Xerox Alto Computer 30th Anniversary

aheath writes "The New York Times has a story about the 30th anniversary of the Xerox Alto computer: How Digital Pioneers Put the 'Personal' in PC's. According to the PARC Factsheet "The Alto Computer (1973/1980) included the Graphical User Interface (GUI), WYSIWYG editing, bit-mapped display, overlapping windows, and the first commercial use of the mouse." The concepts prototyped in the Xerox Alto contributed to the development of the Xerox Star, the Apple Lisa, the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows 1.0."

Comments

*cork pop*

[KefkaFloyd]

Well, happy 30th anniversary to them! PARC has provided us with far more than just the GUI, though that is what it is most notable for. PARC has churned out a lot of innovations and I hope it continues as long as Xerox is willing to fund it (which is in their best interest, IMO, a lot of IP comes out of it).

Re:*cork pop*

[questamor]

Ethernet was another of theirs, from memory

or one they refined to usefulness anyhows. If I weren't so lazy I'd go look it up somewhere :)

Re:*cork pop*

[Syre]

Yes, they talked about the 3M computer: 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels on the screen and 1000 bytes of RAM, with a graphical interface and a mouse.

The Alto was the first computer that met that design goal.

That same year, Xerox came out with the first laser printer and an ethernet network that connected the printer and workstations. The original network ran at 3Mbps.

See PARC's History page

Re:*cork pop*

[javiercero]

Hum... I thought that it was the PERQ the first machine to meet this challenge. I think the 3M challenge was put forward by CMU, and Three Rivers (the group that produced the PERQ) was made mostly of people from CMU. The 3M challenge was supposed to portray what workstations would be like by the mid 80s, I think the Alto was the main inspiration for the PERQ though....

The 3M challenge asked for a network of distributed workstations, each of which should be able to process 1MIPs, hold 1MB of RAM, and display at least 1Mpixels. CMU scientist guessed that networks of such machines would mean the end of timesharing by the mid/late 80's.

Oh man, I feel old :-).

Re:*cork pop*

[j-pimp]

CMU scientist guessed that networks of such machines would mean the end of timesharing by the mid/late 80's.

The human desire for individual ownership will never let that happen.

Re:*cork pop*

[Anonymous Coward]

Read that again.
You are supporting his argument by claiming the desire for individual ownership will eliminate timesharing.

He is claiming timesharing would be eliminated.

foo(foo(foo(foo())) = 1

Re:*cork pop*

[Anonymous Coward]

I was studying in the CMU Computer Science Department in the 80s, and people often used the term "3M" in reference to the goal for every student on campus (or was it in the Department?) to have such a machine.

PERQs were the machines that Computer Science Department faculty, students, and staff used to work on the SPICE project: the project to develop the operating system (Accent), editors, text processors, language environments, etc. to support 3M users and computer science research.

PERQs were very noisy, generated a LOT of heat (enough to overheat small offices, although the heat could be welcome in winter time), and had a reputation for flakiness. I also believe that, like the Alto and Dorado, they cost far too much to make giving/selling one to every undergraduate practical.

(When the University independently announced a plan to force every undergraduate and graduate student to buy an IBM machine, there were loud howls of protest in the student newspaper, focused on the price tags of the machines. I think the IBM machines went for ~$3,000 or less.)

Perhaps the unkindest cut was the graduate student definition:

PERQ (n.): The unit of energy obtained by dropping a PERQ eight stories off the top of Wean Hall into a waiting Dumpster.

I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[Mordant]

is exactly bragging-rights material, know what I mean?

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and the Apple Lisa is something to write home about?

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[bedouin]

Have you ever used Windows 1.0? I managed to get it running in Virtual PC one day; it was nothing more than a glorified DOS shell with a calculator and word processing app. The Lisa on the other hand, actually did some useful things, and had a somewhat graceful GUI; nicely shaded grays are much nicer than that 4 color CGA monstrosity that was Windows 1.0.

Actually I remember using Geos on my c64 around 85/86, and unlike Windows 1.0, there were a few decent productivity apps for it. M$ isn't the only company guilty of stealing ideas, it's just they're the only ones to consistently make bad implementations of what they stole . .

Did you know the Lisa could also run UNIX?

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[CordMeyer]

Apple never 'stole' from Xerox.

Steve Wozniac wrote: Steve Jobs made the case to Xerox PARC execs directly that they had great technology but that Apple knew how to make it affordable enough to change the world. This was very open. In the end, Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology. That's not stealing outright.

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[Billly Gates]

I remember using AOL for DOS (shudder) for my 286 since compuserve was too expensive and the gui used was Geos.

They made dos toolkits for developers and it was a pretty gui. I had great looking icons and everything on my 16 color cga monitor. It looked alot like the WIndows/Mac version.

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[hpavc]

I think it was. I know I wanted one very very badly at that time. Even today those screen shots look very usable. By usable I mean it had a gui that is simular to what we all use today, it had the all purpose application of the day AppleWorks amoung others. It also had the imagewriter (maybe even the v2 model). It also had a lot of games available which isnt all that bad either.

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[FlorentinePogen]

Just to nitpick a bit... :)

Windows 1.0 in CGA mode was 600x200 black and white, if you had colors at all it was running in 16-color EGA mode. It also came with Paint, and a very early version of Win 3.1's File Manager, which was the main way to launch apps. And let's not forget Reversi :).

The Lisa was black and white, not grayscale. And yes, The Lisa 7/7 OS had a brilliant UI, and was a much more robust OS than MacOS would be for years to come. The UNIX variant it ran was Xenix (not sure if Microsoft had any involvement with it at the time.)

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[C0LDFusion]

Indeed. The common misconception is that Apple "stole" the concept from the PARC, when it was more along the lines of a random friend of a PARC researcher (who happened to be a Mac team member) was invited, checked it out, told Jobs, and then Jobs gave Xerox millions in stock for a technology that Xerox thought was useless at best and a piece of shit at worst.

It's like if you had a shitty G.I. Joe missing an arm, a guy buys it from you for $10,000 and then fixes it up to near-mint and eBays it for $100,000. Hardly stealing.

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[SN74S181]

There were a few valid productivity apps for Windows 1.0. Micrografx In*A*Vision was a pretty nice vector-based drawing program. It evolved into Designer, the techie's preferred alternative to the more flouncy CorelDraw.

Back in that day, Windows 1.0 pretty much had to be given away. Early Windows apps came bundled with a 'runtime' version of Windows that would be installed as part of the process of installing the App. This in effect made the Windows/App bundle into a temporary run-time Windows environment.

The boxed copy of In*A*Vision in my collection comes with a runtime version of Windows 1.03.

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[ncc74656]

I think it was. I know I wanted one very very badly at that time. Even today those screen shots look very usable. By usable I mean it had a gui that is simular to what we all use today, it had the all purpose application of the day AppleWorks amoung others.

I'm guessing that you're referring to the Lisa...if you were, AppleWorks didn't run on the Lisa. I don't doubt that there was a similar productivity suite for the Lisa, but AppleWorks was an Apple II package. It was derived from an earlier Apple III package called III EZ Pieces.

More recently, Apple resurrected the AppleWorks name when it renamed ClarisWorks. Any version of AppleWorks =6 runs on Macs.

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[hpavc]

Didnt the Lisa run Apple // programs as well?

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[ncc74656]

Didnt the Lisa run Apple // programs as well?

Nope...the Apple II was a 6502/65C02/65C816-based machine, depending on the model. The Lisa, like the pre-PowerPC Macintosh, was a 68K beast (5-MHz 68000 for the Lisa, faster processors for the various Macs that followed).

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[sxpert]

Well, of course, it was not a copy machine.
The management at Xerox seems to downplay anything that is not a copy machine, and tries to bury it as fast as they can.

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[voodoo1man]

"The Jobs visit had been infuriating enough, he says. He'd been out of town at the time, which was regrettable, "because if I'd been in town, I would have told him [Jobs] to get out. And if he hadn't, I would have beat the shit out of him. I had no respect for him. Then they [Xerox] would have fired me - and it would have been good for me and for them.""

From an interview with Bob Taylor (who used to be director of the Computer Science Lab at PARC) in W. Mitchell Waldrop's _The Dream Machine_. The exchange happened when Jobs "allowed" (the book makes it sound like this was a privilige) Xerox to buy $1.05 million of Apple stock in a private (Apple hand't gone public yet) stock sale, for which he would get unlimited access to research at PARC.

Actually, Apple had been planning the Lisa over a year before Job's visit, bit-mapped screen and mouse included. The Apple people mainly wanted to look at Smalltalk (too bad Jobs didn't "steal" that). They weren't particularly impressed with the laser printer or ethernet (Jobs was supposed to have hated networks with a passion).

The quote above was probably largely motivated by the (realized) fear that the microcomputer manufacturers would bastardize the idea of personal computing (the general view seems to have been that they were bright ignoramuses who completely ignored what the rest of the computer community was doing).

Re:I'm not too sure that the Windows 1.0 thing

[petrilli]

No offense, but Bob Taylor is not the most disinterested source to quote. If you read Dealers in Lightning, you'll get a better view of what was going on at PARC at the time. I've met a bunch of people at PARC at various points, and most understand that the biggest flaw was the disconnect between PARC's goals and Xerox' goals. PARC was very long-term, and focused on innovation, where-as Xerox was very focused on what would help them next quarter.

For many reasons, Xerox was never going to capitalize on the Star. I've owned various D* machines (my last a Dandelion), and they were great, but they were $16,000 new, and made the Lisa look zippy and cheap. Xerox lost this game pretty fair and square. Bob Taylor was brilliant, but never ever to articulate to management what he was doing, and more importantly, how Xerox as a Fortune 10 company could use it to build a better marketplace.

It's a lot of sour apples, no pun intended, if you ask me.

And for some reason......

[mao che minh]

vi, a text editor that was developed on the Xerox Alto platform, has yet to make any progress since.

*ducks*

Re:And for some reason......

[cos(0)]

I thought vi was long unsupported and has since been replaced by alternatives such as Vim (my personal favorite), Nvi, Elvis, and Vile.

Re:And for some reason......

[g4dget]

I'm sorry, but am I missing a pun here? "vi" was developed by Bill Joy on and for UNIX. See here.

Re:And for some reason......

[Billly Gates]

Vi today aka gVIm has menu's, syntax highlighting, icons, autoindentation, buffer support, split windows, support for every concievable language and batch file format ever made, and multiple OS support. The old VI is still there for older systems. Everyone else I know uses gVIm.

It has improved greatly. I only use :q! :enew :dd :w so my hands never leave the keyboard and use the menu's and icons for everything else. I am by no means a cryptic command jockey. I find it alot easier to use then emacs as well. Try using Emacs using just the menu's. Its confusing and the look and feel do not work right with other apps.

I looked at ultra edit on my windows2k box. Even though it looked cool and had things like the ftp client built inside I still found it lacking compared to gVIm. Autoindentation is not as advanced and will only autoindent if the editor sees brackets. Also its not a scriptable as gVIm either.

I like the default color themes for gvim for c++ code but find it ugly when writing perl and java code. I have a different them automatically come up depending upon what kind of file I open. Try that with Visual C++ or UltraEdit.

Re:And for some reason......

[SN74S181]

I prefer to focus on the core vi functionality, and avoid any new non-standard bells and whistles. I have too many boxes here at home whose only connection to the outside is the ethernet cable. The BSD os'es all include vi built in, and emacs only as a package. And at a job not long ago even the OS/2 boxes, which all had telnet server daemons running on them, had a vi installed.

It's just nuts to use anything else. Bring up many editors in a remote shell and you just go to a blankscreen (the editor used direct screen writes, etc.) and the whole shooting match is over.

In emergencies, though, it's also useful to remember some of the ed commands. I don't think there's a UNIX system in existence that doesn't have ed lurking down there in /bin

Re:And for some reason......

[Guy Harris]

Vi was somewhat influenced by Bravo, an editor that was developed on the Alto, according to this interview with Bill Joy:

REVIEW: Didn't Bruce Englar implement the count fields feature?

JOY: Bruce suggested that. At one point there was an acknowledgment section in the documentation for the editor that mentioned all the people who had helped - I don't know if it's still there in Volume 2.

A lot of the ideas for the screen editing mode were stolen from a Bravo manual I surreptitiously looked at and copied. Dot is really the double-escape from Bravo, the redo command. Most of the stuff was stolen. There were some things stolen from ed - we got a manual page for the Toronto version of ed, which I think Rob Pike had something to do with. We took some of the regular expression extensions out of that.

Re:*cork pop*-fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

They gave us (and Xerox) the laser printer.

Windows 1.0

[wordisms]

I just like the screen shot of the "mouse with steel ball" and more notoriously, "the reboot screen after a crash." Somethings never change.

Dealers of Lightening

[joeflies]

Read Dealers of Lightening for a very good look at what happened at Xerox Parc. It does a good blend of the managment misfires, the politics, as well as providing a solid appreciation for what these guys did.

The section I found most interesting was the political battles over purchasing a research computer. After selecting a computer that was best suited for the job, they didn't get to buy it, and ended up building their own. A great story about how the pure research and deep thinkers mixed both worked together and battled against the engineers and the suits.

Non-registration URL.

[Anonymous Coward]

A URL For those who don't want to register

Re:Non-registration URL.

[fussman]

Read Sig

Re:Non-registration URL.

[Anonymous Coward]

how lame could you be? what exactly does registering with NY Times cost you? you mean you'd rather that slashdot cut out an entire news source (and a reputable one at that) because you are too lazy to register... lame

Just think...

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

If you had a 1024 node cluster of these things you could load windowsXP in just under 3 months.

Re:Just think...

[Daleks]

On a similar note, I once timed how long it took for the BFG to fire in Doom 2 on an old 386. 87 seconds. Why I still remember that from high school I do not know.

Re:Just think...

[SN74S181]

I once plugged in a 1 MHz crystal oscillator in an AST 286 machine. Which made the machine into a 512 KHz 286.

I didn't have the patience to let it boot up all the way, though. I waited and waited and waited. Then I heard the floppy drive start going *bip* *bip* *bip* as it started the POST sequence of s-l-o-w-l-y stepping the head up to the top track and back to home. I said 'forget this' and put the original (12 MHz!) crystal back in.

Re:Just think...

[the_2nd_coming]

young punk says:

"12 MHz?!?! I am sure you mean 1.2 GHz right....heh MHz god how could you get any work done!!"

heh...doesn't it make you feel old when you recall the days of single and double diget Mhz computers :-)

Re:Just think...

[Firehawke]

What, did you have detail maxed out? I used to play on a 386-SX16, the absolute lowest you can do on a 386, and it wasn't anywhere near that bad.

Re:Just think...

[RevAaron]

heh...doesn't it make you feel old when you recall the days of single and double diget Mhz computers :-)

Nah- you don't have to be that old to remember those. Especially double-digit MHzes- plenty of 16 year olders grew up with original Pentium machines.

Now, you gotta feel old if you recall the days where people actually measured clock speed in KHz, not MHz. I mean, I'm only 22 and used to use 1 MHz machines all the time when I was a kid. :P ...and slower!

Re:Just think...

[SN74S181]

The biggest install base of code that I actually wrote is running on an embedded controller that runs at 400 KHz. It's a 4 bit processor, too.

Re:Just think...

[the_2nd_coming]

I dunno, I feel pretty old when I think back to those days.....and the 16 year olds probably did not know they were useing a 12 MHz machine at the time they were using it. in MHO if you are to young to have bought music on records or you never had a need for a cassete tape, you are to damn young :-)

as for your 1 MHz machines....your 22? how cheap was your dad? my god, I was using apple II's back in 1982 and they were pretty state of the art back then running at about 5-8 MHz.

Re:Just think...

[dre80]

Actually, the original Apple II, II+ and IIe ran on a 1 MHz 6502 CPU. The later-revised (late eighties) Apple IIe and the Apple IIc used the 65c02 at a whopping 2 MHz. :)

Re:Just think...

[the_2nd_coming]

realy? hmm....seemed so much faster :-)

hey at least it ran Sticky bear bop

Alternatives to the GUI

[questamor]

If they (and the followon effects, such as apples machines, and windows etc) hadn't created the GUI as we now have it - which in many ways is unchanged, ie overlapping windows, mouse, etc... what kind of interface would we have?

I'm willing to accept it was a pretty good jump of thought to create the gui on a bitmapped display after so much text-only based human-computer-interaction, but are there other ways of interfacing? perhaps other GUI ideas that we don't see just because they weren't first, and hence now the most developed?

Jargon file

[arvindn]

The jargon file has an interesting entry on the Xerox PARC.

It says

Sadly, the prophets at PARC were without honor in their own company, so much so that it became a standard joke to describe PARC as a place that specialized in developing brilliant ideas for everyone else.

Happy Birthday!

[CommunistTroll]

While we're celebrating, let's not forget the language that XEROX Parc wrote to help them program the Alto - the language that was used for the demo that Steve Jobs saw when he popped in for a visit...

Smalltalk

Re:Happy Birthday!

[leereyno]

While this is a little off topic, I'd just like to point out that Steve Jobs saw all that stuff at PARC because his people took him there to see it. They'd already seen it all, in fact some of them came to Apple from PARC. The reason for the effort? Because in order to get Steve Jobs to go along with a good idea it is necessary to make him think he came up with it himself.

Lee

Re:Happy Birthday!

[Anonymous Coward]

This gets 3 Insightful and the post above gets 0 Overrated? This is a tough audience!

It's kind of like LISP.

[PHAEDRU5]

You get it right first time, so why bother changing?

Psssst...it was a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

no text here, move along.

Windows 1.0 looks like "popdos"

[cyber_rigger]

There was a neat little dos program that once came with a Logitech mouse called "popdos". It looked very similar to Windows 1.0. The interesting part is that popdos originated from the same place as OpenOffice.

Re:Windows 1.0 looks like "popdos"

[TKinias]

scripsit cyber_rigger:

The interesting part is that popdos originated from the same place as OpenOffice.

Star Division? Or Germany as a country?

Re:Windows 1.0 looks like "popdos"

[javiercero]

Logitech is Swiss.... everyone's favorite neutral country!

Re:Windows 1.0 looks like "popdos"

[cyber_rigger]

Star Division? Or Germany as a country?


I believe both came from Star Division.

Re:Windows 1.0 looks like "popdos"

[sfsp]

From the exit msg:

"Pop-Up Dos Release 2.02
Copyright (C) 1989 LOGITECH Inc, (C) 1988 Star Division GmbH."

I found it on a floppy I had archived in 1991(!). Other than finding a disk drive to read a 5.25", 1.2M floppy, it works great! And it DOES look like Win1.0, other than the color scheme I chose 12 years ago (green menus with purple pointer? Why?)

Steve

A little better picture. . .

[Fritz Benwalla]

Can be found here -- odd little note, the original CPU is on casters, so I suppose it ranks as the first portable too.

Its blazing computational stats:

BCPL: 5-10 uSec for a simple expression
Nova Asm: 1-2uSec / instruction
Microcode: 170 nSec / micro instruction

Can be found with a lot of other cool information on its original programming language and some software on this very cool page by an Alto collector.

Neat machine. I think I want one now.

-----

Great milestone!

[Anonymous Coward]

It also led to GEOS on the Commodore 64!
Some screenshots

And, let's not forget a TRUE genius and pioneer, Doug Englebart. He predated the Alto. This guy is what engineering and technology is all about. Not the bunch of clueless kids (and women!) that are sucked into the indoctrination of universities these days....

Ah, my kingdom for a time machine to travel back to the 1960s. Men were men, electrical engineers actually liked electronics way before they went to school and there was no fooling around!

Methaphors, Forms

[fm6]

Well, any user interface starts out as some kind of metaphor. The dominant file system organization, for example, borrows the ideas of files and folders from simple paper filing systems. By the same token, the overlapping windows GUI is just a metaphor for a desk with a lot of papers on it. So your question really devolves into this one: what other good GUI metaphors are there? I can't think of any, but then I'm pretty bad at thinking visually.

Not quite offtopic: back in the late 70s, some workstation designers decided they could do an intuitive user interface without waiting for bitmap displays to become affordable. The result was the form-based user interface of the CTOS operating system, which ran on special proprietary hardware. Of course, like most proprietary systems, it was driven from the marketplace by IBM compatibles. Too bad, really.

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[Planesdragon]

what other good GUI metaphors are there?

A whole bunch, actually.

• A "channel" metaphor, where you "flip" between different programs.
  
• A "book" metaphor, where you move between tabbed "chapters" that represent either various tasks or various stages of work
  
• A "deep box" metaphor, where you have various objects in a 2D+1 space, with the closer objects getting higher priority.
  

The interesting part is, modern GUIs integrate both the "book" and "channel" metaphors alongside the "papers on a desk" metaphor. I certainly know that I don't use overlapping windows for anything but file-sorting; every program I run (exempting IM and Winamp) is maximized, and I switch between the tasks with the fundamental windows keyboard command, Alt+tab.)

Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting a better file system metaphor. Toss the "files and folders" lie, skip the "everything is a file" concept, and hop right into "Hard Drive is a database."

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[the_2nd_coming]

yay...CTOS....when I worked for the State Of Michigan 2 years ago as network support, they were JUST phasing those systems out for storing data for Child protective services.....man that interface sucked.

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[the_2nd_coming]

that would be BeOS or the XP2FS.

as for the paging system I would prefer a right click menu or a pop up menu on the tool bar to tab between programs.

I mean I guess the task bar is close but that interface sucks...when will we get a mini thumbnail in the tab?

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[Planesdragon]

I mean I guess the task bar is close but that interface sucks...when will we get a mini thumbnail in the tab?

IIRC, OS X has this. You can get ObjectDock to have the same effect in windows.

As for BeOS--I keep meaning to give it a try, but I'm not sure it'll be worth it.

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[the_2nd_coming]

wait for openBeOS to finish. then try it. there will actualy be some nice apps for it after then.

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[Graspee_Leemoor]

"when will we get a mini thumbnail in the tab?"

There is an example programming exercise somewhere on Microsoft's site that replaces the standard ALT-TAB interface in XP with one that contains a bitmap of the running program. It is meant to show off some new WIN32 API call to get the contents of a window as a bitmap, but is quite useable. I've had it installed for years.

graspee

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[fm6]

Good examples. They're not deeply integrated into popular GUIs, but you're right, people do use them.

Also, "channel metaphor" would seem to describe the virtual consoles on most Linux and a lot of Unix systems. I know text-mode diehards who insist that virtual consoles are more practical than any GUI.

One of the big design mistakes in early Windows was not making the book metaphor (I prefer to think of it as tabs that access specific windows in an app) a basic feature of the GUI. Instead, it provides that stupid MDI concept, which doesn't include a simple way to switch between app windows. But many application and framework developers (Intuit and Borland come to mind) were quick to add on this functionality -- which shows how useful it is.

Lots of people are working on various z-axis metaphors. But I don't believe they'll be practical until displays get a lot better. Like an affordable display that's also a table or wall surface.

Like you, I tend to work with one window maximized, though I tend to rely on the taskbar (which I keep permanently visible at the bottom of the display) more than alt-tab. ("Background" apps like IM and Winamp go into the clock area so as not to distract.) That's often a pain, because in my work there's a lot of multitasking (in the human sense). But even 21" monitors aren't really big enough to have multiple apps open at once, unless the apps are really simple (file manager, IM, etc.). Perhaps if I could afford multiple monitors. I know a guy who uses four at once, and that strikes me as just barely enough!

Yeah, I've seen the nicer Apple monitors -- and felt lust in my heart. Way out of my price range.

The filesystem-is-a-database methaphor exists, but I can't see it catching on. Not that it's a bad idea, but consider the paradigm shift! I'm afraid the file cabinet metaphor is locked in, along with QWERTY keyboards, letter-digit notation in spreadsheets, and other conventions that have too many established users to be replaced -- no matter the advantages of the replacement.

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[fm6]

The BeOS file system has a lot of interesting features (I especially like the built-in file typing), but it's hardly a database metaphor. Perhaps you're thinking of the fact that the file system is journalling, a concept you usually associate with databases. But any serious file system has journalling these days.

Never heard of XP2FS. There's the open-source flight simulator, but I don't suppose that's what you meant.

Paging system? Whatever. Let's not trot out the tired old "it works best for me, so anybody who doesn't use it is an idiot" argument.

Re:Methaphors, Forms

[LPetrazickis]

It's part of the XP Powertoys.

Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstations

[SoupIsGood Food]

I wrote an
SoupIsGood Food

Troll !

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

jjjjjjjjj kjjj
vi is simple, powerfull and easy to use.
oo
vi is simple, powerfull and easy to use.
:w
q:q
:wq!
:wq

Re:Troll !

[SN74S181]

Actually, my VT-220 terminal doesn't have an escape key on it's keyboard. It sorta pisses me off.

Re:Troll !

[dasunt]

Does it have control and the "[" key?

Smart vim users know that ctrl-[ is the same as escape. Smarter vim users remap the caps lock and control keys so that control is to the left of the a key on a US querty keyboard.

Re:Troll !

[SN74S181]

Yep, but when you're used to using the escape key on a Pee Cee keyboard up in the corner, it gets you sort of twitchy to have to do something different. Bad habit, I know, moving the hands off home row.

The VT-220 is really more of a historical relic. A console for getting on the Sparcs that don't have framebuffers, and not used much.

Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home 4?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I've been searching for one for 3 years now...

TOTN

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw PARC on the Triumph of the Nerds DVD.

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[Billly Gates]

...and fvwm and olvm look no more advanced the xerox star.

Thank god KDE and Gnome came around. Its amazing that until the turn of the century unix users had 1970's gui's.

pedigree

[BWJones]

The concepts prototyped in the Xerox Alto contributed to the development of the Xerox Star, the Apple Lisa, the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows 1.0."

I believe the pedigree should read: "the Xerox Alto and Star pioneered the GUI and mouse navigation in 1980 and 1981. these elements of the operating system while brought to the business mainstream by the Apple Lisa in 1982 (one year behind schedule), were brought to the common PC user in 1984 with the Macintosh."

Including Windows 1.0 in this company is a joke as Windows 1.0 was nothing more than a shell and not a true OS. In fact, it could be argued that Windows was a shell with DOS being the real OS up until Windows 98.

Re:pedigree

[Kirby-meister]

Even Win98 still had the DOS backbone on it - I'd say WinXP was the first "home use" Windows OS that was the first non-DOS-shell OS. Although I know a lot of people not into computers at all that use Win2k, so I guess a line can be drawn somewhere in the NT line.

Re:pedigree

[SN74S181]

The discussion is of a graphical interface.

I wouldn't say that MacOS was really an 'os' anymore than the Windows 1.0 shell running on top of MS-DOS.

Also, I don't get it why they don't list the GEM desktop or GeoWorks. Those were early and fairly popular GUI environments too. Certainly more popular in their time than Windows 1.0.

Re:pedigree

[Planesdragon]

Including Windows 1.0 in this company is a joke as Windows 1.0 was nothing more than a shell and not a true OS. In fact, it could be argued that Windows was a shell with DOS being the real OS up until Windows 98.

?

Don't you mean XP/NT (depending on when you move "the OS" away from 9x.) or Win95?

All that Win98 did over 95 was IE integration and some small tweaks. DOS was still there, still built-in--and still in a vital part of the OS through ME.

In Win95 MS bundled DOS closer to Windows, such that DOS 7 wasn't called a seperate program, they were (AFAIK) never sold seperately, and DOS always assumed that you wanted to head right into windows.

DOS didn't get tossed until the NT kernel rolled out--which was in NT 3.5 at all, and XP for the "home" market.

Re:pedigree

[BWJones]

I wouldn't say that MacOS was really an 'os' anymore than the Windows 1.0 shell running on top of MS-DOS.

Oh? And why not? I would be interested in what your definition of an OS is. It is true that the Classic MacOS (MacOS through System 9.2.2) had some serious problems in terms of its architecture compared with other operating systems (UNIX based), but it most certainly WAS an operating system inclusive of its GUI which was not simply a shell running on top of the OS.

Re:pedigree

[BWJones]

Don't you mean XP/NT (depending on when you move "the OS" away from 9x.) or Win95?

Yes, indeed. You are most certainly correct. What I intended to say was that Win98 was the last of the Windows based systems running on DOS, but my statement apparently was badly constructed.

Re:pedigree

[SN74S181]

What difference does it make if it's a shell running on top of an OS, or an OS that has the shell embedded in it. Either one is an OS, and MacOS (before they gave up and just bought NextStep, the same way Microsoft bought the first version of MS-DOS, from an outside vendor) is pretty much just as anaemic, or more so, than MS-DOS with Windows on top as a shell.

Your Mac zeal is showing.

Re:pedigree

[BWJones]

I was responding to your comment: I wouldn't say that MacOS was really an 'os' anymore than the Windows 1.0 shell running on top of MS-DOS. My question still stands, and my point was that the MacOS was very different from Windows 1.0 running on DOS.

What difference does it make if it's a shell running on top of an OS, or an OS that has the shell embedded in it. Either one is an OS, and MacOS (before they gave up and just bought NextStep, the same way Microsoft bought the first version of MS-DOS, from an outside vendor) is pretty much just as anaemic, or more so, than MS-DOS with Windows on top as a shell.

You are backtracking from your earlier statements now. It could be argued that having a GUI interface running on top of the operating system is much less efficient than having the GUI as a fundamental part of the OS. All those years of running IRIX and X-windows environments in IRIX and now OS X and X-windows environments on OS X have made that more than clear to me. Where Classic MacOS really excelled was the integration that the GUI had with the OS. The Classic MacOS GUI was not a shell. Take networking for example: Networking with the original Macintosh was a breeze. Simply plug the machines in to the network click maybe three or four times and you are connected to the network. Doing this with Windows 1.0 was an exercise in frustration, so calling the MacOS anemic with respect to Windows 1.0 even with this one example is more than a little disingenuous. Hell, even with modern versions of Windows, getting on a network is much more labor intensive than it needs be.

Your Mac zeal is showing.

After 20 or so years of using personal computers and workstations of many kinds including Sun, SGI, Wintel, Osbourne, Altair, TRS-80's and Apple ]['s, I have since the 80's preferred the MacOS, and I continue to do so with OS X. It is simply a more efficient way of getting work accomplished combined with a greater return on investment. If one has a job to perform, and they make more than 10 or 20 $$'s/hour, they should not have to be spending time trying to make their computers do what they want and minimal time should be spent on keeping them up and running. Apple computers have proven themselves to be efficient tools and as such I will continue to use them in my research career and my personal life and am happy to do so.

Re:pedigree

[SN74S181]

It could be argued that having a GUI interface running on top of the operating system is much less efficient than having the GUI as a fundamental part of the OS.

Or the reverse could be argued. Lots of people here who are bigtime Linux/Unix advocates have made the case that one of the big problems with Windows NT is that the GUI is built in, whereas with Linux/Unix the GUI is seperate and not even necessary to the functionality of the whole. When Microsoft went from NT 3.51 to NT 4.0 one of the bad things they did was integrate the Graphics into the NT kernel, which reduced reliability considerably, and sabatogued the microkernel design.

That last paragraph sounds like you read it off a fax direct from Apple Marketing.

Re:pedigree

[squiggleslash]

FWIW, Windows ME was the last DOS based Windows, though they took pains to hide it with that version (you didn't have the option of booting into DOS unless you changed some system INI file to point at command.com or something - I can't remember exactly how it worked.) Windows ME, I believe, was an attempt at a transitional OS, discouraging the use of DOS while retaining as much compatability as possible so that when users jumped to the NT line, starting with XP, the change would be less jarring.

Re:pedigree

[BWJones]

Lots of people here who are bigtime Linux/Unix advocates

I also, am one of them.

have made the case that one of the big problems with Windows NT is that the GUI is built in, whereas with Linux/Unix the GUI is seperate and not even necessary to the functionality of the whole. When Microsoft went from NT 3.51 to NT 4.0 one of the bad things they did was integrate the Graphics into the NT kernel, which reduced reliability considerably, and sabatogued the microkernel design.

This is one of the nice things about OS X. I can run it from a terminal or even boot into the cli and never have to invoke the GUI. Honestly, this is rare these days as for 95% of tasks, the GUI is more efficient.

That last paragraph sounds like you read it off a fax direct from Apple Marketing.

Nope, just a satisfied customer. You should try them out before being so critical. Even from a server perspective, I have been quite impressed. For instance, check out Webvision. This site is averaging approximately 35 thousand hits/day from all over the world, is graphics intensive, and is running off of an old G3 iMac running OS X. Maintenance is minimal, setting it up was trivial, its completely silent as it has no fan so it can sit next to my desk without bothering me, and it was cheap.

Little known facts

[soundofthemoon]

When I worked at Xerox (not PARC) in the 80s, we had an Alto lab with a dozen or so Altos. They were so cool. Besides all the visible features, what really made them kick was that they had programmable microcode. So you could code up a new high-level instruction set and build your own language. This was how the Smalltalk-72 VM was implemented. They also had removable hard disk platters. Something the size of a pizza that held about 2.5MB. And besides the 3-button mouse, they had a 5-key chord keyboard - right hand mousing, left hand chording, it was a surprisingly fast way to edit.

The other totally fun thing about the Altos was they supported network games. My favorite was Mazewars. This was almost certainly the first multiplayer FPS game in the world. Everyone played an identical looking eyeball. You zipped around a maze and shot each other (with withering glares, I guess). But you really needed to be good on the chord keyset to win.

Re:Little known facts

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, I worked a Xerox too (1983 - 1985). We used Alto's for code development for Copier products, the PARC people gave us all kinds of "development" tools, compilers, etc. We had Ethernet, "real" printer servers. The Adobe guys "borrowed" InterPress, the "lanugage" Xerox used, but it was compiled (had to run on 120+ppm laser machines). For 1983, it was very 'state of the art'. Nothing like hauling around your 10 MEG REMOVALBE HARDDISK (at least mine was). HUGE, BIGGER than a LARGE pizza. They were bringing in the Star Stations for us just before I left, WOW, 23" CRTs, unheard of at the time. Oh, once cool thing: the 8" floppy drive (YEP!) could be "programmed" to format the floppy for ANY format: CP/M, and other formats around at the time. Talk about being universal! Oh, and the Star's also had internal Shugart HD's (Xerox was building the drive casings in Roch. NY, I saw then at the plant). No more removable packs, YEA!
Yep, there was also a "star trek" game played across the net as well. Nohting like flying through a sector of space then find yourself surrounded by 100's of Klingon's and being turned into space dust! E-mail was cool, and yea, playing missile command with a 3 button mouse and a portrait monitor, very COOL!
Yes, the machines uses the AMD 2901 bit slice processor, 16 bit. The Star stations were seutp to be LISP systems as well for the DOD. The Star enviroment was also crafted for the Gov't., we used a "stripped" version, more like the "typical" GUI interface today.
After being spoiled at Xerox for ~ 2 years, I left and the first computer I purchased was a MAC. Been a MAC HEAD ever since. My, we've come a long way baby!

They did NOT have overlapping windows!

[sxdev]

Both them and Apple keep pointing it out. Jobs made a mistake and thought they did; so the Apple people worked hard trying to duplicate something that didn't exist.

Re:They did NOT have overlapping windows!

[poleshifter]

actually, they mention that smalltalk had overlapping windows in several places

Re:They did NOT have overlapping windows!

[nullard]

They had overlapping windows, but not clipping. IIRC they just drew everything starting from the bottom. In any case it was Bill Atkinson that made that fortunate mistake. See "Insanely Great" by Steven Levy pg 87.

yeah...

[1nfern0]

but does it run linux????

Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[dWhisper]

The thing I love about Xerox is that it reminds us all that Windows didn't rip off Apple, they ripped off Apple who was ripping off Xerox. It's interesting to think about what it would have been like if Xerox would have been in control of the computer market, since they had everything that we use today, and gave it away when they could have sold it.

Thanks Xerox.

Re:Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Apple actually purchase the rights of this technology though? Maybe they didn't invent it.. but I think ripping them off is kinda harsh.

Re:Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[the_2nd_coming]

you are so dumb...Jobs PAID Xerox for a tour of their research labs. that gave them all he needed to get the idea for the lisa.....of cource JObs screwed up and allowed Bill Gates in to see the Lisa before it was released becasue he wanted MS to develop some software for the system and Gates said he needed to see what he would be making the software for. next thing you know, MS has decided to not take Apple up on its offer and MS went to their mother (IBM) with the great Idea for a new GUI based OS later to be called OS/2 and windows 1.x then when MS dumps IBM they turn it into Win NT and win 3.x.

so Apple got the technology on the up and up and Gates tricked jobs into shoing him the technology with out a NDA. one of many reasons Jobs was Dumped by the board of directors.

Re:Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[CordMeyer]

Wrong.

see here

Re:Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[dWhisper]

Actually, he was offered the tour, and allowed the rights to use the idea of GUI. He never paid rights to use the idea. I'm not sure about paying for the tour.

IBM requested a GUI OS and then allowed MS to use the concepts behind it, the same as they had allowed them to market MS-DOS, as compared to IBM's PC-DOS. And Windows 2.0 was the first to properly implement the GUI idea conceived for OS/2.

Re:Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Apple bought the GUI. Stock exchange of some sort, completely above the table. It's M$ that later stole it.

Your M$ bashing is virtuous, but when it leaks over onto other companies, you might want to be more careful.

Re:Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[javiercero]

Two points:

Jobs was allowed to visit PARC under a crosslicensing deal, PARC guys actually did not want to share their stuff with Jobs, they were forced to by management. Jobs hired a bunch of guys from PARC after that.

Microsoft did produce plenty of titles for the MAC... for example Excel started out as a mac only product (I think, fuzzy memories now...)

Re:Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[Anonymous Coward]

He did pay in stock rights. Xerox got a huge stack of Stock before Apple went public because they lets Jobs see the Alto. They were well compromised (I think their stock was worth $850,000 the day Apple went public but I'd have to check The Mac Bathroom Reader for the exact number)

Re:Celebrating what Xerox Gave Away...

[dWhisper]

Excel was made to compete with Lotus 1-2-3, and could be used on a lot of different platforms, I believe, but was the primary focus of the Mac. It was before the OS/2 fiasco, but it was the main justification behind computers entering into the business world for day-to-day use.

All credit to Xerox

[Azahar]

Why did Xerox just put it all away though and let others develop it.

It was like the Vikings went to America and did nothing with the knowledge and it had to wait until Columbus went back to America (having read the Viking accounts) and then told everyone about it.

Full kudos to Xerox for ingenuity but not much else.

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[SN74S181]

Those of us who run UNIX on machines like my Toshiba 486 laptop sorta resent you putting down FVWM. It works really well. It's disappointing that big fsking aircraft carrier bloatware desktops seem to be the defacto standard now.

Looks aren't everything, you know.

Debunking the "Apple Ripped Off Xerox PARC" Myth

[Nova Express]

Since I'm sure it will come up somewhere in this thread, I'd like to launch a premptive strike and debunk the "Apple stole the Lisa/Mac interface from Xerox PARC" Myth.

1. Apple was already working on some GUI elements before Steve Jobs visit to Xerox PARC in 1979.
   
   
2. Many Apple and Xerox GUI elements were developed in parallel.
   
   
3. Most importantly, Apple paid Xerox millions in stock to incorporate the GUI elements it did borrow for the Lisa/Macintosh projects.

Apple borrowed a number of elements from PARC research, but not all of them, and it did pay for the ones it did borrow. More details at: http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html.

the '73 alto had a GUI?

[the_2nd_coming]

I could have sworn that it was a charactor based system.

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[Billly Gates]

Try WindowMaker. Its my favorite when using my old p166 adn its themeable and looks really cool. Uses very little resources as well.

WYSIWYG

[trentfoley]

In the early 1980's, I worked for a software spin-off of an engineering company that was going down the tubes rapidly. One Friday I went to work to find:
1) A very polite policeman at the door.
2) No electricity.
3) No management people.
4) Confused employees.
5) An envelope at my desk with a check for 1/2 of my pay.
6) On the memo line, it read: "WYSIWYG"
7...
8) no profit.

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[SN74S181]

Thanks for the tip. If I ever upgrade to a p166 it'll probably be something I'll try. Mine is a 486DX-2 50.

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a nickel - buy a modern computer.

For more info

[ciryon]

if you haven't done so; see the really interesting movie Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Ciryon

Re:For more info

[Anonymous Coward]

Looked interesting so I started downloading off kazaa.
My girlfriend thought I was getting some cheesey porno involving pirates & fake tits!

haha

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[the_2nd_coming]

heh...yeah...if you have 50k I am sure some one will give you their's.......rememeber that there are a lot of colectors out there willing to pay big bucks for those old systems.

Very true

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at design pages from the late 70's at apple the mouse, icons and menu driven programs were already conceptualized. Apple took that and also what is saw at xerox, they hired away lots of xerox staff, paid xerox 1 mil. to use what it saw. Apple only was given a limited demo of the Alto not the Star, they developed many of the later concepts used in star independent of xerox. Apple developed the metaphor which is now used on many computer systems

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[SN74S181]

Here's $10,000. Good luck funding a vintage Xerox Alto for that price on eBay.

Re:Debunking the "Apple Ripped Off Xerox PARC" Myt

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I'm sure it will come up somewhere in this thread

yes, it already did.

Apple Lisa (MacXL) booted up nearly10 times faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple Lisa (MacXL) booted up nearly10 times faster than the poorly written ALTO. True, the lisa was written in high level languages , except for a few critical bits in assembler, but the alto was a sick pig.

people forget all too quickly that amachine that takes 10 minute to boot is a worthless piece of crap.

(regardless of its average up time).

Apple paid for the stuff (however minor) that zeorx did first.

hurray Apple, The Mac won (MS windows is a tribute to the macs inventions).

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[Anonymous Coward]

Windowmaker should run on a 486 as well. It is only slightly more resource hungy then fvwm if any. As long as you have 16 megs of ram you are set. If not then save up $25 and buy a 64meg fpram stick from crucial.Make sure its 30-pin fast page or fpram which is the only one that will work with your 486 laptop. 72 pin is for the desktops and 30 is for laptops.

You will notice a tremendous speed improvement with a simple ram upgrade and windowmaker will probably without it can run fvwm. The requirments are similiar. Look at the screenshots.Its also easy to add programs and menu's unlike fvwm.

Windowmaker is just a simple window manager like fvwm and not a desktop.

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[ShadowDrake]

>Make sure its 30-pin fast page or fpram which is >the only one that will work with your 486 laptop. 72 >pin is for the desktops and 30 is for laptops.

With due respect, this is gibberish.

30-pin RAM came first. It was 8 bits wide (9 with parity) so you needed four to make a full bank for a 386/486.

72-pin came later. It filled a 386/486 bank with 32 bits (36 with parity)

Some 486s took only 30-pin. Some only took 72-pin. Some took both. Interestingly, there may even be 286 and 386 systems that took 72-pin. (Magnavox did a 286/386SX system using a board with a 72-pin socket)

However, that probably won't do much for a laptop. Many laptops of the era take manufacturer-specific cards.

YOU MISSED

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are incorrect.

Sniff

[DCMonkey]

I remember Popdos! I too got it with my first (logitech) mouse. I had it set to come up on boot on my Compaq 286 lunchbox (think 3" thick laptop). It was more like Midnight Commander (2 pane text mode file manager) though IIRC.

Those were the days.

Apple Lisa Interface..

[euxneks]

Does anyone else think that the simplicity of the OS on Apple Lisa looks extremely attractive? Maybe it's just late at night... =)

Re:Apple Lisa Interface..

[Trurl's Machine]

Does anyone else think that the simplicity of the OS on Apple Lisa looks extremely attractive?

I never worked on Lisa, but like all the Mac users who started their Apple experience on the 68k machines, I miss some of the simplicity of the old Mac system. The whole desktop metaphor was developed with "one machine, one user", "no subdirectories of subdirectories", "no multitasking" etc. principles in mind. Just adding a harddrive distorts this metaphor and causes some confusion ("on my computer", what does that mean? depending on situation, it can mean "on my computer's harddrive", "on my user's desktop" or even "within the network reach from my computer"). It was nice to call directories "folders", but when folders within folders started to have their own folders, the metaphor was useless.
Apple always understood this, and there was always a "Simple Finder" option, for people who actually WANTED to have their choices limited as in 1985, on a 2000 machine. If they want to use just a word processor, a web browser and a mail application, more choices would just confuse them. "Simple Finder" is actually available even in MacOS X 10.2. I still think SOMEBODY should write a complete MacOS 7 conversion theme for MacOS X.

Altogether: a Xerox Alto simulator

[Eric Smith]

Last year I did some work on Altogether, a microcode-level Alto simulator. It does not yet include simulation of the disk or 3 Mbps Ethernet hardware, which will be necessary in order to boot useful Alto software.

Because almost all of the interesting Alto software used the writable control store, it is important to simulate the Alto at the microcode level. The Alto used horizontal microcode, so several operations are done in each clock cycle, which IIRC was 170 ns. On an Athlon XP 1900+, the CPU simulation runs at about 1/4 real time. In order to obtain better performance, it will be necessary to do quite a bit of optimization, possibly including binary translation of the microcode into native host code.

There's no packaged release of the Altogether code, but it can be checked out from CVS.

Re:Debunking the "Apple Ripped Off Xerox PARC" Myt

[Krapangor]

Most importantly, Apple paid Xerox millions in stock to incorporate the GUI elements it did borrow for the Lisa/Macintosh projects.

But this proves indeed that they were ripped off.

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[SN74S181]

The laptop in question has the full compliment of 28 megs of RAM that is physically possible for it's design. It's a proprietary 24 meg module added to the pitiful 4 megs stock in that model. I specifically bought it second hand five years ago to run Linux on. It's the ultimate hacker's Toshiba 486, the T2105. The last and best Grayscale VGA Toshiba ever made. For some reason the marketing goons at Toshiba recycled the 2105 model number several years later for a newer model. It causes a lot of confusion when researching this particular model online.

the people of PARC

[thesilverbail]

Bob Taylor headed the labs at PARC in those days. They say that at its height he had 76 of the top 100 computers people in the country working for him. His management technique was simple: Just bring a lot of brilliant people together and give them enough money and time to carry out whatever research they wanted. and they came up with the mouse, bitmapped screens and the ethernet cable. Douglas Englebart worked there and was(is) one of the great unsung heros of the multimedia revolution.

Irrelevant trivia : Palo Alto means "tall pole" in spanish.

Re:the people of PARC

[The Ape With No Name]

they say that at its height he had 76 of the top 100 computers people in the country

So who were the other 24? C'mon, dish.

Ahead of their time....

[jemenake]

Steve Jobs has said that, at the time he visited PARC, they demoed three technologies for him: OO-programming, graphical user interfaces, and LANs.

He said that he was so blown away by just one of the techs (the GUI, of course), that the potential of the other two were completely lost on him.

It boggles my mind how far ahead of the curve the PARC guys were. Imagine going to a demo session and having the demonstrators show you a working quantum computing laptop running from a fuel-cell with a virtual holographic 360-degree 3-D display. It must have been something like that... where each advancement is so groundbreaking that you can only absorb one of them in a sitting.

Re:Ahead of their time....

[bjohnson]

The Mac has had simple, easy to configure networking built-in all along: LocalTalk anyone? So he did get the value of the LAN.

(Though that may not have debuted until the Mac Plus in '86)

Slow as hell, of course, but it was plug 'n' play simple.

OO Programming, well, there they were constrained by the limited resources of the Mac. The OS Toolbox was written in 68000 assembler.

*sigh* Apple didn't "Steal" the GUI from Xerox

[green pizza]

While many Xerox engineers and even more techies outside of the company were sad to see Xerox discontinue GUI efforts beyond the Alto and Star, this was the full intention of the company's executives. At the time, Xerox was a copy machine company, the powers that be had no interest in making any sort of computer. In return for information, cooperation, and to somewhat return the favor, Apple gave Xerox a large amount of Apple stock. Apple didn't "buy" the GUI from Xerox, neither did they "steal" the GUI. About the only thing they "stole" were some engineers that moved to Apple to continue GUI work (Apple's former chief scientist, Larry Tessler, for example).

The early Lisa and Macintosh machines were less powerful than the last generation Xerox machines, but had better software support. The Xerox had several impressive demos, but most were incomplete. By 1985, the Macintosh had Mac Write, Mac Paint, Mac Draw, Hypercard, several Postscript-based illustration and DTP applications, and the very first GUI versions of MS Word and Excel.

Search the web for Apple/Xerox myths, you'll find the real story from several credible sources, including Steve Wozniak (Apple co-founder) who was still with the company at the time. www.woz.org may be a good start.

If it makes you feel any better, you may want to think of Apple as getting a taste of their own medicine with the Newton project. Like Xerox that pioneered a new area of computing, but allowed other companies to mass market smaller/cheaper models, Apple left the PDA market just as it began to take off. The Newtons were impressive technology demos, but were large and expensive and still had some quirks. Two years after Apple discontinued the Newton, everyone had a Palm.

Re:Debunking the "Apple Ripped Off Xerox PARC" Myt

[Anonymous Coward]

umm the Alto was done in 1973.

One user? Can I get One-user on Win 2K?

[Azahar]

Bugger I can't. Multi-user is an MS feature and not an MS bug.

How about Linux? Can I get One-user on Linux then? I can't? Multiuser is still a feature and not a bug?

Bugger.

Fire In The Valley

[dubstop]

Or read Fire In The Valley, the book that the film is based on. Both the book and the film are excellent.

"every program I run is maximized"

[metamatic]

Wow, I'd heard that there were people who run every program maximized, but I'd never met any.

Lucky you, stupid web designers build their sites for you!

Re:"every program I run is maximized"

[Planesdragon]

Wow, I'd heard that there were people who run every program maximized, but I'd never met any.

You--you mean that you don't? Wow!

And stupid web designers DON'T build their websites with me in mind. They either assume a 640 pixel or an 800 pixel width, rather than tying the main section of their website to a percentage of the full page.

Those stupidly designe sites have a lot of whitespace alongside the content--which is just plain annoying, IMO.

Re:"every program I run is maximized"

[RevAaron]

There are a lot of inexperienced users who run every program maximized, at least such is my experience doing support with a few different groups. Sometimes these people get freaked out when you un-maximize something and proceed to drag data from one window to another- bound to freak 'em out every time. :)

The Alto (and Star) kinda sucked

[metamatic]

The AC has a point. I worked with a guy who used to be a Xerox Star salesman. He said that they used to arrange that the machines be booted ahead of time. If they crashed for any reason, you'd just walk out, because once the customer saw how long they took to boot you'd never sell one.

The Alto and Star had a number of dubious design decisions that led to the incredibly large boot time and low reliability. One was that the filesystem implemented disk allocation via a simple linked list; no file allocation table. If you want to get to block 250 of a file, you had to read the first 249 to follow the chain of pointers. Yeeesh.

Fumbling The Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Also along the same lines, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Only collectable system that fetches those types of prices are Apple I's, as far as I know. Though it wouldn't suprise me to see it get $2000-$3000, I guess, lord knows any of the old IMSAI stuff can get that on ebay.

Consent Decree

[ahfoo]

Try googling Xerox consent decree and you will discover that Xerox neither mistakenly gave away nor generosly gave up their technology --they were forced by the government. That's government as in by the people of the people for the people. Too bad we gave up on that form of government in the US.
The public domain has to be taken by force, it always has been and always will be. There is no room for charity in monoploly plans.

Re:Consent Decree

[ahfoo]

Okay, I ended the above post a bit too heavy handedly, what with Gates being such a charity fiend. But the thing about the Xerox consent decree is really something to think about.
That's a phrase we used to see in the headlines all the time in the 70s, but ever since the 80s it has all but disappeared from the front page because it is no longer an issue. It's no longer an issue because the government we've chosen has no interest in protecting the public domain. Relecting on PARC should be time of reflecting on this fact.

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[javiercero]

I still keep it real yo! TWM all the way on most of my machines... it is butt ugly for most people, but I like the simple 2D look of it, plus I can make it tabbed ala BeOS. It is fast, light on resources, and it runs equally well on my old Sparc IPX than on my new Athlon 2000.....

If you really need all that color candy for your desktop environment (GNOME, and KDE as major suspects) that means that you are not doing real work... most of the action takes place INSIDE the window, not at the BORDERS :-). All that I ask for my window manager is that it handles my windows just like I command it to, and it gets out of the way, I do not need no frikking fireworks display everytime I open a damn application.

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[OldFart58]

An old Xeroid, me... used a 6085 for a couple of years, which was then replaced by GlobalView running on a SPARC - 'till we then upgraded everyone to PC's running Win3.11 - I don't miss the 6085's much (took _forever_ to boot up).

Try asking on comp.sys.xerox - that's the kind of thing that USENET group was originally set up for... even though nowadays its mostly used for people asking about printer drivers and Metacode converters, folks with 6085's, etc. still check it out periodically.

Have fun!

OldFart 8-)

Markov != history

[Multics]

We must always remember this story is written by John Markov, whose career is based in part on a set of half truths about Kevin Mitnick (who is by no means a saint) and other spin-based technology reporting. Some of the dotcom frenzy could have been moderated if he'd reported truth instead of illusion from his bully pulpit.

Given the previous mis-reporting (and I was around in the early 70s) I take issue with any one person or organization getting 'credit' for personal computing. It was time, in the industry, to do this. Already in tbe back of Scienctific American were half a dozen companies advertisting mini-computers that were targeted to a single researcher. I was on PDP 8s and soon thereafter PDP 11s which were mostly being used to support single people.

Allen Kay shold get credit for bringing to prominance the windowing environments that most of us now use.

-- Multics

Books

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting read (if you can find it) is the Smalltalk/80 book series by Adelle Goldberg et al. One volume, entitled "Bits of History, Words of Advice" describes how PARC invited several companies (including Apple and HP) to create their own Smalltalk implementations.

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because there isn't many of them.
But do you really want one?
By that I mean they're a valuable historical item, and as fragile as something out of a mummy's tomb. They are very vulnerable to the elements, so a person's home may not be the best place to store them.
One guy I found on the internet had bought a couple of dozen of Altos, and stored them in his garage, only for there to be an earthquake which smashed them up.
So yes, if you do manage to find them, try to arrange more suitable storage than in your house.

Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want more on the story of Alto and the products that were born out of it, I suggest watching the third installment of Cringley's "Triumph of the Nerds". You may find the transcripts here

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Outside shed, climate controlled with a nice big concrete slab floor. I have a few 220v receptacles and such, I store most of my mini-computers out there.

Yes, I do want one. I wouldn't butcher it and see if I could put a Athlon motherboard in it, or any of the other bullshit you see people doing with treasures like this. I'm willing to do the research to restore it, if it's not in working condition. And if it can be networked to a modern computer, I will do so... maybe even letting some respectul individuals use it remotely (as I do with some of my other oddball computers).

I may not be a museum curator, but I would provide a good home for it. I wouldn't even sell the thing if I couldn't keep it, I know a few like-minded individuals who become it's caretaker.

Oh, and finally, I'm fairly safe from most natural disasters in my area.

Working with one the Alto's designers

[fhammond]

Several folks from PARC are now at Adobe. I work with one of them - Ed McCreight - and he's just a great guy. Very, very smart but more important, an incredibly nice chap. He's the sort of person who you literally can't image ever having done anything malicious. He's also one of those people who seem to be interested in just about everything; a true renaissance man. Adobe is a wonderful place to work for many reasons but for me, getting to work with Ed is definitely at the top of the list.

Oh, a related note: I read an interesting book recently, titled "The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film". It's basically a transcript of conversations between Michael Ondaatje (author of The English Patient) and Walter Murch. Murch is a film and sound editor (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, THX 1138, American Graffiti) and from the book, reminds me of Ed: a very smart guy and a real expert in a specific area but also a person who is interested in a huge array of topics. It's an excellent book.

fh

Re:Alto: ancestor to both GUI and Unix Workstation

[spike hay]

Try WindowMaker. Its my favorite when using my old p166 adn its themeable and looks really cool. Uses very little resources as well.


Windowmaker is my favorite. I just really love the dock style of GUI. I even use it on my more powerful Athlon.

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[DCZX]

I have an Altos 586TX with Xenix on it, I would be happy to sell/get rid of if you're interested. It's got a tons of docs and software, but I don't have the password for root or any logins... maybe you can hack it somehow.. email: downerczx@yahoo.com

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[Anonymous Coward]

See if you can get one of the pre-1975 models, find some way of attaching an external 56k modem, and connect to the internet with a port of the Commodore 64 webbrowser. Browsing the www with a 30year old PC; the ultimate in geek m0j0.

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[Eric Smith]

The last Alto that a friend sold went for $5K about three years ago. Even though the economy has tanked since then, I seriously doubt that an Alto would sell for any less than that now. Although there were more Altos made than Apple Is, there may be fewer Altos left in existence. It was easier for someone with an Apple I to store it in their garage or basement. Also, most Altos were not in private hands, so when they were no longer needed they got scrapped.

On the other hand, it's much easier to find a second-generation Star system, the Xerox 6085, known as the Daybreak. As of a year ago, people around here were still giving those away.

Getting the Star software running is much harder than acquiring the hardware. Generally you need a server as well (typically an 8090 Daylight), and a license key. It is possible to get it running standalone, but that's not how it was normally used.

The software was renamed from Star to Globalview. There actually was a Windows version of it, GVWin. GVWin was still written in Mesa. Fuji/Xerox also had a product that implemented the Mesa byte code interpreter on a PC.

Re:Apple Lisa (MacXL) booted up nearly10 times fas

[selan]

When I was in kindergarten, my father bought a Lisa for his office. I'm now married with kids, so that gives you some idea of how long ago this was. I remember playing with it when I was a kid.

To this day, my father claims the Lisa was the best machine he has ever used. All the applications were completely integrated in a way that DOS and even Windows apps weren't for many years. You could draw up a diagram in the paint program and paste it into the word processing program easily. It was so solid that, AFAIK, it was still being used in the office just a few years ago and may still be there today.

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

A Star would suit me just fine, I think. Thanks for the extra keyword (daybreak), incorporating that into my Ebay search as we speak.

As for Alto's being rarer than an Apple I, that would mean fewer than 150. I can't think of any computer system that would be rarer, off the top of my head. Shame how corporate disposal policies are killing all sorts of historical computers. :(

Software is always the bitch though, isn't it? An acquaintance of mine has a Cray supercomputer, I think it's going on 2 years now... still can't find a copy/license of Unicos. My DECstation (MIPS cpu, needs ultrix, not osf/tru64) has been sitting under my desk for 3 years, and it's annoying. I've managed to dig up nearly every major, and many minor, version of OpenVMS, and still can't find ultrix.

Hint: If anyone wants to discuss the quasi-legal exchange of esoteric OS's, I'm the guy you are looking for...

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[Eric Smith]

As for Alto's being rarer than an Apple I, that would mean fewer than 150.

I don't mean rarer in the sense that fewer were made. Several thousand Altos were made, vs. perhaps 200 Apple Is. But I think there are fewer surviving Altos than surviving Apple Is. There are believed to be under 20 Apple Is left.

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Well, I was under the impression that there were as many as 60-70 known Apple I's left. Out of 150-200 in the beginning.

But to think that 2500 (to 4500?) Alto's might have been pared down to fewer than 100 is sad indeed.

Note: The Xerox Alto is distinct and different from an "Altos" (name of the company) anything.

Out of the 1800 Beboxen ever built, wonder how many surive?

How often do you boot, anyway?

[alispguru]

people forget all too quickly that amachine that takes 10 minute to boot is a worthless piece of crap.

Well, that depends on how often you boot it, doesn't it? At the time, Lisp machines took a long time to boot, but they stayed up for months at a time. Altos in use as file servers had similar uptimes. You must have had to boot your Lisa a lot if their time to boot was a big concern.

One reason Altos and their kin took a long time to boot was the multiple layers in the OS - boot loaders that load microcode loaders that load image loaders that load images... Once while I was working on a complex diagram on a Star, I selected a group of objects and punched "Ungroup". The screen went black for a few seconds, and a different-looking window system popped up, called "Pilot". A few windows scrolled, the screen went black, and a more primitive-looking window system appeared, calling itself "CoPilot". This one printed some stuff to a window and vanished, and a very simple window system appeared, called "CoCoPilot". After a little more screen activity, the screen went black again for a few seconds, and my original Star session appeared again! I quickly saved my diagram and was quite weirded out for the rest of the afternoon...

The Alto

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran Interlisp, an AI development environment on the Alto and Interlisp-D on the Dandilion/D0-Dolphin/Dorados. I developed a multi-layer PC board layout tool and worked with CDS a Cell-Design VLSI CAD package on these things. Its surprising that these boxes had multi-font, full color (optional card and monitor for the AltoII-XM) and that the entire office suite, cad tools, documents and such fit on a single Diablo-32 hard disk (3 MBytes). Then Microsoft comes along and gives us very little more but it now consumes 300 MBytes. Its a good thing that a Trident T-300 disk (actually many) could be hooked up to the Alto because if Microsoft were in control you'd need it!

In 1985 I patented the Optical Mouse and many other developments for PARC. I was in Optical VLSI design and Artificial Intelligence but you couldn't have asked for better computer environments in the 70s and 80s.

Congratulations to the Xerox Alto. I've got one but its been dead a long time -- no display. But the cast aluminum blue Xerox logo from the keyboard still lives on my briefcase.

BC

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[Anonymous Coward]

As for Alto's being rarer than an Apple I, that would mean fewer than 150. I can't think of any computer system that would be rarer, off the top of my head. Shame how corporate disposal policies are killing all sorts of historical computers. :(

My mother's school sent a working historical Acorn Computer model to the rubbish tip. I was not happy upon hearing that. People have got this idea that any computer older than 4 years should be binned. I've seen people say "chuck it" about Pentium 233mmx computers.

Re:Anyone have a Star/Alto they want 2 find a home

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering I know of one person with a couple of dozen Altos, I somehow doubt there're as few as 20 of them still around. My guess would be more like several hundred. But consider that an Apple 1 is an Apple 1, whereas there were a number of revisions of the Alto of a period of nearly a decade. My guess would be there are only a handful of the early models still working.

New book on PARC's strategy and offspring

[__aacqhs8241]

Just published: "Open Innovation" by Hank Chesbrough, $24.50 on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578518377/ .
It describes what PARC was looking for in its research, the many spin-offs that we've heard of, and proposes a post-PARC theory for tech R&D funding / thinking with research from Intel, IBM, Lucent and others. I've posted a full review at http://www.mironov.com/pb/mar03.html .
Strongly recommended!

Last Post!

[alpg]

[In 'Doctor' mode], I spent a good ten minutes telling Emacs what I
thought of it. (The response was, 'Perhaps you could try to be less
abusive.')
-- Matt Welsh

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