Hands up! Sorry I obviously thought you had implied apple stole when I read your post originally, you still seem to be implying they just used the GUI Xerox had and didn't change it considerably, did you read the links I posted, I'm sure when you learnt your computer history years ago, it wasn't told the way Raskin tells it now. And he pretty much says that himself.Originally Posted by joebloggs
yes your wrong, where in my post did i say they stole it ??, you've mentioned stealing in 3 posts up to now..
and you've admitted it yourself that the mouse and GUI came from Xerox, so how am i wrong ?? , oh hang on they didn't invent the mouse they had to get a license, still apple didn't invent them did they ????
oh i see you've used the word 'inspired by'
this is what i said
'they've copied things from other companies - the mouse, GUI all came from xerox as well as many other firsts'
the mouse they did license it, well they had to as it had a patent on it
some at apple had worked at xerox, jobs had seen the GUI at xerox, yes of course they didn't copy it 100%, they made their own changes and improvements
I created this method for moving objects and making selections after finding the Xerox click-move-click method prone to error
When I joined Apple in 1978 I stopped visiting PARC to avoid any possible conflicts of interest.
I eventually wrote a memo that showed, point by point, that the one-button mouse could do everything that PARCs three-button mouse could do and with the same number or fewer user actions
I had observed that people (including myself) at PARC often made wrong-button errors in using the mouse, which was part of my impetus for doing better.
jef raskin quotes.
This whole part of the argument stems from the fact I say Apple are well known for having a lot of R&D and you dispute this by saying they copy stuff, every company copies stuff, some do steal and not pay.
But one thing you did say was Jobs went to Parc and thats when he saw the GUI, but as Raskin says the project started way before that, so that wasnt the pivotable moment when a lot or people (not you) say it was then stolen.
RASKIN SAYS:
As I said in my history of the Mac Project (the one currently being serialized in CHAC), the Mac was by no means the work of one person, but the combined efforts of thousands in hundreds of companies large and small. It was not, as many accounts anachronistically relate, stolen from PARC by Steve Jobs after he saw the Alto running SmallTalk on a visit. For one thing the usual account (as in Levy's book, "Insanely Great" and others) denigrates the original and creative work done by all the Apple employees that put their hearts into the Mac.
And as far as the mouse goes, I was just trying to point out it wasn't merely a straight copy, i'm sure there must of been more under the hood optimisations apart from taking most of the buttons away. Surely the concept of the mouse is more important than how the mechanics work, and I think Apple redefined the concept by thinking about how it needed to be used, the same way they have done with touch interfaces.
