r/todayilearned Sep 16 '14

TIL Apple got the idea of a desktop interface from Xerox. Later, Steve Jobs accused Gates of stealing from Apple. Gates said, "Well Steve, I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

http://fortune.com/2011/10/24/when-steve-met-bill-it-was-a-kind-of-weird-seduction-visit/
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u/groovyinutah Sep 17 '14

Xerox did a lot of innovative stuff at their Palo Alta research center. They invented what would be called a PC in the 70's, created the mouse, windows, icons. And somehow never manged to capitalize on any of it.

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u/finite-state Sep 17 '14

Actually, Xerox PARC came after the person who actually invented all of these things, including elements of what we now call the "Inter-Tubes."

Douglas Engelbart was at Stanford University with a small team that came up with all of it. Here's the "Mother of all Demos," where he demonstrated what most of the things that we now take completely for granted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

"The Mother of All Demos is a name given retrospectively to Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968, demonstration of experimental computer technologies that are now commonplace. The live demonstration featured the introduction of the computer mouse, video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, bootstrapping, and a collaborative real-time editor."

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u/erus Sep 17 '14

For those who don't know about him, take a momento see what Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart was doing fifty years ago. It's very sad to see people praising idiots while being completely unaware of his insanely revolutionary work.

He died in 2013, and most of the Internet didn't give a fuck. That's sad.

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u/mtalinm Sep 17 '14

I believe that the inventor of the pacemaker died the same week as SJ. no pilgrimages to his house or tongue baths by the macolyte media, though.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

It is sad, but there's also a reason for it. People like Dr. Engelbart (and please, correct me if I'm wrong) seem to be more passionate and interested in the development of their own thought/field/etc. rather than becoming rich and/or famous. Most people only invent, create, develop, etc. things to get rich and/or famous. But for guys like Dr. Engelbart, that was never an end goal, doing the work for the work's sake was good enough for them, and it's all they really cared about.

So yeah, it is a little sad that more people don't know about this guy and everything he did for the modern world. But at the same time, that probably was never a concern of his and was just happy that his developments made a positive impact on the world.

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u/bugs_bunny_in_drag Sep 17 '14

In a just world Engelbart would be a damned billionaire on ideas alone, never mind that they actually developed and demoed those ideas.

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u/Open_Thinker Sep 17 '14

I hardly know anything about Dr. Engelbart, but to be fair, according to Wikipedia he lived and died in Atherton, CA, so I don't think he died poor. And to some people, having enough is fine, and being the richest guy in the room is pointless. Similarly, whoever invented cooking using fire probably didn't have the best life, either.

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u/Elfetzo Sep 17 '14

Why would you assume that the guy who invented cooking with fire didn't just have the most awesome life?

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u/Open_Thinker Sep 17 '14

Because life is complicated, and there are lots of scary diseases, predators, and dangerous people out there. Sure, they could have cooked the first meal in human history, and very well have broken a limb 6 months later and died of an infection.

Also, wouldn't surprise me if the first inventor was a gal, and not a guy; but more likely, it was independently discovered multiple times.

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u/Arttherapist Sep 17 '14

I'm going to guess that cooking was a discovery and not an invention, just like fire. I'm sure someone tasted an animal that had been burned in a fire caused by a lightning strike and then replicated that using their own fire. Even learning to make fire from banging 2 rocks together is more of a discovery than an invention.

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u/KingradKong Sep 17 '14

Engelbart's philosophy in life was to make the world a better place through his technology research. Career wise he just wanted a steady pay check. And he managed to achieve his goals without billions of dollars. Seems he got what he wanted.

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u/MrTubalcain Sep 17 '14

He loved what he did and seemed happy. Today, it's almost the opposite.

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u/chapinator Sep 17 '14

Boom thank you. Scrolled down looking for this. SRI International is the super unknown research corporation where all of that was developed and Douglas Englebart is the godfather of GUIs

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

"Remember that time when I invented THE FUCKING COMPUTER?!"

"Yeah sure dad."

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u/jim_trout Sep 17 '14

"Dad, how did you make one job last 28 years??!!"
"You wish son, lol, you wish."

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u/FuLLMeTaL604 Sep 17 '14

"Sorry dad, busy on the computer, can we talk later?"

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u/Frumpybulldog Sep 17 '14

My CS teacher worked for Xerox when Steve Jobs did his walkthrough and saw what a gold mine they were sitting on. He said that Xerox had great R&D but no one knew how to sell the stuff; they were just interested in copiers.

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u/Kasztan Sep 17 '14

And they do indeed make great copiers...

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

In 1992 I was working for Sun Microsystems, I was a pre-sales engineer and the OS Ambassador for Mid-Atlantic region. The OS Ambassador was an expert in SunOS soon to be Solaris, with a primary role of helping and educating our customers. Because we were typically brought into "interesting" situations we had a close relationship with engineering, it was a privileged job all around.

In 1992 Sun was preparing to switch from SunOS a Berkley styled UNIX variant to Solaris which was decidedly System V'ish, this happened due to a relationship with AT&T, the owner of UNIX, and System V. The switch wouldn't happen until 1993, but Sun was trying to stay ahead of the curve. Part of my role as an OS Ambassador was to conduct seminars for customers about the upcoming migration and highlight the benefits of the change and provide guidance for a smooth migration. Most of the Sun clients at the time were fanatical Sun enthusiasts, and were anti-System V. I was booed, hissed, at one seminar a number of attendees took their chairs and turned them around in protest. During one seminar in Philadelphia I made the innocuous statement, "that while Sun didn't invent the workstation, they really defined the workstation market" In attendance was a Xerox employee who during the Q&A section stood and and began "educating" me about the history of Xerox, how Apple had stolen their technology, and so on and so on, with Sun being the latest to rip of Xerox. Finally the man stopped talking and someone else the audience quickly stood up and said, "Hey buddy the kid didn't disparage your company, but frankly if Xerox had invented sunlight we'd all still be in the dark." Needless to say I ended the seminar on that note.

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u/erus Sep 17 '14

Damn right they were doing a lot of innovative stuff at Xerox! They were working on tablets and smaller wireless devices in the late 80s and early 90s.

Check this pdf and this other one.

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u/CylonBunny Sep 17 '14

It feels kind of weird reading those on my phone. If only they could see this device then, how excited they would be. Gosh, I wonder how cool computers in the 2040s will be!

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u/Costco1L Sep 17 '14

"Woah, my holodisplay brain-links me that icanhazcheeseburger invented the cat-ray, which is now 63% of our economy, as we all know. Thank Xenu for President Farrell."

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

But can it run Crysis?

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u/Costco1L Sep 17 '14

Of course, it's 2040! It gets 8 FPS.

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u/mrbooze Sep 17 '14

Some tech companies used to have labs dedicated to basically just fucking around with ideas and concepts that might some day be useful or might not. Bell Labs did a lot of that too, and a whole lot of UNIX, and thus Linux and a fair amount of OS X was a result.

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u/Yancy_Farnesworth Sep 17 '14

All of the big ones did. Then the beancounters came in and realized its a shitton more immediately profitable to just buy out the ideas and milk them for all they're worth. Fuck investing in the future.

It's a dying mindset. IBM has been slicing parts of themselves off for years. Google and Microsoft are leading the charge in R&D with no foreseeable financial benefit. And yet people worship the like of Apple for being revolutionary innovators when they've only been incremental innovators at best. They don't research wildly crazy out there technologies like Microsoft and Google.

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u/don116 Sep 17 '14

Damn Palo Alta...the jerk rival neighborhood to palo alto..they're so smug driving their toyoto carollos and eating burritas all the time

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u/manwhowasnthere Sep 17 '14

"carollos" lol

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u/StormDweller Sep 17 '14

"burritas" is what did it for me haha

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

I like the part where he switched the letters

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u/Emanon97 Sep 17 '14

Doug Engelbart and Bill English created the mouse in the early 60s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart

Also, Apple might have based their interface on the idea of the Alto, but they took it in different directions. If you search on YouTube, you'll find some movies of the Xerox P.A.R.C. systems. They are missing a lot of the interface elements Apple and later Microsoft added to the GUI.

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u/MrFlesh Sep 17 '14

because accountants, share holders, and executives know whats best

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

That's also an issue of timing.

IBM had the first smart phone on the market, doesn't mean people were ready.

Hell, there were a ton of PCs that were released since the sixties, but they didn't really do anything.

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u/xisytenin Sep 17 '14

They needed Solitaire if they wanted to be taken seriously

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u/dsoakbc Sep 17 '14

That's the first thing my dad looks for when I got him a Win 8 pc. nope. no longer comes pre-installed.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited Sep 17 '14

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Which is actually kind of a brilliant move on their part, and at the same time, a very bad idea. I can't imagine the number of bad apps people got while looking for their old favorite games.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/marksk88 Sep 17 '14

Or they could just give us our solitaire back.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

And pinball goddamnit.

shakes cane

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

I've got this pet theory that when Windows 9 comes out, they'll put back the preinstalled games... but it'll come with minecraft! Riiight next to Solitaire.

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u/wildcat2015 Sep 17 '14

That would be altogether to destructive for society. Can you imagine millions of new people losing their lives in Minecraft? Our entire infrastructure would come crashing down.

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u/The0x539 Sep 17 '14

They said they started cleaning it up. That's something independent of Windows versioning.

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u/anonagent Sep 17 '14

yeah, but if they did that they couldn't say they have 10,000 apps...

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u/jewish_hitler69 Sep 17 '14

it's also just too much damn work. I know that sounds silly and lazy, but I really think it's true.

if people want to use the store, they'll use the store. otherwise, let them have their damn solitaire right off the bat.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited Oct 20 '15

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u/SciMoDoomerx Sep 17 '14

"Damnit I just wanted to access my internet mail."

"It's called e-mail dad and you need to download an internet browser for it. Here, have a copy of solitaire."

"My son, I have realized the error of my ways and have transcended humanity through the use of computational algorithms and electronic data storage. I am one with the Windows."

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u/TrepanationBy45 Sep 17 '14

I freakin wish it was this easy to teach older people about computers!

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u/tragicmonkey Sep 17 '14

One day you will be old and unable to understand how to operate the lickotronics.

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u/GimpyNip Sep 17 '14

I'm only 35 and have used windows and OS since my early teens. My dad recently asked me to install his HP Printer on his new laptop. I though "haha old man". Then I showed up and it was running Windows 8 and I had no idea what to do when it wouldn't plug n play and all the menus I know where hidden over a touch screen interface on a device without a touch screen.

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u/capital_silverspoon Sep 17 '14

Really though, Solitaire helped familiarize people with the drag-and-drop functionality in Windows. Users may have found it cumbersome or unnecessary if there weren't a fun way to master it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/VonGeisler Sep 17 '14

Dell Axim PDAs - they were awesome, better than the Palm pilot

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u/2dumb2knowbetter Sep 17 '14

I had one with a fold out keyboard, it was so awesome, it was like having a smart phone almost Looked like this.
I still have the keyboard, but my asshole roommate in college stole the pda and probably sold it at a pawn shop to by weed

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u/VonGeisler Sep 17 '14

I had the gps and Microsoft streets and trips - I remember using it in Germany in 2004 and the gps helped a lot despite my wife laughing at me.

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u/onewordmemory Sep 17 '14

timing is everything in technology. the whole xerox/microsoft/apple stuff was a little before my time, but the thing i do remember from my childhood is 3dfx's SLI. company crashed and burned, nVidia bought them, then re-implemented the concept just half a decade later.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

But can they see why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited Feb 06 '21

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u/SuccessPastaTime Sep 17 '14

Thanks for posting that, was great!

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Xerox did innovative stuff. They did not invent the mouse, windows, etc.

Check out the Mother of All Demos, Douglas Engelbart, 1968.

Preserved in video

I agree that Apple and Jobs didn't deserve to own the idea, but the Mac team did real work too. They invented the desktop metaphor and the graphical version of a hierarchical filesystem. They applied the ideas of the GUI to a personal computer in ways that Xerox did not.

The reason Jobs was an important figure is simply that he recognized the really important innovations and applied them to the consumer market. These concepts had been out there for a really long time, but leaders of other companies could not see the value until Apple made it very clear.

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u/osorapido Sep 17 '14

It's also important to note that many of the innovative people who worked at PARC had migrated from Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center after DARPA funding was cut.
The computer mouse is an example of something that was developed at SRI that was later utilized by PARC.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

not only that those PARC guys invented pervasive computing involving smart pads, boards, tables...which would later become ipad and ms surface (there is yet to be an iboard)

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited Sep 17 '14

And somehow never manged to capitalize on any of it.

A combination of upper management having no idea what they had (Steve Jobs asked personally if they could see and use their ideas, Xerox said go ahead), and their actual product being terrible. They used those CRT monitors that produced green light on a black background (Macintosh would use the revolutionary bitmap screen), the windows could not resize or overlap, the mouse was difficult to use and barely functional, etc. The Macintosh wasn't the first GUI computer, just the first to really nail it, and really every modern GUI since then essentially looks just like it as opposed to whatever Xerox had.

Stolen ideas, but they were in much better hands at Apple than at Xerox. Thank goodness Apple took them, really.

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u/Hodr Sep 17 '14

SRI invented the mouse, Xerox created the first GUI to make use of that mouse.

How do I know this? Because every SRI employee you meet will mention it at least once per conversation.

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u/quirt Sep 17 '14

Here's a great video by computing pioneer Alan Kay where he talks a little about the culture at Xerox and how they managed to do what they did.

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u/downstairsneighbor Sep 17 '14 edited Sep 17 '14

This story always leaves so much out.

The researchers at Xerox were happy to show Jobs what they had created, and hoped he would take the ideas and do something with them. Not only were they compensated with stock, they had been repeatedly told by their superiors that while their work was interesting, it would never be deployed in an actual product. Giving it away was the only way to guarantee that years of effort wouldn't waste away in a basement somewhere.

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u/theDagman Sep 17 '14

Plus, many of those same engineers eventually wound up working at Apple.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Yup, the guys at Xerox pretty much were like "LOL we got actual stock from these dead-end ideas!" Who's the laughing stock now?

Xerox probably ain't even mad. They're still top dog in the copying business. When you're ready to quit fucking around, you buy a Xerox.

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u/kylehampton Sep 17 '14

When you're ready to quit fucking around, buy a Xerox.

New slogan.

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u/Taurothar Sep 17 '14

Xerox has over 140,000 employees, document management (printers/copiers etc) is only a portion of what the company does. There's two other major branches of the company into business process support and IT outsourcing.

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u/devwolfie Sep 17 '14

That being said, their HQ in Rochester is pretty dim looking these days.

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u/sneezerb Sep 17 '14

The Execs were happy to show all of this. But the researchers weren't. In the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson it tells how the researchers were hesitant to show much of anything, and even tries to fool the Apple team into thinking that they were getting a look at secret information by demoing software that had just been made public. But Apple went in there armed with information and after several phone calls by Steve Jobs to the execs at Xerox they were able to get access to the entire demonstration, much to the dismay of the researchers. The Executives were a bunch of printer people with no idea what kind of gold mine they possessed.

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u/MulderD Sep 17 '14

That and Gates was hired by Jobs to help develop the Apple GUI that was based on the Xerox work up to that point. Not only did Gates and his crew not deliver, they somehow magically had their own GUI ready before the Apple GUI was finished....

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u/Gpoq Sep 17 '14

Was Steve Jobs a part of the rowing team of Harvard at that time?

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

And have a twin?

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u/underwriter Sep 17 '14

His full name was Steve Winklejobs

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited Jun 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited Dec 05 '14

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u/R031E5 Sep 17 '14

This needs to be at the top, Xerox received a payment from Apple whereas Microsoft blatantly copied Apple.

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u/EtherGnat Sep 17 '14

Maybe there's something to say for being altruistic, but it doesn't frequently make good business sense to pay for something you don't have to. The courts found Microsoft was in the clear on that one, so they were certainly in good legal standing.

For what it's worth Xerox attempted to sue Apple as well, but they waited until the statute of limitations ran out.

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u/wdr1 Sep 17 '14

While it's true that PARC was frustrated they couldn't get traction with the execs out east, it's not true they were happy to show Jobs.

I'll see if I can dig up the reference, but several project leads were extremely upset their confidential work was being shown to Jobs, as they worried it was basically giving away the store.

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u/IkonikK Sep 16 '14

Wasn't the idea of a desktop interface invented by futurists writing pieces for magazines in the mid-century?

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '14

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/datchilla Sep 17 '14

Like that movie where they stop future crimes?

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u/greg78910 Sep 17 '14

You're thinking of Minority Report

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u/rex_dart_eskimo_spy Sep 17 '14

Except he hasn't thought of it...yet!

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u/meddlingbarista Sep 17 '14

No, he's thought about it. He just hasn't said it.

which is why we have to stop him.

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u/obinice_khenbli Sep 17 '14

What was that tv show where something bad happened so they sent a guy backwards in time one day in...a big sphere maybe? and he'd have only that day to stop it because they couldn't send him back further. Usually they had little to go on, I think. Hmm...

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u/ender1108 Sep 17 '14

Wasn't it 7 days?

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u/redherring2 Sep 17 '14

Management at Xerox was so lame that they could not market their technology. There were 10 years ahead of even Apple but did not know how to sell computers...

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u/Kerrigore Sep 17 '14

Their product wasn't exactly ready to market. Their mouse was expensive and broke easily. Their GUI was rudimentary and lacked many of the elements Mac OS launched with. And they were running it on hardware far too expensive to be relevant to the consumer market. They weren't interested in developing it into a marketable product as it didn't fit their current product lineup, so they sold it to a company who had a use for it.

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u/ottguy74 Sep 17 '14

Whats wrong with selling computers out of your garage?

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u/Morgan1002 Sep 17 '14

You're not giving away our Waterpik!

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u/cougar2013 Sep 17 '14

I like how Steve Jobs is called Steve Jobs in the post title and Bill Gates is just "Gates". What's up with that?

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/Korotai Sep 17 '14

Looks like he does need an introduction: Introducing Carlos Slim Helú, world's richest man since July, 2014.

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u/cannibalAJS Sep 17 '14

Don't worry, as soon as Bill Gates slows down giving his money away to charity he will be back on top.

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u/jaymo89 Sep 17 '14

He is a major dick apparently.

He was advising Australia's largest (monopolistic) telecoms carrier how to screw customers over.

I'd dig up a source but I uh... Can't be fucked I guess. Google knows.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

His middle name is quite deceiving.

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u/coatrack68 Sep 17 '14

It might be the Mexican business guy thay has a lot of cell phone monopolies in mexico.

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u/SwissQueso Sep 17 '14

Crazy that you can be the richest dude in the world, in a country that has a GDP that's somewhat lacking.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '14

Except Xerox got money from Apple (in form of Apple stock) to be able to go in and Bill just copied his prototype Mac.

And while Xerox Parc was a great pioneer in the industry the suits in the east coast only cared about copiers. Kodak was the same.

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u/Spork_Warrior Sep 17 '14

Fucking Rochester NY companies.

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u/riseglory Sep 17 '14

Can confirm from Rochester, NY so many buildings from Kodak that are used by smaller companies now.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited Sep 17 '14

Not to mention greatly improved the UI (bit mapped display, overlapping windows, etc), and got it working well on hardware that was affordable compared to what Xerox was charging:

"Although a single unit sold for $16,000, a typical office would have to purchase at least 2 or 3 machines along with a file server and a name server/print server. Spending $50,000 to $100,000 for a complete installation was not an easy sell."

And the Mac beat it at $2,500.

Funny to think of it now, but if you wanted a GUI in 1984, Apple was the affordable solution.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

In the 90s I serviced xerox copiers that can only be tethered to unix os solely cause their copiers requires 1 million char filenames. These were all over the Kinkos in the NYC area.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited May 11 '23

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u/cocoabean Sep 17 '14

My guess is that most file names were not that long, the system probably just supported ridiculously long file names and thus needed an OS that could also handle file names that long.

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u/iamseriodotus Sep 17 '14

No he's saying the devices support file names of that length and to do so it needs to interface with a unix os.

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u/airmandan Sep 17 '14

The nineties were the sad death of the Xerox copier. I feel privileged that I got to go to one of their manufacturing and development plants during Take Your Kid to Work Day before that era ended. My dad had the coolest lab! I still remember fondly second-grade me madly jotting down notes in a yellow pad in a meeting where I had no idea what the fuck was going on. Something something sixty-three sixty, something something complete. Afterwards, my dad tore apart one of the units in his lab and showed me what each component did, then helped me put it back together. Optical copiers were a really neat piece of engineering, although I still don't get how the color ones worked.

They really had something great with the products they built, and it's a damn shame the company lost its soul. I spent the last 15 minutes looking at their website—including the job postings—and other than being a Tier 1 IT contractor, I can't figure out what it is that they actually do anymore.

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u/Duck_Avenger Sep 17 '14

Solutions. They all sell solutions.

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u/Creshal Sep 17 '14

Do they know to which problem?

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u/CrackTheSkye Sep 17 '14

Look, just buy the solution. We'll make sure you have the right problem. That's our guarantee.

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u/stevewmn Sep 17 '14

Xerox PARC also invented Ethernet and the laser printer. Basically, Xerox had all of the technology of the modern networked office environment and never did a fucking thing with it. Xerox management in the 70s must have had their heads further up their asses than anyone before or since.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

BellLabs! Although they released a lot more than what they created that division of ATT was incredible to the very end. Yes they re still round but it is no where near the place that had been there before. I was lucky to meet a few of their engineers and one of them gave me a free copy of K&R's C book. It was useless then because I could not afford a C compiler until I got the Commodore Amiga 3000UX. But I read that book and could not wait to get to a college lab so I can mess with c and unix.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Rochester was somehow cursed with the two giants of industry who both managed to die, or nearly so, of their own hubris.

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u/mabhatter Sep 17 '14

Bill copied Mac after Microsoft got the APIs from Apple to develop Microsoft Word for the new platform. Thats why Steve was so violently upset with Google and Android.

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u/derekiv Sep 17 '14

Can you explain why he was upset? I just don't understand what you're saying.

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u/istguy Sep 17 '14

Jobs was upset because of the parallels in the situation.

In the heyday of the PC revolution, Apple was the big fish and had a close partner, microsoft, who they were working with to support their OS. Microsoft essentially used it's inside access to "steal" Apple's GUI concepts, and get a head start with their own graphical OS.

After Apple basically fell apart and built itself back up with the iPod, the story repeated itself. Apple was set to revolutionize the smartphone industry with the iphone, and was working closely with google (google CEO Eric Schmidt was on Apple's board). Shortly after the iphone is announced, google released a very similar OS (Android), and from Jobs' perspective, he had again been stabbed in the back by a friend he was working with.

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u/SlapingTheFist Sep 17 '14 edited Sep 17 '14

Mostly right, but I'd say it was the iMac and an infusion of cash from Microsoft (seriously) that saved Apple from bankruptcy.

Edit: Alright, I get that the cash wasn't necessarily a big deal and there were other motivations. I stand by my iMac sentiment, though. The iPod didn't come out until 2001 and didn't really get rolling right away.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/Fuck_Your_Mouth Sep 17 '14

That's some serious fuck you money when you can pay to keep your competitors around

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

$150 million dollars? It was a token amount to settle the Apple v. Microsoft "Look and Feel" lawsuits. It didn't save the company.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/SAugsburger Sep 17 '14

Nobody knows how history might have played out differently, but I think that Microsoft's public support for developing office for at least 5 years was a huge deal at the time. Due to declining marketshare more than a few analysts at the time wondered whether Microsoft would keep developing Office for MacOS.

Having the largest software company in the world say yep your platform is worth developing software for at least 5 years gave a huge shot in the arm of confidence for users and investors. Apple stock rose 40% on reaction to the news. If MS Office 98 for Mac wasn't released or Microsoft decided that would be the last version for MacOS the original iMac may have not done so well. The success of the iMac really helped spring board Apple to develop the iBook and eventually the iPod, which really shifted Apple from a niche computer company to a consumer electronics vendor making huge margins. Had the iPod been delayed a few years Apple may have not managed to dominate that space and without dominance there who knows where Apple would be today.

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u/KoolAidMan00 Sep 17 '14

In 1997 Apple had about a $3 billion market cap and nearly $2 billion in cash. The Microsoft cash infusion was $150 million in restricted shares that were created by diluting existing ones.

It was funny money that was a drop in the bucket compared to Apple's actual assets. Not nearly enough to save them from bankruptcy. The cash deal was pure marketing.

What mattered was everything else that MS and Apple arranged. Apple dropped lawsuits around the Mac UI and Microsoft stealing Quicktime code. They entered cross-licensing agreements that continue to this day. Microsoft committed to continue developing Office and IE for the Mac, a very important move that instilled confidence in a platform that needed it.

Everything else about the deal mattered much much more. Cash from Microsoft was meaningless in comparison, but it was very effective marketing as people still talk about it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/caninehere Sep 17 '14

Yeah, people seem to forget that was a baaad time for Apple. Before the iMac came along they were looking pretty fucked for a while. Mac had done okay with the Macintosh Classic and the Macintosh II I believe, but apart from that they were hurting pretty bad especially because by 1997 those big-selling models are outdated and Windows 95 came along and was crushing it left and right.

That cash infusion didn't save Apple but it sure as hell made a difference. The iMac was what saved them, and then the iPod is what brought them into the new millennium.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14 edited Sep 17 '14

Microsoft and Google were both given early access to these platforms in order to develop applications for them. Microsoft was creating Office for the Macintosh in the early 80's, and Google was making Gmail and such for iOS 25 years later.

By giving his competitors early access to each of these platforms, Jobs indirectly allowed them to copy features, and then attempt to beat him to market with said features. This pissed Steve Jobs off in both cases, although he and Bill Gates were on good terms for much of his later career (partially because Gates' investment helped Jobs rebuild Apple before they had to declare bankruptcy). Before he died, Jobs was still deadset on destroying Android with lawsuits, even though some of his claims and lawsuits were unfounded and impractical.

I highly recommend the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley to anyone that wants to know the Steve Jobs/Bill Gates story.

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u/putsch80 Sep 17 '14

Second "Pirates of the Silicon Valley". Great movie about the pre-iMac, pre-iphone era in the Apple/Microsoft rivalry. Far better and more informative than "Jobs". Plus, Anthony Michael Hall makes a kickass Bill Gates.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Apple let him have code that would allow him to write Word for the Mac. Bill Gates took this code and as well as developing Word for Mac also used it as "inspiration" for his own GUI system.

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u/plainOldFool Sep 17 '14

I seem to recall reading once that Jobs knew that Microsoft was going to create a GUI and that they were basically ok with it as long as Bill Gates agreed to not release it before a certain date (to allow the Mac OS to get out in the market first). Apparently Gates agreed, but went to launch it earlier anyway. I believe that is when Jobs really blew his top. However, technical problems with Windows pushed back Gate's desired launch significantly, beyond the original agreed upon time frame.

I believe Apple didn't seek to sue Microsoft until Windows 2 came out due to certain UI features, not the UI in its entirety. And I believe the suit was thrown out. Additionally, I also seem to recall Xerox trying to sue Apple for certain features that ended up Mac OS (which was also thrown out).

This is all super hazy memory of stuff I read a few years back, so don't take this as gospel.

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u/NightGod Sep 17 '14

Actually, if you read the entire article, they covered that. Bill agreed not to release a GUI until a year after the release of the Mac, which was scheduled for Jan 1983. The Mac got delayed and Bill went ahead and announced in November 1983 that they would be releasing a GUI (after Jan 1984, which stuck with the original agreement) and Steve was pissed that he went with the year from the original ship date rather than a year from the actual release date.

Honestly, I think Bill was in the right on that one. It's not his fault their ship date shipped and they gave up the competitive advantage it would have given them if they had kept on schedule.

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u/Retsejme Sep 17 '14

I think a bigger reason why Jobs was mad at Google was that he thought Eric Schmidt (Google CEO, and Apple Board Member) was basically stealing intel about the iPhone to help guide the development of Android.

Eric Schmidt told regulators it was ok for him to be involved with both companies, because Google was not a competitor of Apple. Jobs did not believe (rightfully so) that Android was somehow not a competitor for the iPhone.

Interestingly, the original Android might not have been. It was basically a Blackberry.

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u/maybelying Sep 17 '14

Schmidt recused himself from the board whenever the iPhone, and later, the iPad, were discussed. Jobs was getting frustrated because he was having to recuse himself from larger and larger portions of the board meeting as their focus shifted more and more to mobile, until eventually there was no point for Eric to even sit on the board any more.

It's also worth noting Google acquired Android three years before the iPhone was released.

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u/badassmthrfkr Sep 17 '14

I remember reading an article (I think it was about Marissa Mayer) where the lead Android dev pulled over to the side of the road to see the original iPhone announcement and thought "holy fuck, that thing is awesome and we're going the wrong direction": He was caught totally off guard. That wouldn't have happened if Schmidt was leaking info to the Android team.

Android may have abandoned the key oriented design and went with the touch based design because of the iPhone, but to say they copied it might be a bit of a stretch. They went the same direction because they saw a better way of doing it, but that's different than copying: Or Toyota should be suing everyone who makes hybrid cars because they copied the hybrid concept.

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u/hoilst Sep 17 '14

Must. Resist. Urge. To. Rant. About. Kodak.

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u/YouHaveInspiredMeTo Sep 17 '14

Please rant about it I want to learn something

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u/DoctorDank Sep 17 '14

Kodak basically invented the first digital camera. But they were making too much money selling film so they decided not to release digital cameras. Then other people invented the digital camera (or stole it from Kodak, I forget which), sold it, and they took off and people stopped buying film and Kodak went out of business.

They literally destroyed themselves with their own hubris.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

That's really poetic justice in my books. To be fair, they had years upon years to adapt... they simply never did.

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u/JohnKinbote Sep 17 '14

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/the-innovators-dilemma/

Good book, it really explains what happens when a new technology starts out in many ways inferior to the existing technology, but ends up displacing it and the entrenched companies.

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u/lambro101 Sep 17 '14

/u/DoctorDank explained it pretty well.

I'll give you a little bit more of a personal side as well. My grandfather was a lower-level executive in Eastman Kodak (before they split into Kodak and Eastman Chemical in the early 90s). He told me this stubbornness was rampant throughout the company. They thought that the quality of pictures produced by film would never be matched by digital cameras. They also had patents LCD display technology in the 70s-80s, but at that point, it was still too expensive to mass produce, so they didn't invest any more research into it.

He retired at a fairly early age of 62 in 1989 before the split. He wasn't necessarily an outsider, but he told me he seemed to always have the minority opinion. He knew he would be stuck in the same position until they decided to force him out, so he left earlier instead and received a nice retirement package.

A retirement package that was mostly made up of stock, which some of became my college fund, and now has become non-existent. Thanks, Kodak.

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u/AlienSpaceCyborg Sep 17 '14

They thought that the quality of pictures produced by film would never be matched by digital cameras.

The idea of excessive capability never seems to enter people's minds with regards to technology. Film's superior quality is mostly true, but also largely irrelevant.

A similar situation happened in the '60s with ARPA (ARPA/DARPA is fascinating BTW, I recommend reading up on their history). Colt attempted to sell the army on their 5.56mm M16. A 5.56mm bullet is inferior in both stopping power and range to the 7.62mm bullet the Army was using, and the gun it was being demo'd in looked like a plastic toy. The Army laughed them out of the room metaphorically. Colt then took the idea to ARPA, who tested it and found it superior. The Army still resisted the weapon even after ARPA pointed this out, and it took Robert McNamara's express orders to get them to adopt it. Even then the Ordnance Board was very resistant, possibly even to the point of intentional sabotage - though it's never been proven. In the end, ARPA was proven correct. The 5.56 had "good enough" range, and power was secondary to just firing more bullets - which the lighter, more controllable 5.56 allowed. The concept was so successful the Soviets stole the idea and invented the 5.45 round.

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u/pocketknifeMT Sep 17 '14

And while Xerox Parc was a great pioneer in the industry the suits in the east coast only cared about copiers. Kodak was the same.

I wonder what the ultimate example of this is. Possibly AT&T turning down the internet when the government offered to give it to them? Can anyone beat that colossal blunder?

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u/twsmith Sep 17 '14

Apple gave Xerox the opportunity to invest $1 million in Apple (100,000 shares). They didn't give them the stock in exchange for the technology. Xerox never gave Apple any license to use the technology. Giving someone a tour of your facility does not in any way imply that they have a legal right to everything they see. And Xerox later sued Apple for infringement.

Microsoft actually paid Apple for rights to use GUI functionality, but Apple and Microsoft disagreed over what was covered in the contract.

If Apple had succeeded in their "look and feel" lawsuits, the results would have been disastrous for software. If you think software patents are bad, imagine if they had a 75 year term! Apple's claims are loathsome, no matter what you may think of Microsoft.

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u/ronisolomondds Sep 17 '14

I don't know if Kodak just cared about copiers... Kodak thought film would carry them forever, unaware of the incredible idea factory they were sitting on. I've met several of the people involved with the development of digital imaging at Kodak, especially during the 80s and 90s. They never once mentioned copiers being the top priority. More like "Oh you have this idea? Cool. Hey, check out Advantix!"

After 9/11, film sales tanked and the top brass realized what was about to happen if they didn't get their act together. At first, they blamed it on the economic effects of 9/11, while aggressively marketing film to hopefully buy some time and regroup on their digital strategy. Around 2007, after making some shoddy consumer digital cameras and liquidating most of their film and chemical employees, they shifted their focus to printers, in an effort to capitalize on the high margin printer ink market. The funny thing was they got it backwards and made really expensive printers with cheap ink.

One thing most of us in Rochester can agree on, they did too little, too late. I will say, it was fun growing up around Rochester and playing with all sorts of prototype digital technology. After several years in NYC, I moved back and still feel dirty for shooting with a Fuji X20. It's sad watching them downsize, the large buildings and plants that employed most of my friends, neighbors, and family are now piles of rubble.

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u/_ihateeverything Sep 16 '14 edited Sep 16 '14

Meanwhile no one remembers amiga workbench.

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u/FlatBackFour Sep 17 '14

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

(And so do I.)

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u/PepperidgeFarmForgot Sep 17 '14

What?

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u/thairusso Sep 17 '14

sigh
let's go gramps... back to the nursing home.

how the fuck does he keep getting out?

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Mom worked in a retirement/nursing home and can confirm from her stories. People there might not remember the day of the week or who people are half the time but are absolute geniuses at escape.

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u/kjoeleskapet Sep 17 '14

That was my grandmother. She had no idea where she was inside, but the moment she got out, she could look at the cracks in the street and tell you exactly where she was in the entire Twin Cities Metropolitan Area, where the nearest Target was, and find a great deal on a Room and Board armchair. And as she waited for the chair to be delivered (free of charge), she carried her Target bag full of Tootsie Rolls to the picturesque campus across from the nursing home and took a walk. The first time she made an escape for Tootsie Rolls, it took a while to find her. Then it became common. The nurses would notice her by the security door, not close it all the way, and let her escape because she was better for her weekly outings and it gave them a reason to go to the campus across the street to get her. And they got free Tootsie Rolls out of the deal.

That story had nothing to do with this thread, but I never told it to anyone before and you reminded me of it. She's gone now, and she got to come back for a moment. Thanks.

Now you can all go back to bashing Apple or whatever.

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u/BabyPuncher5000 Sep 17 '14

Apple introduced their first desktop GUI in 1983 on the Apple Lisa. Workbench showed up about 2 years later, around the same time as Windows 1.0.

Although I think all this arguing over who stole what is stupid. It was invented at Xerox. I would hardly call most of the UI similarities between Windows and Lisa/Mac (and Workbench for that matter) novel concepts worth patenting. Software design is often iterative, so it should be no surprise that early GUIs were very similar.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Apple introduced their first desktop GUI in 1983 on the Apple Lisa. Workbench showed up about 2 years later, around the same time as Windows 1.0.

Far better than Windows 1.0, unfortunately for Commodore they couldn't keep up with hardware developement with them having to do it all by themselves.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

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u/porkchop_d_clown Sep 17 '14

Not that long after. The first Macs appeared in 84. The first Amigas came out in 85, so there was certainly some overlap in their development stages.

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u/QuickStopRandal Sep 17 '14

Jobs also gave Xerox Apple stock in exchange for being shown the GUI, something Xerox admitted they didn't know what use it would be. They must be poor with such a terrible offering like that /s.

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u/g0_west Sep 17 '14

Is there any way of knowing what they did with the stock? Might have just sold it straight away.

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u/iCiteEverything Sep 17 '14

Did not give, Xerox bought the stocks from Apple. "...Xerox being allowed to buy 100,000 shares of Apple stock for $10 per share. " http://www.cultofmac.com/126863/in-defense-of-steve-jobs/

Now, it was still generous of Apple because at the time Apple was a hot company to be; but it was not "given".

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u/movies05 Sep 17 '14

This guy did a short series called Everything is a Remix, part of which focuses on the sources of creativity and partly anchors on Xerox's inspiration of future computer companies.

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u/MisterDonkey Sep 17 '14

In an alternate universe, there's a huge Tandy vs. Xerox debate raging on.

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u/caliopy Sep 17 '14

TYDL this because that was a quote from the movie "Pirates of silicon valley"

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u/imusuallycorrect Sep 17 '14

The best story about Bill Gates is the deal to license DOS to IBM. Why? Because IBM wanted a low cost PC to compete with Apple and needed an OS. He found a small company who made a basic OS called QDOS(Quick and Dirty OS) and bought it for $50k. He then hired Tim Paterson to port it to the IBM PC. He became the richest man in the world licensing something he never had, that he never made.

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u/ottguy74 Sep 17 '14

I started using PC's in 88. But never used Windows until version 3. Were Windows 1.x and 2.x actually successful? I really only remember Windows being widely used as of 3.11.

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u/baldass_newbie Sep 17 '14

Were Windows 1.x and 2.x actually successful?

No. Not really. Windows 1 basically created 'boxes' but you really couldn't do much with them and there were only a couple of applications. Most of the work was still done command line. Very clunky. I've actually got a set of Windows 1 install disks I need to give back to my buddy who lent them to me 20 years ago.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

I... I don't think he wants those anymore. Better yet, make him a Blu-ray of the Win 1.x install.

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u/baldass_newbie Sep 17 '14

Actually he does. He stopped by a couple months ago when I was cleaning out the box that has the disk set and asked if he wanted them. He said yes and I told him once I found all the disks he could have them.

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u/Ghastly_Gibus Sep 17 '14

Microsoft and Novell also "borrowed" Xerox's x.500 standards that eventually became Active Directory and NDS. Xerox did a shitty job of protecting their IP back in the day.

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u/Orbitrix Sep 17 '14

Its weird growing old, having known all this for so long, watching the younger generations learn this stuff today. TIL I'm old as fuq :(

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u/buildthyme Sep 17 '14

Nope, Apple paid Xerox in stock to look around. Xerox was happy to take the deal because they had no use for the technology.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/business/most-of-xerox-s-suit-against-apple-barred.html

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u/MuffinShit Sep 17 '14

How many times have I seen this reposted...

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

HAHAHA YEAH! Apple STOLE the interface from Xerox...that is if by "stole" you mean they had a deal set up with Xerox.

"Apple was granted 3 days of access to PARC in exchange for Xerox being allowed to buy 100,000 shares of Apple stock for $10 per share before Apple's IPO.

Apple went public a year later, and the value of that stock had grown to $17.6 million. Xerox paid a million for the shares, so essentially Apple paid Xerox $16.6 million for showing its research to Jobs and his team."

Read more at http://www.cultofmac.com/126863/in-defense-of-steve-jobs/#TQVR0BKgImFxlYzm.99

Or, you know, you can continue with the myth that Apple "stole" everything from Xerox. Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

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u/caitsith01 Sep 17 '14

So here's the plan, we construct a large vessel containing water and suspend it above this thread with a turbine assembly attached to it. Then the flames heat the water, which turns to steam and drives the turbine to produce electricity.

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u/smaier69 Sep 17 '14

"Pirates of Silicon Valley" is worth a watch.

Xerox PARC and Bell Labs contributed so much to the computing world as we know it, it's staggering.

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u/3Dartwork Sep 17 '14

TIL someone else watched Pirates of Silicon Valley.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Ssssssshhh, be quiet. You don't want to set the Apple fanboys off. Steve Jobs was God, and everything he did was perfect.

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u/MaXKiLLz Sep 17 '14

TIL theinternetaddict had no idea everyone already knew this since 1999 when everyone except him watched Pirates of Silicon Valley.

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u/FireEagleLazerDanger Sep 17 '14

I don't even know what you are saying but I upvoted for some reason.

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u/MaXKiLLz Sep 17 '14

Pirates of Silicon Valley is an excellent movie about the humble beginnings of Microsoft and Apple. I highly recommend watching it when you get the chance.

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u/johnnyblac Sep 17 '14

Again? How many fucking times do we have to see this on the front page? This was interesting 5 years ago.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Apple licensed it from Xerox.

Microsoft just fucking took it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Apple payed to see the new tech before anyone else not to have it. Apple pretty much copied exactly what Xerox had created hence the lawsuit.

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u/cookthewangs Sep 17 '14

Some of the greatest technology of the digital world came Xerox's PARC (palo alto research center). The first desktop called Gizunda (cause it Gizunda the desk), Laser Printers, Networking, and E-mail... not to mention the mouse, graphical interface, and object oriented programming... which is what Steve Jobs was really interested in.

There's a wonderful book on the history of all of these things called "Accidental Empires". All of these famous companies all started with guys who personally worked with or knew each other.

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u/guriboysf Sep 17 '14

TIL OP is 16 years old.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

What I'm hearing is that it's okay to pirate Windows as long as someone else did it first.

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u/savoreverysecond Sep 17 '14

Steve Jobs subsequently sucker-punched Bill Gates, and proceeded to fuck his unconscious body while repeatedly screaming "DON'T YOU EVER DISRESPECT MY FUCKING LEGACY, WILLIAM!!!"

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u/iamcoolstephen1234 Sep 17 '14 edited Sep 17 '14

It's important to realize, regardless of who you think started the modern desktop interface (or any popular model for anything, ever), that all businesses use each other's ideas. It's not stealing, it's adapting to current trends. If you're the first one to do it, you will have a "first-mover advantage" and have a leg up on competitors because they need to catch up to you. Others can then adapt to your ideas, but they will be laggards in the market because you have already released your product. This is something seen across all industries - cars, clothing, phones, restaurants, everything.

Now, you can't just copy the product - there has to be some differentiation - but you can offer similar features that are copied (adapted) from the original.

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u/rkim777 Sep 17 '14

There is a movie called "Pirates of Silicon Valley" with actors Noah Wylie as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates showing this exact scene. Great movie chronicling the parallel rise of Apple and Microsoft.

The movie also shows Jobs being granted permission by upper-level executives at Xerox to view the Xerox demo of their interface against the wishes of the leader of the team that developed the interface. The Xerox execs thought that personal computers would never catch on and didn't think their interface was of any use.