>user interface was anything but simple. It took some 30 years of effort by engineers and computer scientists in universities, government laboratories, and corporate research groups, piggybacking on each other’s work, trying new ideas, repeating each other’s mistakes.

So like M$ Win 11 repeating Apples mistakes or what? lol

"Let's just remove useful features, move some stuff around and reskin everything... oh and I want anything that takes 1 or 2 clicks to take 5 clicks..."

"New improved Windows 11 is here! Download your copy today!"

> The grandfather of the graphical user interface was Sketchpad

Not quite; SAGE graphic displays with light pens were a few years earlier.

Thanks, Xerox!

And thanks to the formerly progressive Supreme Court of the 1970s that was willing to slap them with the consent decree forcing their patents to be openly licensed. Xerox had no intention of sharing this technology, they were forced to do so by the government in an era when the government actually had the balls to represent the people.

That’s interesting. My understanding was that Xerox had the know-how to create several groundbreaking technologies we take for granted in computing today, but they had zero idea on how to implement and market them to the public. This is why they invited people like Jobs and Gates to take a look at what was going on at Hyde Park.

No, fuck no. That's nonsense. Jobs and Gates and NEC as well as other Japanese interests rushed in to grab a piece of the action when the courts forced it open. It was only because of the Xerox consent decree that any of this stuff ever made it to the public.

The fact you don't know about this is interesting in itself. It used to be widely known but it's interesting how people's opinions have been shaped over time to create this ridiculous narrative. It's actually hard to even find the original documentation anymore because so much effort has gone into hiding it.

But you can still find good info on it but unfortunately much of it is paywalled which is how the ignorance is manufactured:

[The 1975 Xerox Consent Decree: Ancient Artifacts and Current Tensions] (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40843504)

If you search around you can find a copy which goes into what really happened.

Oh, wow! My Dad worked in tech for a long time and had 'Triumph of the Nerds" on vhs.

https://www.pbs.org/nerds/

That's very interesting, thanks. I have dealt a lot with Smalltalk and (untrue) myths about PARC, but in fact I was not familiar with this one.