MS/Apple (Re: [lbo-talk] Re: wotsit madder)

[Robert D. Day]

Just a hisorical note. Both Apple and Microsoft based their early graphical
user interfaces (GUI) on experimental work done at Xerox's Palo Alto
Research Center, where Xerox R&D people were toying with mainstream use of
"what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) programs for document creation -
part of that whole "paperless office" wet dream a while back. Both Bill
Gates and Apple's Steve Jobs went to Xerox PARC and saw that Xerox didn't
realize what they had stumbled on and weren't going to pursue it. Apple
first released a GUI - heavily inspired by what was seen as Xerox PARC -
with the Lisa in 1980, I think. It flopped.

In the subsequent development of the Macintosh, Apple sent several prototype
machines to Microsoft, where Microsoft engineers gave critical feedback on
the development of Mac OS.

For more information, check out Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringley,
Harper Business, 1996.

Both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were based on
Mosaic, developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Some of the key people at
NCSA went on to found Netscape, using the Mosaic HTML browser - developed
with public funds - for private profit at Netscape.

--- Robert D. Day

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Louis Kontos" <Louis.Kontos at liu.edu>
To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 5:24 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: wotsit madder

what a rosy view. microsoft windows (clicking icons versus typing commands)
is based on the Apple operating system -- no? microsoft explorer is based on
navigator -- no? this is a corrupt company as they all are in various
ways -- no?