A Non-Dogmatic History of the GUI

Zoxed writes "Jeremy Reimer provides an 8-page history of GUIs from the early 1930s to the present day. For example, from the conclusion: 'the truth of the story is that the GUI was developed by many different people over a long period of time. Saying that "Apple invented the GUI" or "Apple ripped off the idea from PARC" is overly simplistic, but saying that "Xerox invented the GUI" is equally so.'"

Comments

Love of the Mouse

[Janitha]

After reading this, I noticed one thing, seems like the idea has been stuck into the same idea this whole time, a simple 2d screen. Even vr googles use two 2d screens. Hopefully this will change more as the development of layered LCD's and other technologies start comming up. True 3d gui's are what I am waiting for now.

Re:Love of the Mouse

[Peter Cooper]

I don't see the point. It's like demanding 3D paper or 3D TV. Paper and TV have been around significantly longer than GUIs, and I don't see anyone jumping to make those 3D. I saw some demos of some 3D TVs in the 90's, and while the idea had a certain 'cool' factor.. it seemed pointless.

Some things simply don't need to be more complicated than they are.. like adding buttons and extra text boxes onto Google search, or developing 3D paper.

Re:Love of the Mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, what would all these 3D gui's be suitable for? [..] I never felt the need for either a 3D pointing device or display. Can you give some more examples of applications where such devices would have an added value?

One thing that stuck in my head from my CS course in user interfaces was that (paraphrasing and condensing), "3D interfaces suck".

A major problem is that in a 2D interface, everything is visible (*); in a 3D interface, things can be 'hidden' behind other things, or even 'inside' a group of other things. At least you'll have to move around to see items; in the latter case, you'll actually have to move some items themselves aside to see other items.

Also; bear in mind that 3D interfaces will always be observed via two 2D projections (in your eyes, of course); this does *not* give anything approaching full knowledge of the 3D world from a given perspective. 2D on the other hand, does not have this problem.

On the course mentioned above, we were shown a video from the early 90s (this was circa 2001/02), with a virtual reality file management system. Navigation was via a hierarchy of logically-organized rooms in a building; files were finally found within boxes and folders.

Even then, it seemed vary dated in an "early 1990s virtual reality fetishising" way. In short, with the benefit of hindsight (*or* the ability to step back from the hype), it is obvious that the system was gimmicky and inefficient compared to the still-prevelant Mac/Windows-style folder navigation.

If technology was the limiting factor on 3D interfaces, I believe they'd have become commonplace by the second half of the 1990s. The fact that they aren't says more about the mechanics and usability of them than it does about display technology.

(*) Yeah. Things *can* be hidden by other things in most current GUIs. That's because they offer a very restricted level of 3D; namely layers of depth. They get away with this *because* it's limited.

GUI is over-rated

[xiando]

I know. I am a bit strange to think GUI is over-rated. And in very many cases, GUI does the best job. But CLI, text-based, is my preferred choice for a broad variety of applications. Text-based simply gets the job done quicker and more smoothly in many cases. Actually, unless I am working with something that actually requires graphics I prefer text-based..

Re:GUI is over-rated

[NanoGator]

"I know. I am a bit strange to think GUI is over-rated. And in very many cases, GUI does the best job. But CLI, text-based, is my preferred choice for a broad variety of applications. Text-based simply gets the job done quicker and more smoothly in many cases. Actually, unless I am working with something that actually requires graphics I prefer text-based.."

In your case, that's great. However, UI isn't just about quick efficient interfaces with the computer, it's also about making an interface that a new user can do something with. A text interface is the WORST interface to give somebody who's never used the system. If a GUI is designed well, you can tell a user what their goal is and they'll work it otu. With a text UI, the user will fly over to Google.

Apple bought it from PARC

[unassimilatible]

Apple ripped off the idea from PARC" is overly simplistic

How about, "Apple bought some ideas from Xerox for millions in cash and stock?"

This "Apple ripped off PARC" thing is nonsense. Just because the PARC group didn't like that their company sold the GUI rights doesn't make it a rip-off.

Bought and paid for.

Obsolete? Not keeping up with trends.

[SuperKendall]

And little has changed. The poor foundations of the original MacOS haunted Apple until they finally had to throw out MacOS and start over again with OS X. And what do they do? They base it on NeXT and Objective-C, a system that was pretty nice in the 1980's, but that has never been technologically cutting edge and is pretty much obsolete today as far as software technologies go.

Now Objective-C I'll grant is a bit of a mixed bag - primarily because of the lack of garbage collection, though autorelease pools are not too bad...

But the NeXT foundation and Objective-C together are actually very pertient to the world we live in today. The very heavy message-passing style of calls actually mirror the growing populartity of message passing in large enterprise systems, such as JMS.

Objective-C is actually where the industry should have gone instead of C++. It's easier to learn and use than C++ (I've done both) and might be a little behind Java or C#, but then again it's also not really been overhauled for a while.

The rapid degree of progress Apple has managed to make in the OS and with other programs is a good demonstrator for how efficient Objective-C can be.