Re: Think Different. (Re: Is it NT or VMS)

[Jon Paris <paris@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>> "Actually, Xerox invented the windows interface (and the mouse) at their
Palo Alto Research Center in the '70's.  They just couldn't figure out
what to do with it."  <<

I wouldn't put it quite that way - they marketed under the Xerox "Star"
banner.  Mostly it was sold as a sophisticated word processing device,
competing with a number of other stand-alone WP systems of the time - it was
the first time I saw a system with a portrait format screen.  I suspect that
the reason it failed to impress the market was the price which was very high,
and the performance which was well short of stellar.  One of my customers
installed a number of them back in the late '79 - '81 timeframe I would guess.

Ultimately it failed because the CPUs of those days just didn't have the
horsepower.  Was the software written in Smalltalk - it was certainly the same
time-frame.  At least when Apple cloned it - first for the Lisa and then the
Mac - they had the good grace to freely credit the inspiration for their work -
I think I'd feel different about MS if they were similarly generous in
crediting others.

Phone: (416) 448-4019   -   Fax: (416) 448-4414

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