guardian.co.uk — At a time when computers were more like glorified typewriters, Apple introduced the Macintosh ? and changed how people interacted with them. In exclusive interviews, Steve Wozniak, Apple's co-founder, and Andy Hertzfeld, one of the developers, recall how it happened.
Jan 23, 2009 View in Crawl 4
xalorousJan 24, 2009
Dude, go whack off to your mac-porn and try to read some legit background info before you post such drivel.Gates entered into a contract with IBM that was written to benefit him. But it was about DOS not Windows. Shame on IBM for not reading the fine print.________ takes existing products, improves them, and sells them for a profit. ________ takes new ideas, patents them and sells them for a profit. ________ evend develops a few new ideas, patents them, and sells them for a profit.If you put Microsoft in the blank, it works. If you put Apple in the blank, IT WORKS. Primary difference is company focus. Microsoft focuses on making products with standardized interface that increase productivity. Apple focuses on elegant design for appearance and ease of use.
dragosshJan 24, 2009
It may have something with Macintosh's 25th birthday.
cowicideJan 24, 2009
Yes, now it's fanboi
deadbabyJan 25, 2009
If Apple had never existed or hadn't pursued the Lisa/Mac projects I think probably Atari or Amiga would get most of the credit for popularizing the GUI. Neither one was far behind Apple. Tthe original Atari ST GEM UI is arguably better than the Mac UI. Amiga too although I don't have much first hand experience with them. I was always impressed with the early versions of Workbench.
mrbitchJan 26, 2009
@ tupperbacharach RE: " In regards to Microsoft copying Apple, there is a lot of documentation that Windows was actually inspired by Visi On."You're absolutely correct, there WERE some elements of Windows that were influenced by "Visi On", and it's VERY interesting that the EARLY concept versions of "Visi On" were ported over to run on an Apple III...<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiOn">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiOn</a>&quot;... VisiOn, a play on "vision" that retained their "Visi" naming. A port to the Apple III was completed in November 1981 ... "
proxybulletFeb 1, 2009
not only that bill gates also saw xerox's alto aswell as steve therefore them both stealing the idea from a company that didnt care for it because they were far more interested in printers just shows where real genius lies.
johnnysoftwareOct 24, 2009
That's one thing they did - invent pull down menus, where before there were only popup menus. Apple created the menubar, if I am not mistaken.The Mac's windowing system was far more powerful than the Xerox Star's. The Mac, heck, even the Lisa, was far less expensive than the $50,000 Xerox star.Apple brought laser printing to the masses. Before the Mac was introduced and came out with the Laserwriter, laser printers were almost unknown except in huge businesses. That helped get Adobe rolling... in dough.Apple chose to create an object-oriented version of a popular compiled language instead of imitating the Xerox Star's use of an interpreted language (SmallTalk). Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X today all use compiled languages as their primary OS development languages and compiled object-oriented languages as their principle ones for doing GUI programming.Microsoft Excel came out on the Mac before Windows. Apple's engineers helped Microsoft engineers make MS Word a GUI app instead of a character based app years before MS-Windows 1.0 ever came out. Microsoft programmers picked up the ability to write GUI programs from Apple at Apple.Apple had a very nice BASIC programming environment product in the 1980's that rivaled Visual Basic almost a decade before the latter was invented. In an effort to appease Microsoft, Apple did not release it however. When Visual Basic came out, it included the ability to write "extensions" (VBX) which were inspired by Apple Mac's Hypercard extensions (XCMD & XFCN).When Windows 1.0 came out years later, Microsoft's entire development team was unable to muster the skill to create overlapping windows. It was limited to tiling windows. It took even more years to get that crucial feature implemented. Apple's graphics programmer had invented/optimized the Mac's graphics subsystem in just 6 months, long before Microsoft saw the Macintosh and decided to do their own version of it called "Windows".A lot of what Apple did at the start of the 1980's could not even be imitated until almost a decade later. If they had not dreamed it up and made it work, it would not have been around to imitate. Microsoft's original plans for what became Windows was to add popup text windows, some multi-tasking, and to support lots of device drivers for lots of different peripherals. Apple changed the picture of what needed to be done in Microsoft's minds.
johnnysoftwareOct 24, 2009
Apple had something like Microsoft Bob years earlier but after kicking it around and perhaps some usability testing they decided it would not really be a big help to users.
johnnysoftwareOct 24, 2009
IBM did not own the market for long. There was not enough innovation in the original IBM PC hardware to make it protectable intellectual property. IBM tried to rectify this with the heavily patented PS/2 and the PC clone makers rebelled. Since Microsoft had already corralled these independent companies as "partners" who were fully dependent on Microsoft's OS, Microsoft+cloners went their own way.IBM's PC team also suffered the tragedy of having its top leadership on all on the same small plane - and it crashed, decapitating the group.IBM apparently was not too worried because they thought they still had Microsoft in their corner, as a collaborator on the OS/2 operating system product. However, Microsoft suddenly pulled out of that and touted its own Windows operating system as the way to go. IBM was caught flat footed.Today, IBM does not have a mainstream desktop personal computer or PC operating system. The original PC product line and its follow up efforts totally crashed for IBM. They dropped OS/2 and sold off their PC making interests to a Chinese computer company many years ago. Personal desktop computers really only worked out for IBM for most of the 1980's and then it was over for them.
johnnysoftwareOct 24, 2009
With the introduction of Microsoft retail stores and the online store, Microsoft has just become an over-glorified VAR in computer industry parlance.