[HN Gopher] Xerox's influence on Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (2018...
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Xerox's influence on Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (2018) [video]
Author : thunderbong
Score : 58 points
Date : 2023-01-02 13:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| detourdog wrote:
| More interesting to me is Douglas Engebart's influence on Xerox
|
| https://dougengelbart.org
| masswerk wrote:
| Hum, usual confusion of what the Alto and what the Xerox Star
| was.
|
| (The Alto was an experimental development system and did not have
| a consistent user interface. Many of the innovations at PARC were
| eventually consolidated by Xerox SDD into the Xerox Star, which
| provided a consistent interface, metaphor and 'persona' of the
| computer. The Star was a commercial computer and highly
| impressive for its time, but not a success. The famous Apple
| visit comprised a tour of the Alto, but not of the Star.
| According to their own word, Apple developers like Bill Atkinsons
| had not seen or experienced the Star. On the other hand, they had
| read papers from PARC even before the visit and had been
| influenced by them.)
|
| It may be also worth mentioning that Xerox hired a substantial
| amount of the talent floating around the ARPANet community. (Bob
| Taylor, founder of PARC's CS department, had previously headed
| ARPA IPTO.) Rather few projects emerged genuinely at PARC, many
| ideas existed already previously and people were hired because of
| these ideas. (Possible video, "How Xerox Ripped Off the ARPANet
| Community"? /s)
| jecel wrote:
| At the end of a talk at the EE380 course in Stanford with L
| Peter Deutsch, Allan Schiffmann tells a story about being at
| the launch of the Xerox Star. As more and more things were
| demoed, the guy behind him kept cursing very loudly. Allan got
| fed up with this and turned to tell the guy to be quiet - it
| turned out it was Steve Jobs.
|
| The April 1982 issue of Byte magazine had a very detailed
| article about the Xerox Star: "Designing the Star User
| Interface" by Dr. David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph
| Kimball, B
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _The April 1982 issue of Byte magazine had a very detailed
| article about the Xerox Star: "Designing the Star User
| Interface" by Dr. David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph
| Kimball, B_
|
| Ooooh. Found it here:
| http://billverplank.com/CiiD/XeroxStar.pdf
| gabrielsroka wrote:
| Or here, p. 242
|
| https://archive.org/details/byte-
| magazine-1982-04/page/n243/...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I have this in my book (not the cursing part). I was worried
| that only Dave Liddle even knew about Jobs being there, so
| now I feel better.
|
| It's possible I talked to Jobs without knowing who he was! I
| talked to a lot of people.
|
| Dave Smith wrote the foreword to my book, and that's his son
| on the cover, "playing" MazeWar. There's a guy in Seattle
| with two working Altos in his basement, and that's the real
| software.
| [deleted]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Excellent, I can't find anything to correct, and I was there :)
| This is also an old video.
|
| Maybe a note expanding on "Bill Atkinsons had not seen or
| experienced the Star." That's because in Dec. 1979 there was
| nothing he could see. It was introduced in May, 1981 and barely
| worked even then.
|
| I have all the facts about Inventing the Future, including the
| lightning storm that took down the Ethernet: Jan. 5, 1978.
| Maybe on the 45th anniversary this Jan. 5 we'll have another
| networking disaster with the big storm.
|
| https://www.albertcory.io/inventing-the-future
|
| I knew about the ARPANet connection, but I don't have a list of
| names. Eric Harslem, my boss, was on RFC 39 and 40.
| [deleted]
| convolvatron wrote:
| I'm kinda disturbed by the notion that Xerox took anything from
| Arpanet. by the time I was involved, people like Lixia and
| Steve were really core members of design group - and I always
| considered their participation and willingness to host meetings
| a huge boon to the community.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| [dead]
| ygaitonde wrote:
| The book "The Dream Machine" by M. Mitchell Waldrop was a great
| read if you're interested in learning more about the inspirations
| behind PARC itself. It covers the history of personal computing
| from the early 20th century to the end of the 20th century, and
| does a great job covering a lot of the personalities behind the
| tech that is so ubiquitous today.
| detourdog wrote:
| I had learned of Doug Engelbart doing my thesis in the early
| 90's and was struck dumb when I was able to actually watch it
| on YouTube. Rumor has it Stewart Brand was the A/V tech.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| ..nice little video--- but then completely ruined by the ad at
| the end. Ironically it kind of shows how we have evolved. From
| the fresh, new, and exciting technologies, now to a blistering
| reality of miles of tabloid ads at the end of every article and
| ads incorporated even into a tech video about Xerox and the old
| days..
| [deleted]
| no_wizard wrote:
| More surprising to me: Xerox patents were allowed to expire. What
| I draw from this is that when patents are allowed to work as
| intended[0], that corporations are very much more likely to
| invest in new technologies and push for new innovations. They
| were able to still reap billions off the printer market they
| invented, but this seems to have kept them on their toes,
| founding PARC, which inspired / lead to tons of innovation in its
| own right (even if it wasn't owned by Xerox).
|
| I know this isn't the direct point of the video, but that is my
| ultimate takeaway here, that the patent system, when applied as
| intended[0], actually drives innovation and reasonably protects
| innovators long enough for them to make enough to fund their next
| thing etc.
|
| [0]: Approximate definition I mean of this: Giving the
| inventor(s) the monopoly on a technology / innovation for a
| finite period of time, then released into the public domain
|
| edit: apparently I got my facts wrong (took video at its word
| that the patents expired) but that is, in fact, not the whole
| story. Though, I think my broader point is still sensible, that a
| functioning patent system, when working as intended, would foster
| innovation & investment that otherwise wouldn't be fostered.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| They're not "allowed" to expire, they have an inherent time
| limit. Of course, smart patent holders make "improvements" and
| get new patents before that happens.
|
| On the printer market: maybe you mean the laser printer? The
| 9700 came out in 1977, and the other laser printers a few years
| after. PARC was founded in 1970.
|
| There was also an antitrust settlement that Xerox made, which
| forced them to license the patents to competitors before they
| expired.
| w1nst0nsm1th wrote:
| That how insulin business works... Patent expire, a new
| version is out, old version is removed from production.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Xerox did not 'allow' their monopoly on copiers to expire. They
| regularly filed large numbers of patents and engaged in
| monopolistic commercial practices in an attempt to lock up one
| or more elements of the supply chain. The FTC then forced them
| into a consent decree in the 1970s that required them to
| license the patent portfolio at a reasonable royalty fee. This
| allowed the Japanese market entrants to compete and therefore
| innovate for the benefit of the consumer.
|
| Edit: arguably, because Xerox did not have to compete with the
| Japanese until legal actions were taken, they were NOT actually
| on their toes and lost ground rapidly once the market was
| opened. Had they been forced to compete by the late 1960s
| instead of mid 1970s, they may have been in a better position
| to sustain themselves against foreign competitors.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I should have read this before my comment, sorry. You're
| correct.
|
| Laser printers didn't create PARC -- it was the other way
| around.
| bluedino wrote:
| Where would you go to 'see the future of computing' today?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You can find lots of labs _claiming_ they have it. Determining
| which ones really do is the hard part - otherwise everyone
| would be investing in it.
| w1nst0nsm1th wrote:
| AI, quantum computing.
|
| The first one is becoming a bit of a buzz word, sometimes with
| great(excessive) expectation not in line with what the actual
| thing is (statistical algorithms fed with a very huge amount of
| data in order to build a model consisting of serialized data
| saved on disk and serving as filter to classify input or
| generate new output, like picture (midjourney), text(chatGPT),
| or actions (brake for self-diving car) from input).
|
| Quantum computing seems to progress quickly, but according to
| comments from an article published yesterday, it's still prone
| to error which makes it unreliable for actual commercial use
| and is more used for training for future quantum computing
| software dev.
|
| The problem is that the ones reporting on these things, for
| example on youtube, don't always understand how or what these
| technologies do and have excessive expectations about them. The
| other problem is people having a ball in the game (scientists,
| startup CEO, investors, paid commenters looking for clicks) do
| the same in order to have a financial gain.
| gregw134 wrote:
| https://chat.openai.com/chat
| detourdog wrote:
| If you were asking me I think integrated circuits are going to
| get bigger. I find them too small and disposable right now.
|
| I'm trying to figure out how to get the most value of large
| circuits.
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