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The Birth of the Apple Lisa
Ton writes "People think Apple stole the GUI from Xerox, but it's much more subtle than that. Braeburn has posted a story about the development and birth of the Apple Lisa, the first commercial computer with a graphical interface. More on this subject at Andy Hertzfeld's (one of the original developers of the Mac) site Folkore.org."
This article pretty much illustrates the difference between Apple and Microsoft. Apple tried really hard to come up with a great, user friendly GUI for the Lisa, and in the end sold it for close to $10K to try and quickly recoup costs. Microsoft instead goes and buys a crappy OS (the early DOS) for $80K or whatever it was, sells the crap out of it to IBM and becomes the dominant player. Now Microsoft can afford to sell its OS dirt cheap as it makes up the cost in volume and monopoly practices. Apple still continues to design a great OS and sell it along with hardware at a high premium. Pretty much nothing has changed in the philosophy.
At OOPSLA '87 (back in the pre-history days) we pretty much all were astounded that we had all been strongly influenced by a single article in Scientific American in the late '70s that showed off future trends in computing including the work at PARC. You never know what will be the thing that really sets off an industry. A fairly interesting group was there including Alan Kay (Smalltalk-72), Adele Goldberg (Smalltalk-80), Bjarne Stroustup (C++), Brad Cox (Objective C) - how much each of them inspired that article or was inspired by it is left to the reader.
While the machine and software were excellent for the time, it was Apple's boneheaded discontinuation and non-support of the Lisa that made Microsoft the company it is today and sent Apple into the corporate wasteland. I know more than one company that were sold on Lisa, bought is and deployed it. Then, they were told it was the end of the line - zip for you, nada. Had the knuckleheads at Apple even bothered to offer a discount on Macs to corporate Lisa buyers things might have been different. Instead, they got nothing so they shunned Apple. The instead bought MS and when Windows came out they never looked back. Thier employees cut their teeth on Windows machines, and then bought them for home where their kids got ahold of them. The rest is history. Yes, Apple sold a lot to schools, but home is where the fun is and most use came. It's been a Wintel world ever since. Since then, Apple has only gained among niche users in desktop publishing and more recently on media development. I don't count iPod as computer hardware. It is a straight consumer product. Had Apple behaved differently, the PC world could have been very different.
Yes, Apple did steal the idea for a graphic user interface from the demo visit that Jobs and crew made to Xerox PARC. Jobs and crew were primed for a completely new user interface for a low-cost (here meaning less than $50000 US 1981 dollars) business computer. They came, they saw, they copied.
Xerox hired great people who created a new computer environment. Xerox management saw it and realised that it could make them rich. Xerox slapped a $50,000 price on it, sat back, did nothing with it, and watched it bomb, and have its central concept get stolen by the first hungry people to see it.
Apple hired great people who wished to create a new computer environment. Apple management saw Xerox's work and realised that it could make them rich. Apple copied it, slapped a $10,000 price on it, sat back, did next to nothing with it, and watched it bomb, and have its central concept get stolen by the first hungry people to see it.
Atari hired great people who wished to create a new computer environment. Atari's 'management' saw Apples's work and realised that it could make them rich. Atari copied it, slapped a $1,000 price on it, sat back, did next to nothing with it, and watched it bomb, and have its central concept get stolen by the first hungry people to see it.
Microsoft hired great people who wished to create a new computer environment. Microsoft management saw Atari's work and realised that it could make them rich. Microsoft copied it, slapped a $100 price on it, sat back, did next to nothing with it, and watched it soar, and have its central concept get stolen by the first hungry Unix programmers to see it.
The point? Stop your management monkeys from looking at the technology world as a means to get rich and more as way to build the framework and infrastructure that will allow wealth to be generated by new organizations and processes that are made possible by new technology. Then they will be able to make enough money to keep their pointy little heads happy.
Stop being so fucking greedy. Greed is not good. In the long run, it doesn't work.