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So, is "windows" a generic term, or not? Fair question. In 1968, Douglas Engelbart certainly thought of the desktop environment as windows. He created a "a windowed GUI" with a mouse and everything. In the early 70's (same link), Alan Kay gave us Dynabook and Smalltalk, which used overlapping "windows." In 1981, Xerox introduced the Star computer, which featured overlapping, resizable windows. Xeroc PARC called Star's interface a "WIMP" interface, for windows, icons, menus, and pointers. In 1982, Microsoft started introducing a windowed desktop, though it wasn't called "Windows" until November 1983. In the same time period, universities developed the "W Windows" system, which was quickly replaced with a new version called the "X Window" system (W to X. See where they went with that?) in 1984. The survey that MS introduced says that people think of MS Windows when you ask them what "windows" on a desktop means. Another fair survey question could be: given any GUI/WIMP interface, how many people would call it a "windows" interface? If most people generically identify any GUI/WIMP interface as "windows", then Microsoft's trademark term "Windows" is just as meaningless as Ford introducing and marketing a new vehicle called the new "Ford Car" (Yes, yes; we all remember the Renault Le Car).

The original GUI was invented at Xerox PARC. When Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse, he envisioned it being part of a "graphical windowed interface" and actually invented something called a "windowed GUI", mostly as a proof of concept, I think.

This URL has some interesting background. Others here will probably cite more reference material.

http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/511/45

Suffice to say, Microsoft didn't invent the idea of using the term "windows" to refer to a GUI with what we now think of as windowing effects.

How about Douglas Engelbart's "windowed GUI" from 1968? Or the part of the smalltalk language that dealt with "windows"? XEROX PARC referred to their system (the one Steve Jobs saw) as WIMP -- Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer -- in the 70's.

There's more evidence in the previous case. Even the guy who gave Windows its name (a marketer) got the idea from the words the tech guys were using to describe "Interface Manager".

it's supposed to be object-oriented but there's no way to decalare class or methods

Furthermore, there are ways of declaring classes, although the keyword class is never used. It's not a particularily powerful language, agreed. But in an environment such as the web, flexibility is a must and JavaScript provides it very well.

I think it's well suited for what it's used for.

http://WebmasterBase.com I learnt all my PHP with Kevin Yank at Webmasterbase.
One day this will be worth mentioning: http://ComputingNews.com

Here we go... one more time...

Apple did not STEAL anything from Parc. They PURCHASED the rights to Parc's ideas to augment their existing GUI. Parc made money on the deal. Of course it was nothing compared to what it was worth, but...

If you're actually interested in what happened rather than perpetuating this myth, check out GUI History

IIRC, Xerox originally came up with the concepts of the personal computer, the graphical user interface, the mouse, and several other substantial breakthroughs in computer science.

According to this page, the personal computer was invented in 1949. Xerox was a chemical company called Haloid at the time, and was just getting into the photocopy business.

This very good primer describes how various pieces of the GUI were invented throughout the 50s and 60s by people such as Ivan Sutherland and Alan Kay.

The mouse was invented by Douglas Englebart in the mid-1960s.

Xerox did invent at PARC in the 1970s and beyond: several other substantial breakthroughs in computer science, such as Ethernet and Object-oriented programming.

Your fancy 'point and click' interface actually came from Xerox.

but at least they hacked up a link to the unofficial apple museum... their link was Like this

Here's the 'cleaned-up' link from me: Enjoy