Jobs’s software team took the graphical interface a giant step further. It emphasized “direct manipulation.”
And this right here is a major point of contention.
The standard WIMP GUI that is taken for granted today (and that evidently DE designers have a hard time shaking off even when supposedly attempting to "break new ground" - see GNOME 3 and Unity) might have ended up being the lesser approach.
The PARC conception of a GUI (later emulated by Niklaus Wirth/ETH Zuerich's Oberon, as well as Rob Pike's 8 1/2, rio, help and acme) really had this knack for actually enforcing composability.
In present GUIs, windows are mostly dumb, isolated and unable to talk. In addition, they are very difficult (if not outright unfit) for automation. Acceptance testing frameworks like Selenium which run as headless browsers show this isn't a problem if there's a common serializable representation (HTML, DOM...), but not so for desktop GUIs.
All text on screen is modifiable, regardless of where it is. Text is executable. A lot of common scenarios where people cook up quick scripts for task automation are effectively made obsolete, given that the desktop itself is one big programming environment without the user really being told it is. Task launchers/run dialogs are no longer needed.
More recent research, like Bluebottle OS (de facto successor to Oberon?), has experimented with zoomable interfaces. These obsolete virtual desktops entirely, because you have infinite (by the colloquial definition of infinity, of course) space to work on.
It's this drive to move beyond WIMP that has motivated a lot of people toward tiling window managers. Ironically enough, they are also the most primitive and simple to create, which really says something. Still pales in comparison to the classic GUI, though.
>The PARC conception of a GUI (later emulated by Niklaus Wirth/ETH Zuerich's Oberon, as well as Rob Pike's 8 1/2, rio, help and acme) really had this knack for actually enforcing composability.
Sounds really interesting can you point to some resources where I can read about this in greater detail?
I recommend anyone interested in PARC read "Dealers of Lightening" by Michael Hiltzk.[1]
It's been argued that the profits from the laser printer paid for the money spent on PARC a 100 fold. I'd agree with that. That said, I don't think Xerox could have been the new IBM/Microsoft/Apple combined - simply because their sales force was.. addicted? to the per imprint commission model, and it would be a huge change to go to a different model for them. So while PARC could have invented it, and they could have possibly gotten it into production, I don't think their existing sales and support force understood enough on how to sell and service it.
Reminds me of Kodak. They had the future, but it didn't have meaning in the mind of the company. Large thriving systems seem to lack enough schizophrenia to understand what they need to do to survive.
Back in the late 70's, I worked at a company called Aph. They had developed everything in house that could be used to build a PC, and the stuff was way ahead of what else was around at the time. The company was composed of numerous brilliant people (Hal Finney was one).
But what was lacking was somebody with vision to notice what we had. And so it was all for naught.
"You're ripping us off!", Steve shouted, raising his voice even higher. "I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!"
But Bill Gates just stood there coolly, looking Steve directly in the eye, before starting to speak in his squeaky voice.
"Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. 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."
Steve went to the neighbours and paid to use the TV, Gates came and took it. If you were a developer in the 90's, Gates is still more evil than Jobs ever was, and philanthropy years later doesn't wash away the sins. Ruthless, but with enough money, it appears you can make people forget.
The key difference is that Apple gave Xerox $1 million in shares as a payment for them to demo the Alto to Apple engineers with the understanding that they'd implement the ideas in Lisa/Mac.
The Alto UI was revolutionary for its time, but it was not the same as the Macintosh UI, no overlapping windows for example, regions in quickdraw being the big differentiator.
There's a big difference between invention and innovation. Both are important, but we do less and less of the former. The idea of a mouse before PARC must have seemed a little crazy, whereas the idea of the iPhone before 2008 seems a little inevitable.
Alan Kay's recent talk "The Future Doesn't Have To Be Incremental" goes over this yin and yang of the two 'i' words of our industry with authority. Worth a watch.
This seems like a great time to post the phenomenal Everything is a Remix [1]. Part one discusses movies, part two film, and part three discusses interfaces for computers, with special emphasis on Xerox PARC, Apple, and the Mac.
[+] [-] vezzy-fnord|11 years ago|reply
And this right here is a major point of contention.
The standard WIMP GUI that is taken for granted today (and that evidently DE designers have a hard time shaking off even when supposedly attempting to "break new ground" - see GNOME 3 and Unity) might have ended up being the lesser approach.
The PARC conception of a GUI (later emulated by Niklaus Wirth/ETH Zuerich's Oberon, as well as Rob Pike's 8 1/2, rio, help and acme) really had this knack for actually enforcing composability.
In present GUIs, windows are mostly dumb, isolated and unable to talk. In addition, they are very difficult (if not outright unfit) for automation. Acceptance testing frameworks like Selenium which run as headless browsers show this isn't a problem if there's a common serializable representation (HTML, DOM...), but not so for desktop GUIs.
All text on screen is modifiable, regardless of where it is. Text is executable. A lot of common scenarios where people cook up quick scripts for task automation are effectively made obsolete, given that the desktop itself is one big programming environment without the user really being told it is. Task launchers/run dialogs are no longer needed.
More recent research, like Bluebottle OS (de facto successor to Oberon?), has experimented with zoomable interfaces. These obsolete virtual desktops entirely, because you have infinite (by the colloquial definition of infinity, of course) space to work on.
It's this drive to move beyond WIMP that has motivated a lot of people toward tiling window managers. Ironically enough, they are also the most primitive and simple to create, which really says something. Still pales in comparison to the classic GUI, though.
[+] [-] programmer_dude|11 years ago|reply
Sounds really interesting can you point to some resources where I can read about this in greater detail?
[+] [-] Aloha|11 years ago|reply
It's been argued that the profits from the laser printer paid for the money spent on PARC a 100 fold. I'd agree with that. That said, I don't think Xerox could have been the new IBM/Microsoft/Apple combined - simply because their sales force was.. addicted? to the per imprint commission model, and it would be a huge change to go to a different model for them. So while PARC could have invented it, and they could have possibly gotten it into production, I don't think their existing sales and support force understood enough on how to sell and service it.
http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Michael-Hiltzik-eboo...
[+] [-] agumonkey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|11 years ago|reply
But what was lacking was somebody with vision to notice what we had. And so it was all for naught.
[+] [-] jfb|11 years ago|reply
But Bill Gates just stood there coolly, looking Steve directly in the eye, before starting to speak in his squeaky voice.
"Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. 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://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_N...
[+] [-] failed_ideas|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nemo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloha|11 years ago|reply
The Alto UI was revolutionary for its time, but it was not the same as the Macintosh UI, no overlapping windows for example, regions in quickdraw being the big differentiator.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=I_Still_Remember_...
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nickbauman|11 years ago|reply
Alan Kay's recent talk "The Future Doesn't Have To Be Incremental" goes over this yin and yang of the two 'i' words of our industry with authority. Worth a watch.
[+] [-] jacquesm|11 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY
31:54
[+] [-] sebastianconcpt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alilja|11 years ago|reply
1. http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
[+] [-] jgunaratne|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alinenache|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]