On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Tim May wrote:
> --Xerox PARC had overlapping windows. Apple used the 1979
> demonstration to redirect it's nonoverlapping windows to be
> overlapping. This is detailed in some of the histories of PARC,
> including "Dealers in Lightning."
Hmm, yes, now that I read back, they did have overlapping windows.
> (This is very imporatant because it was Dan Ingalls of the Smalltalk
> group at PARC, called the Learning Research (or Resources) Group, who
> invented the BITBLT algorithm which made overlapping windows
> possible. Apple had been not been planning to use overlapping
> windows. "Dealers in Lightning" has a good description of Bill
> Atkinson raptly watching the demo in '79, and Jobs going back to
> Cupertino and declaring that the new machines would support
> overlapping windows. Microsoft apparently was late in getting the
> message, as early versions of Word and Windows both had ridiculous
> "tiled" windows.)
Cool, good to know. Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface" (ACM Press /
Addison Wesley) states that Alan Kay had proposed overlapping windows, to
get rid of modes.
> --as for pulldown menus, the PARC/Smalltalk approach is that of
> pop-up and waterfall menus. Apple innovated in many areas; whether
> one likes toolbar menus or pop-up menus is a matter of taste. I used
> both in the past (Symbolics Lisp Machine and Mac) and I use both now
> (Squeak Smalltalk and Mac).
> -- drag and drop didn't appear early on with the Mac...IIRC, it was
> OS 7, circa 1990-91 that introduced it.
No, it did exist in as early as the Lisa Office System. You could drag
icons around from one window to another, from one folder to another, from
one disk to another, etc. Although, it wasn't quite dragging in the Lisa.
In MacOS 1.0, you had to drag the floppy to the trash can to eject it,
drag files to copy them, etc. Sure, it was smoke and mirrors as back then
the MFS didn't really support subdirectories, but it was drag and
drop. No document wide drag and drop, but certainly for the Finder.
> It's not at all clear that Apple ever paid Xerox. The tour was part
> of a bundle in which Xerox put a small amount of seed capital into
> Apple. This does not rise to the level of a contractual arrangement
> of a transfer of technology!
Sure they did:
Jobs approached the Xerox Development Corporation,
the venture capital branch of the copier giant, and
boldly told them "I will let you invest a million
dollars in Apple if you will sort of open the kimono
at Xerox PARC."
... Xerox was anxious to get a piece of the action and
was more than willing to allow an Apple contingent to
take a peek at PARC. Afer all, an investment in Apple
was likely to turn a handsome profit when the company
eventually went public, whereas the stuff at PARC labs
was an intangible asset that might very well never make
it to market. Xerox signed an agreement never to purchase
more than five percent of Apple's shares and invested $1
million by buying 100,000 shares at $10 each (within a
year, these split into 800,000 shares worth $17.6 million
when Apple went public.)
-- Owen W. Linzmayer, The Mac Bathroom Reader, Sybex books
ISBN 0-7821-1531-4
I'd say that allowing Xerox to buy pre-IPO shares of Apple was payment in
the form of an investment. Cost Apple nothing at the time, but payment
none the less. :)
> (I gave tours of my lab at Intel when I was still there. This doesn't
> constitute a contract to transfer technology.)
You're right, it wasn't a transfer of technology contract. It was a demo,
but the demo is what got Apple started on the Lisa, and then the Mac. It
was from the Lisa that Microsoft stole, etc.
> As to whether Xerox could have sued, or should have sued, this is an
> issue for lawyers. But surely the visit of Apple folks did not mean
> that Xerox's technology was transferred legally to Apple.
They did try to sue in 1989, but in March 1990, the court dimissed most of
the lawsuit.
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