Computing history (was Synthfool)

[KA4HJH]

I'll try and clear up a few points. Sorry for all the jumping around but
you know who you are...

>Their original product was a blue-box for ripping the Bell system. Woz
>built most of
>the Apple I stuff at HP and you mentioned Xerox the Lisa and Mac. After
>Woz saw
>MS basic he wrote Applesoft (he did write integer before then).

Woz wrote Integer BASIC and Apple DOS, as well as all the firmware.
AppleSoft was a version of Microsoft BASIC written by MS for Apple. The
biggest change was the addtion of Woz's hires graphics routines.

>Don't get me wrong. They stole the golden key and changed
>the way we live, work and play in this world. The drive was Steve Jobs'
>the ideas
>belonged to others. There isn't anybody suing them and I love my Mac. What
>else is
>there to say?

Despite all the nonsense that has gone on I have a deep vested interest in
seeing Apple thrive. They're MS's only real competitor. They push the
envelope. They piss me off. Two steps forward, one step back--that's the
Apple way.

>I often wonder what would have happened if Jobs hadn't stole these ideas.
>It doesn't
>seem like Xerox would have done anything with them. And if Apple hadn't
>created the
>Mac, M$ would have never ripped them off and created Windows (which may be
>a good
>thing).

I've been wondering the same thing for at least twelve years... I guess
we'll never know.

>Though, had I been one of the guys at Parc, I'd be pissed at Apple AND Xerox.
>At Parc, they invented:
>
>The mouse.
>The GUI.
>Smalltalk and object-oriented programming.
>Ethernet and networking.

Many of them were, although Alan Kay later became an Apple Fellow. I think
they hired a few others away from Xerox, but I don't remember for sure. The
mouse was invented much earlier at SRI, as someone has already mentioned. I
think it was used with a vector-display CAD system. Like a radar screen
with a mouse.

>Actually the mouse was invented at SRI (Stanford Research Institute).  PARC
>researchers made good use of it.  As for Xerox, I used to work there.  They
>did produce and sell computer systems with their GUI (before my stint
>there).  It was actually a much more flexible system than even the Mac.
>Xerox management didn't know what to do with those pesky computer things and
>got out of the business.  Besides, where does the paper and toner go?  Yes,
>another short-sighted "vision" that changed the world...

Yep. Remember that plain-vanilla PC clone they ultimately brought out? As
for the Alto(s), it was a much more powerful than any personal computer of
the time and much more expensive. The one thing that Jobs didn't bother
with was SmallTalk. It takes a machine that powerful to run, and the Mac
was years away from being able to do it properly. It was also the most
esoteric thing in the whole package. A brilliant concept, but not what most
people ended up writing spreadsheets and operating systems with.

BTW, here's a list of some things Apple did actually invent:

The menu bar
Movable, resizable windows with title bars
Single button mouse

These are major improvements, I can't imagine not having them, and it's not
a complete list...

>...remember that other companies were building products based
>on Xerox Parc work at the time too.  Apollo, Perq, Symbolics, Lisp
>Machines Inc. and others were shipping single-user computers with
>windowing systems and mice three years before the Mac was introduced.
>These were more power and expensive machines than the original Mac of
>course, and not intended for home market.  But they were all busy
>reducing their costs, and it would have hit the home market just a
>little bit later.  The Mac breakthrough was really one of cost
>reduction and presentation to the home market.  And they did that very
>well.

I really don't think that the workstation companies would have ever
penetrated the home market, at least not until very recently. Computers
have a way of getting better all the time, raising people's expectations,
which slows the descent of prices. And you have to convnice people to write
software, otherwise you don't have a product. It took a nut like Steve Jobs
to convince everybody, and it didn't happen overnight...

>Laser printers, the PostScript language, byte-code, microtasking, the
>optical mouse...  The list of Xerox Parc breakthroughs is huge.

John Warnock and Co. developed PostScript after starting their own company,
Adobe. I don't remember where or when they started on it but they
definitely own the rights to it.

>But why be pissed at Apple?  I'm pretty sure they developed the Parc
>work with Xerox's full aproval.

Why indeed? I didn't see the entire movie but I think they failed to
mention (among other things) that Xerox got something like 5 or 10% of
Apple's stock in exchange. Yeah, I'll settle for nice chunk of Apple...what
a ripoff. 8-)

>In the case of Apple, I believe they did indeed pay the karmic price for their
>low-life ways. Consider: In 1984-5 Apple had the computing world in their
>pocket. They had the ultimate small computer in the Macintosh. But then a
>series
>of bone-headed decisions cost them everything. While they were busy keeping
>hardware proprietary and costly, Mr. Gates snuck up and beat them at their own
>game. The original Windows may have been a bit rough around the edges, but the
>price was right i.e. it ran on machines we already had. And we could plug in
>cards. And we could make cards to plug in. Just like the Apple II used to be.

The original Mac's biggest problem: not enough memory, and no way to add
more. "128K is enough for most people"--Steve Jobs.

32 bit processors just gobble up RAM and disk space. They had ot bend over
backward to make that machine work. And even then there were few
applications until it got up to 1MB. Today, were's stuck with a memory
management system that can directly address 4GB of RAM but can get so
screwed up that it thinks it's out of memory. And talk about file
bloating...I was dealing with it long before '95.

Card slots are somewhat of a shiboleth. The original Mac didn't really need
them the way people thought it did. One advantage of having Apple
monopolize the hardware and OS is compatibility. Very few "plug and play"
problems with a Mac. Enormous orthogonality.

As for "cost them everything", well, I'm not really very worried about
(maybe Jobs is but...). In fact, the Mac wouldn't be what it is if it were
the top of the heap. Competition creates price wars, not a stream of
innovations. It was never destined to be No. 1. And that suits me just fine.

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"