From: craigdo@microsoft.com (Craig Dowell)
Subject: Xerox is not a commercial entity? (was Re: Windows == OS (NOT!))
Date: 01 Oct 92 20:39:49 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Summary: Xerox did it all first. 

In article <1ad9buINNllh@network.ucsd.edu> mbk@lyapunov.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel) writes:
>MBT3@psuvm.psu.edu (Mike Tierney) writes:
>Apple took ideas from a research lab and made them into a real product.
>(No I don't believe in look'n'feel patents)  Xerox's work showed that
>"a solution exists".  Apple solved it.

Come on now.  Xerox did just a _bit_ more than that.  The Star was a production
system.  There was a business unit at Xerox set up to produce and market it.
It wasn't much of a commercial success; it was way before its time.  You have
bought the Apple marketing version of the story entirely.
 
>I think they came up with a few ideas on their own, too.
>
>Consider:  1) 1 button mouse  

Yes, I think Apple did use this first.  I don't consider it a revolutionary
development at all, though.

>2) 3.5 inch floppy disk

I recall the twiggy disasters very clearly.  3.5 inch drives were becoming
popular while Apple was trying to get their version to work.

>3) unified graphics interface

I'm not sure what you mean, but if you mean consistent command invocation,
user conceptual model and graphical presentation, this was all done in the
Star and Alto long before the Mac.

>4) Postscript laser printer

This is the Apple product that "saved" the Mac.  I have a hard time believing
that if Apple licenced Postscript from Adobe and bought the engine from Cannon
they were close to the first to put them together.

>5) integrated sound modules

Don't know anything about it.

>6) international language support

Again, done on the Star first.

>7) built in inexpensive networking hardware and software. 

The Star had built in networking hardware and software.  It wasn't inexpensive,
but then again, neither were Macs.

8) Easy system administration

True.

>No, they didn't *invent* these things (then again most anything useful
>was proposed in some paper 10 years ago anyway), but who was doing them
>for real before Apple?

Xerox.

>:  Probably
>: the only favorable quality about the Macintosh is that the hardware is
>: all one standard (thanks to Apple's closely-guarded monopoly), and
>: therefore, programs could have been written since 1984 without worrying
>: too much about hardware variances.  If Intel PC's had that kind of
>: single architecture guiding it since the beginning, you'd find PC
>: software surpassing anything the Mac could offer in ease of use (instead
>: of the simply better performance, which equivalent DOS machines have always
>: had over Macs, Windows or not.)
>
>Oh I don't know.  It think the variation in hardware among macintosh models
>is as large among PC clones. 
>
>Microsoft, on the other hand, took an already existing *commercialized*
>product, whose value was proven in the marketplace, and made a substantially
>inferior substitute for a few hundred million bucks.  I'm sure there's alot
>of innovation in the internals, but most of that is probably to get around
>the braindamage in the 8086 architecture and in the CP/M emulator.  (that's
>DOS for most people).

Yeah, just like apple took an already existing *commercialized* product ...
Just substitute Apple for Microsoft.

>But of course, there's still more innovation that can be done.  For
>example, take NeXT.  (Jobs did this one too, you know.).   Much superior
>to either the Mac or certainly windows. Display postscript & 
>interface builder >> X windows  >> quickdraw
>or windows.  NeXT OS > average unix > WindowsNT >> Macintosh OS >> DOS.
>
>Programming a NeXT is certainly superior to either a mac or DOS.

No arguments here, except for the implied greatness of Steve[1].

-- Craig

Not a spokesman for Micro{soft, sloth, shaft, scrap, etc}

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