[HN Gopher] Bill Atkinson: Polaroids Showing the Evolution of th...
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Bill Atkinson: Polaroids Showing the Evolution of the Lisa GUI
[video]
Author : zdw
Score : 123 points
Date : 2025-06-21 15:13 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| smallduck wrote:
| To anyone who thought Apple simply copied what they called at
| Xerox Parc, check this one out.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| The Xerox influence was real but limited - Apple's team
| iterated extensively as shown in these polaroids, adding
| crucial innovations like drag-and-drop, pull-down menus, and
| the desktop metaphor that weren't in the original Alto/Star
| interfaces.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| In context those are just tweaks ... Xerox designed the
| entire WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer) UI concept,
| including the bitmapped display it is based on, first
| commercial mouse, ethernet networking ...
|
| Xerox's invention was visionary and pioneering. Apple's was
| just engineering iteration.
|
| It's as if one company designed the automobile and you want
| to give outsized credit to someone else who added turn
| indicators.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| That is basically how cars have progressed though..
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Sure - there's a lot of value that can be added though
| iterative refinement and enhancement, but let's give
| credit for innovation where it is due.
| knuckleheadsmif wrote:
| The desktop metaphor absolutely was in the Xerox Star and
| that was copied by the Lisa team (and carried over to the
| Mac) after they viewed it when Star was first announce.
| That's well documented. The Star also had limited pull down
| menus mostly a single menu item on the top right of every
| window that was hamburger-like in design that had items in
| it.
|
| The Xerox Development Environment (TAJO/XDE) was more windows
| like where windows were processes and shrunk down to the
| bottom of the screen when closed. Star was developed using
| Tajo but are completely separate systems with very different
| user interfaces. For example Tajo used cut/copy/paste and any
| window could be set overlapping where as Star use a MOVE,
| COPY where use selected the object pressed the verb action
| button, and then selected the destination (use that was
| modal!). Also Star choose to have non-overlapping tiled
| windows (except for modal dialogues & style sheets.) The
| windowing was changed in later versions to allow any window
| to overlap.
|
| What's even more confusing is that Xerox had lots of systems
| including smalltalk, interlisp, star, Cedar & Tajo at the
| time Lisa was released. They also had lots or prototypes
| systems including Rooms and the Alto for that matter.
|
| Apple absolutely also did their own research and design that
| was unique. And in cases the duplicated earlier research but
| came to a different conclusion (for example the number of
| buttons on a mouse.)
|
| I think Apple did more with direct manipulation than others
| did taking it to more extremes -- but you can still see that
| in other earlier systems.
| musicale wrote:
| Great video (recorded in 2022?) from Bill Atkinson himself, and a
| nice companion to Andy Hertzfeld's account at:
|
| https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html
|
| CHM seems to have multiple videos with Bill Atkinson. Now I need
| to watch the one about the Lisa source code!!
| mprovost wrote:
| Bill Atkinson, inventor of Atkinson dithering!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_dithering
| nxobject wrote:
| It looks like that these were actually generated on an Apple II
| driving the framebuffer-to-CRT subsystem of a Lisa.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Bill mentions a special card in the Apple II. My sense is that
| these were not interactive -- merely static images generated on
| a computer to get a sense of real estate -- and of course as
| talking points to replace hand-wavy gestures.
| oersted wrote:
| I love the Computer History Museum (this is published on their
| channel).
|
| The museum itself is not so special, but it's run by all these
| retired volunteer industry veterans that have incredible stories
| to tell, and they are such delightful and smart people. They were
| the ones at the front-lines when everything was starting.
| linguae wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Computer History Museum
|
| My favorite part about the Computer History Museum is the
| events they hold occasionally where they have live interviews
| and demos from legendary figures in computing. Over the years
| I've been to events celebrating the 45th anniversary of the
| Xerox Alto (including a live demo of Smalltalk-76 run by Dan
| Ingalls on a Xerox Alto!), the 40th anniversary of the Apple
| Lisa, and the 40th anniversary of the original Apple Macintosh.
| There's also a chance to meet legendary figures in person. I've
| met and had conversations with Dan Ingalls, Yoshiki Ohshima
| (who is a long-time collaborator of Xerox PARC legend Alan
| Kay), Charles Simonyi (created the Bravo word processor at
| Xerox PARC, became wealthy at Microsoft, and founded
| Intentional Software), Marshall Kirk McKusick (BSD), David
| Ungar (created the Self programming language), and Donald Knuth
| ( _The Art of Computer Programming_ , _Concrete Mathematics_ ,
| TeX, and much more).
|
| I'm also a fan of the museum's recorded interviews with
| legendary figures and the digital artifacts they have,
| including source code to historical projects.
|
| One of the best parts about living near Silicon Valley, in my
| opinion, is being able to meet and converse with people who
| made significant contributions to computing, since many of them
| live in Silicon Valley. While the cost of living is a challenge
| (I'm a tenure-track professor who teaches CS and thus I don't
| have a FAANG salary, not to mention I don't get bonuses or
| stock grants), it's great being able to be in close proximity
| to the people who encouraged me to pursue a career in
| computing.
| leoc wrote:
| Is Steve Russell--the original LISP implementer and Spacewar!
| co-creator--still showing up these days?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| There was a day they were demonstrating the first commercially
| available harddisk from 1956 [0], it would be one thing to see
| it behind glass but the volunteers had built an arduino
| interface to drive it and interface it to bring it back to
| life, and hearing them explain how everything works with the
| requisite enthusiasm was a great experience for a vintage
| computer nerd. That sucker is pneumatic !
|
| [0] https://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/first-
| commerci...
| fidotron wrote:
| This stuff is why I am so cynical about modern software
| development management. Bill Atkinson wrote QuickDraw, a
| masterpiece of low level programming, but also had a very solid
| grasp about what it was for right down to the UX it was to
| enable, and as shown here how the UX evolved with user testing.
| These days the idea someone can span that range is seen as an
| impossibility.
| hyperhello wrote:
| His software was so strong, it made the Macintosh what it was
| at the time, and indirectly shaped Windows and Linux's UI to
| either imitate or showboat against it. The magnitude of his
| contributions to everything we think was normal now can't even
| be stated. Apple drifts around more but the products still have
| a lot of his DNA in it.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree. I hate to see Bill and team not get the credit they
| deserve. There is the idea (so famously put forward by Bill
| Gates) that Windows and Lisa (Mac) _both_ ripped off Xerox --
| and I think that is misleading at best. As you can see in the
| Polaroids, Lisa took the lead from Xerox but then charted
| their own course. (Windows, it is said, then copied _that_.)
| amelius wrote:
| And then in a twist of the plot, Steve Jobs said "great
| artists steal" ...
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, it was an amazing team, and it's well-worth reviewing the
| stories at Folklore.org --- a good starting point is this
| retrospective:
|
| https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html
|
| He also wrote Hypercard, and I'd really like to see a modern
| successor which had the attributes:
|
| - stand-alone desktop app (and/or app for iPad on app store)
|
| - simple syntax (block diagramming like Scratch/Blockly seems a
| natural fit)
|
| - simple creation/arrangement of standard GUI elements (so that
| localization and accessibility still work)
|
| - being opensource (still feeling burned by having donated to
| Runtime Revolution/Livecode's opensource effort)
|
| (so basically a modern, opensource alternative to VisualBasic,
| and yes, I keep asking about this --- there are lots of
| programs in this space, but none are quite as easy/simple as to
| have gotten me past the hurdle of download/install/actually try
| making something/being successful at it, and I freely admit I'm
| a mediocre programmer with not enough time who is bogged down
| on his current project....)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Bill has a great interview with a podcast called
| Triangulation, couple hours covering all kinds of subjects
|
| https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/361
| bartread wrote:
| > These days the idea someone can span that range is seen as an
| impossibility.
|
| I don't know about that, but in many/most organisations it's
| actively discouraged so you simply don't see it. That naturally
| occurs in large corporations where individuals have very narrow
| responsibilities, but I've also been surprised to find it
| happening even in the smallest of startups on occasion.
| qgin wrote:
| It is very hard to be allowed to push or invent anything new
| in an area that isn't your job description.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| What? No it's not, spanning a huge range like this is the
| prototypical skill set for a startup founder.
|
| It's crazy to post a take like this on the website of
| Ycombinator, whose entire business model revolves around
| finding and elevating exactly those types of people.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't get the connection between the skillset of a startup
| founder and someone like Bill. While Jobs showcases taking
| something from vision to product, your Wozniaks and Atkinsons
| solved the countless problems at steps along the entire path
| of the journey. These seem like very complimentary but
| distinct skillsets. I interpreted the OP as stating there's a
| lack of the latter, but they didn't comment on the former.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Would you say if Bill is the Woz of software or if Woz is
| the Bill of hardware?
| jdswain wrote:
| Well Woz was pretty good at software too. He wrote a lot
| of the early Apple software, including Integer Basic (to
| write games) and the low level disk software, called RWTS
| for Read/Write Track/Sector.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Every startup goes through a phase where there are very few
| technical people spanning a huge range of responsibilities.
| Not all founders or early employees are Steve Jobs. Many
| are like Bill Atkinson: a broadly talented person who
| shapes many aspects of a product in development.
|
| While Apple was not a startup at the time Bill did his work
| there, the Mac project very much was a startup inside
| Apple.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| >These days the idea someone can span that range is seen as an
| impossibility.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard ?
| amelius wrote:
| > QuickDraw (...) These days the idea someone can span that
| range is seen as an impossibility.
|
| Reminds me of that guy who built a feature-complete web-version
| of Photoshop.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33334521
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Did agile lead to this?
|
| Features are planned in sprints. Add a widget here, remove a
| widget there. We end up with no design principles or vision,
| just a Frankenstein monster of junk.
|
| His process sounds a lot like (dare I say) waterfall. Spending
| a long time in the design phase until you know what you want to
| build.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| From the video and what I've read at folklore.org it sounds
| more like what Agile purports to be, writing software in a
| tight iteration loop, trying things, getting feedback and
| adapting to the changing needs of the project.
|
| I think where Agile goes wrong is people thinking that you
| don't need someone who is actually experienced and good at
| writing software like this (like Atkinson), you can just pick
| a random individual off the streets who a lot of the time
| can't even code, and have them take a theoretical course
| about writing software like this.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Wild that drag and drop came so late in the development: only
| when the "Finder" was trying to solve user-initiated file copying
| operations.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I remember seeing the Lisa demoed at a computer show in London
| (c.1980) - and drawing a huge crowd. Still, it was slow and very
| expensive - 10,000 GBP back then, or around $50K today.
| knuckleheadsmif wrote:
| More likely late 82 or even 83 when you saw it.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Could be :) This was it's first showing in the UK.
| zmazon wrote:
| Lake
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