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The Birth of the Apple Lisa

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the helluva-contraction-you-got-here dept.

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."

18 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. It gets good here by pcmanjon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    " was more powerful than most minicomputers of the day. The researchers at PARC had since become leery of outsiders, and stopped giving tours. Steve Jobs, convinced that the technology at PARC could help Apple usher in the eighties, offered Xerox a killer deal. Apple, which was still privately owned at the time, would allow Xerox to invest $1 million, which was sure to soar in value when the company went public in 1981 for two guided tours of PARC's technology. Xerox happily accepted, and gave Steve and a team of engineers from the Lisa project a tour of the technologies at PARC.

    Steve Jobs (who took only Bill Atkinson along on his first visit), who had a rather limited understanding of technology, was most impressed by the graphical interface he saw running on the Alto. The interface was nothing like today's desktop based interfaces, but was a huge jump forward from the command line interfaces used everywhere else. When the engineers returned they had a vision of what they wanted in the Lisa project. The Apple chairman was so impressed that he interrupted a demo given by Larry Tesler asking him why nothing was being done with the technology. For the second visit, Jobs brought along several members of the Lisa project, and was given a much more technical demonstration. The other engineers who went on the second visit, who were briefed by Jef Raskin before their visit, were equally impressed.

    The Apple engineers were not the only ones to be impressed by the visit, the researchers at Xerox, long discouraged by Xerox's inability to release a product based on the technology developed at PARC, were impressed by Apple's seeming willingness to implement advanced technologies in their products.

    The Lisa project changed dramatically. No longer was it to be a mere hardware upgrade to the Apple II line, the new focus of the Lisa project was software. The team wanted to implement all of the innovations they saw at PARC."

    It's not really stealing, but rather just "implimenting" someone elses innovations.

    1. Re: It gets good here by phillymjs · · Score: 3, Informative

      So you're asserting Apple stole Xerox's stuff, when right there in the text you quoted it says otherwise. Did you even read it? Allow me to repeat. Read just the bold parts:

      Steve Jobs, convinced that the technology at PARC could help Apple usher in the eighties, offered Xerox a killer deal. Apple, which was still privately owned at the time, would allow Xerox to invest $1 million, which was sure to soar in value when the company went public in 1981 for two guided tours of PARC's technology.

      That looks like a pretty clear quid pro quo to me. Do you think the Xerox people who made this deal were idiots? Do you think they didn't know the probability the Apple people would take and build upon the things they saw at PARC-- things the Xerox suits had no plans to put into products of their own?

      I suggest you watch Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds"-- one of the people interviewed is Adele Goldberg, a former PARC staffer. In her interview, she explained that she made it clear to the Xerox suits what was likely to happen if the Apple people got their tour, and refused to give any demos to them unless they Xerox suits directly ordered her to do so. Which they did. The rest is history.

      ~Philly

    2. Re: It gets good here by ClosedSource · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can spin things any way you like, but the fact of the matter is Xerox didn't grant any rights to Apple.

      Eventually Xerox sued Apple, but the case was thrown out for the same reason that Apple's case against MS was thrown out. The courts didn't buy the argument that a program's "look and feel" were covered by copyright.

      Apple never tried to argue in that case that their tour of Xerox entitled them to any rights, by the way.

    3. Re: It gets good here by phillymjs · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can spin things any way you like, but the fact of the matter is Xerox didn't grant any rights to Apple.

      That's true, but no reasonable person would be surprised that the Apple people would be influenced by the stuff they saw at PARC. My theory is that (at the time) the Xerox suits saw no value in what was being developed, and thus saw no harm in letting Apple see it. If they thought it was valuable, they would never have let the Apple contingent in the building. Instead, they probably thought they were screwing Apple by getting virtually free money out of their investment, in exchange for letting Apple see worthless, unmarketable crap.

      Eventually Xerox sued Apple

      Well, sure, after realizing in horror that they gave away the keys to the kingdom. No matter how much money they made on their investment in Apple, it would have been dwarfed by what they could have made if they had fully exploited the GUI themselves.

      Apple never tried to argue in that case that their tour of Xerox entitled them to any rights, by the way.

      Well, that goes back to my first point. Nobody could reasonably expect the Apple people to not be influenced by what they saw. Short of erasing their memories after the tour a la "Men in Black," if you want to ensure they won't be influenced by the stuff, you don't let them see it.

      And though Xerox didn't grant any rights to Apple, I can only assume there were no NDAs covering the visits, either-- those would have been a potent weapon in the lawsuit, had they existed.

      ~Philly

    4. Re: It gets good here by blibbler · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can spin things however you want, but Apple's case against Microsoft wasn't thrown out because the court didn't acknowledge "look and feel", but rather because a contract between Apple and Microsoft essentially granted Microsoft rights to various aspects of the interface. http://home.earthlink.net/~mjohnsen/Technology/Law suits/appvsms.html
      Many people don't understand the concept of "look and feel" and focus purely on the appearance of the interface. If you read the article, you would have noticed the point that the Alto's interface was very difficult to use, whereas the Lisa team made usability the primary focus for their interface. While they might have looked similar (overlapping windows and desktop metaphor aside) they had a very different feel. By contrast, Microsoft took much of the "feel" from the Lisa and Macintosh ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts-Bi bliography/93-12html/93-12.ps

  2. Not the first.... by AtariAmarok · · Score: 3, Interesting
    "the first commercial computer with a graphical interface"

    The Lisa was the first major one with a sophisticated non-text graphical interface for file access. However, it was not the first to use such an interface at all. Earlier offerings from Apple, Atari, Commodore, etc had many individual programs that had interactive graphic (non-text) interface and control. Probably would be better to say that it was the first commercial offering featuring the early version of today's GUI.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Not the first.... by north.coaster · · Score: 3, Informative

      The Xerox Star was commercial product. It was marketed to Executives, not average folks. Cost was something like $10,000 (in 1981), if I recall correctly.

      It's sort of funny that people make such as big deal about the GUI, when in reality the laser printer was (and still is) equally important. Guess who invented the laser printer? Hint... it starts with a X...

  3. The difference between Apple and Microsoft by teslatug · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. People think... by PsiPsiStar · · Score: 4, Funny

    The RIAA thinks that I stole music using Kazaa, but it's much more subtle than that...

    --

    ___
    It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
  5. Re:stole the graphical interface? by TheAncientHacker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  6. Stole by christurkel · · Score: 4, Informative

    While Apple engineers were certainly inspired by PARC, to say they stole belittles the desktop innovations they did: Pull down menus, overlapping windows and a desktop trash bin.

    --

    CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
  7. Lisa Cut Apple's Throat by Bullfish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Lisa Cut Apple's Throat by Ralph+Spoilsport · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I *love* using apple computers, but I have to add to Mr Bullfish's point with a story about a friend of mine.

      Back around 1990 or so he bought a Mac IIfx. That thing was trippy scary fast for the time, and it cost him a HUGE pile of cash - something like $12,000. Which is a huge amount of money for a computer by todays standards and just short of extortionate back in 1990. However it had that weird 64 pin memory, so upping the RAM cost a freakin' fortune, and it was never used again, which meant that this machine was a $13,000 DOORSTOP. That pissed him off. But he was a Believer, and he went back to the Kool-Aid trough again in summer of 1995 and bought a Quadra 950 for about $8,000. It was discontinued a few months later, and at the time with no realistic upgrade path, except to spend another $8000 on a 9500.

      At that point he said "FUCK APPLE" - he had invested over $20,000 on TWO computers, both of which were doorstops. He was able to strip the 950 for some parts, at least. Since then, he's been a Wintel Guy ever since.

      Apple has a habit of doing that - building extremely expensive machines that have no useful upgrade path. Now that computers are so friggin cheap, upgrape path doesn't mean that much, but back in 1990 it really did.

      I bought an LC (or was it an LC-II? I don't remember...) back in 1991 because it was a colour macintosh for less than $2000, which I thought was FANTASTIC. I think it had 8 megs of RAM. But, with no upgrade path, it was useless after a few years, and then I bought my Quadra 650 for about $1700. The Quadra was great - it worked like a champ for years and I finally sold it to someone who is still using it for word processing running Word 5, FreeHand 5, and Quark 3 to this very day.

      Apple's crude discontinuation of Lisa was just the first in a series of major customer mis-steps by Apple. (full disclosure: both of my Apple computers died in April, so now I'm running a cheapy Wintel box, but only until the MacIntel boxen arrive. Then I'll get a MacIntel powerbook. YAY!!! I look forward to getting back to OSX. Windows makes my day long and grim, and the software I use precludes Linux, for now.)

      RS

      --
      Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
  8. Well, YES, they did steal the idea.... by Simonetta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Well, YES, they did steal the idea.... by stam66 · · Score: 3, Informative
      Yes, Apple did steal the idea for a graphic user interface from the demo visit that Jobs and crew made to Xerox PARC.

      Interesting concept of steal: From TFA (which you no doubt read before offering your incisive wisdom):

      Steve Jobs, convinced that the technology at PARC could help Apple usher in the eighties, offered Xerox a killer deal. Apple, which was still privately owned at the time, would allow Xerox to invest $1 million, which was sure to soar in value when the company went public in 1981 for two guided tours of PARC's technology. Xerox happily accepted, and gave Steve and a team of engineers from the Lisa project a tour of the technologies at PARC

      Is any one else tired of hearing this shit about how Apple ripped off Xerox?

  9. Didn't want the graphical interface... by Sithech · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, industry observers and commentators up until 1990 frequently said that the graphical interface was a bad idea. Check out the press from that time and you'll see arguments that GUI's are too slow, childish, disrespect the expertise of users, and reduce productivity because they take your hands off the keyboard.

    And the Intel processors of 1983-86 vintage were too underpowered to handle the overhead of a GUI at an acceptable performance level. Try booting one up in Win 2.0 some time...

    BTW, a huge chunk of what we now consider standard interface stuff was invented for the Mac, such as the file interface.

  10. Don't quote history you don't actually know by TheAncientHacker · · Score: 5, Informative
    Actually, 80386 support in Windows started with Windows/386 2.10 in 1988 but why mess up a mythology with something as messy as facts.

    Windows 3.0 users did NOT "need to upgrade" to intel 386 based machines (which were several years old by then - not NEW as you state) because Windows 3.0 in 1990 supported 3 modes.
    1. Real mode (which ran on just about anything x86 available)
    2. Standard mode (which required an 80286 or above processor)
    3. 386 Enhanced mode (which, obviously, needed a 386 to run) and took advantage of all those "Advanced CPU" features you claim weren't supported in Windows until five years and 3 versions later.
    Really, if you're going to make it up as you go along, let people know it's just fictional ranting.
  11. Star was $16K; also Lisp machines and PERQ by alispguru · · Score: 3, Interesting
    According to here, the Star was $16500 at first release. They were great machines for their time, but not really at their best unless connected to a network with file servers and printers - stand-alone support was minimal. I can attest to that from my time at Xerox AI Systems (1986-88) - our stand-alone customers had to make do with Epson dot-matrix printers that sort-of worked, and we sent them system image updates on huge stacks of 5 1/4" floppies whose reliability was questionable on a good day.

    Also, I know of two other windowing workstations that were commercially available in 1981:

    The PERQ

    Lisp machines from LMI and Symbolics

    The Lisa was not the first commercial GUI machine, though it probably does hold the title for the first commercial machine under $10K.

    --

    To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.