (de facto successor to Oberon?), has
experimented with zoomable interfaces. These obsolete virtual desktops
entirely, because you have infinite (by the colloquial definition of infinity,
of course) space to work on.

It's this drive to move beyond WIMP that has motivated a lot of people toward
tiling window managers. Ironically enough, they are also the most primitive
and simple to create, which really says something. Still pales in comparison
to the classic GUI, though.

~~~
programmer_dude
>The PARC conception of a GUI (later emulated by Niklaus Wirth/ETH Zuerich's
Oberon, as well as Rob Pike's 8 1/2, rio, help and acme) really had this knack
for actually enforcing composability.

Sounds really interesting can you point to some resources where I can read
about this in greater detail?

~~~
jacquesm
Installing plan9 is about as close as you can get without reading but actually
using those concepts. There is quite a strong link between all those projects.

------
Aloha
I recommend anyone interested in PARC read "Dealers of Lightening" by Michael
Hiltzk.[1]

It's been argued that the profits from the laser printer paid for the money
spent on PARC a 100 fold. I'd agree with that. That said, I don't think Xerox
could have been the new IBM/Microsoft/Apple combined - simply because their
sales force was.. addicted? to the per imprint commission model, and it would
be a huge change to go to a different model for them. So while PARC could have
invented it, and they could have possibly gotten it into production, I don't
think their existing sales and support force understood enough on how to sell
and service it.

[http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Michael-Hiltzik-
eboo...](http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Michael-Hiltzik-
ebook/dp/B0029PBVCA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=)

~~~
agumonkey
Reminds me of Kodak. They had the future, but it didn't have meaning in the
mind of the company. Large thriving systems seem to lack enough schizophrenia
to understand what they need to do to survive.

~~~
ctdonath
I was at Kodak when the terminal decision was made. Among other factors...
Film sales were driven by retailers/drugstores, which were hooked on the model
of customers visiting to buy a roll, another visit to drop off the roll, and a
third visit to get the prints - and odds were that they'd buy _something_ on
each trip. When digital photography started catching on, those stores made
clear that if Kodak did anything to disrupt that pattern, they'd drop Kodak
products _fast_ and destroy the company. Ergo, Kodak was reluctant to dive
into digital. Yeah, there was a long-term plan to cope, but nowhere near as
fast a transition as customers made.

I tried to push the idea of a cell-phone-equipped camera which would
immediately upload images and mail you prints, but was a mere peon so that
went nowhere.

Don't lose sight of who your REAL customers are. Bulk buyers who resell
product aren't.

 _lack enough schizophrenia_

Great line.

~~~
ghaff
Those are good insights. You could probably add to that the fact that
exhortations to avoid "marketing myopia"[1] aside, it's not all that clear
what distinctive capabilities Kodak brought to the digital photo game. It
certainly wasn't their chemical supply chain (though they sold off Eastman
Chemical a long time ago). Nor was it especially their distribution channels
many of which, as you suggest, were actually negatives in the context of a
digital shift.

Furthermore, consumables businesses--especially one as rich as the film
business--are hard to replace. Printing had some of the same characteristics
for a while and Kodak was somewhat in there. They did the online photo service
too. But nothing like film sales and processing. Kodak could have done better
but it would have been a tough navigation. Fujifilm seems to have dome OK but
by a very circuitous route taken by a smaller company.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_myopia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_myopia)

~~~
ctdonath
_it 's not all that clear what distinctive capabilities Kodak brought to the
digital photo game_

At one end, they had hands-down the best & fastest imagers. 13 years ago they
had a fantastic camera in a manageable size & price which could have been, in
time with effort, worked into a consumer product. They had a great start into
dominance as a digital capital company.

At the other end, at core Kodak was a very large scale chemical consumables
company.

Alas, it's very hard for a company to transition from a core competence to its
polar opposite.

~~~
agumonkey
_13 years ago they had a fantastic camera ..._ What model ?

A documentary said Eastman/Kodak was a strong influence on Apple, now its
successors as extremely successful company, using similar philosophy, simple
and focused products + distribution scheme, albeit virtual now.

------
WalterBright
Back in the late 70's, I worked at a company called Aph. They had developed
everything in house that could be used to build a PC, and the stuff was way
ahead of what else was around at the time. The company was composed of
numerous brilliant people (Hal Finney was one).

But what was lacking was somebody with vision to notice what we had. And so it
was all for naught.

------
jfb
"You're ripping us off!", Steve shouted, raising his voice even higher. "I
trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!"

But Bill Gates just stood there coolly, looking Steve directly in the eye,
before starting to speak in his squeaky voice.

"Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's
more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his
house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_N...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.txt)

~~~
failed_ideas
Steve went to the neighbours and paid to use the TV, Gates came and took it.
If you were a developer in the 90's, Gates is still more evil than Jobs ever
was, and philanthropy years later doesn't wash away the sins. Ruthless, but
with enough money, it appears you can make people forget.

~~~
fpgaminer
> philanthropy years later doesn't wash away the sins.

You could argue that they do, in the sense that stealing software/design isn't
particular "evil", while Gates' recent philanthropic efforts are most
certainly "good". I'm not saying what Gates did back then was right, but it
really only led to damage localized to an industry; it didn't endanger
people's lives or destroy culture. As a counter example, I'd call the
RIAA/MPAA evil, in that they promote copyright extension and censorship, both
of which directly damage culture. Back to the argument, improving the quality
of life for millions of people is something I put squarely in the "good"
category. In other words, Gates' previous actions didn't harm the quality of
life for anyone, but his recent actions improve quality of life. So I call
that "washing away the sins."

But please don't take that argument too seriously, because I don't. Its myopic
and doesn't take into consideration the other, worse, things that Microsoft
has done (that actually harmed people's quality of life). And really,
quantifying these things is quite difficult. I'm just presenting an
alternative viewpoint.

~~~
pixl97
>in the sense that stealing software/design isn't particular "evil",

Stealing ideas may not be that evil. Stealing ideas, then rabidly attacking
anyone who attempts to copy you does seem more evil.

------
nickbauman
There's a big difference between invention and innovation. Both are important,
but we do less and less of the former. The idea of a mouse before PARC must
have seemed a little crazy, whereas the idea of the iPhone before 2008 seems a
little inevitable.

Alan Kay's recent talk "The Future Doesn't Have To Be Incremental" goes over
this yin and yang of the two 'i' words of our industry with authority. Worth a
watch.

~~~
jacquesm
The mouse was already in 'the mother of all demos'.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-
zdhzMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)

31:54

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alilja
This seems like a great time to post the phenomenal Everything is a Remix [1].
Part one discusses movies, part two film, and part three discusses interfaces
for computers, with special emphasis on Xerox PARC, Apple, and the Mac.

1\. [http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-
series/](http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/)

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jgunaratne
Now that computing has shifted towards mobile, do WIMP UIs even matter? In the
mobile space Jobs clearly had the last laugh over Microsoft.

