The computer that Apple copied
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2024
- The Xerox Alto and Apple have a tangled love affair that, here, I try to tangle up even more.
Here's the book I read, Fumbling the Future:
amzn.to/3dEDJnM
(Affiliate link! Why not!l?)
I came away from this with a new love for Xerox AND Apple AND Steve Jobs, even after not really being a fanboy of any of them. Hope the same happens to you.
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My friend worked at Xerox park for years. They would invent E-paper and licensed it for a pittance.. They invented a lot of the tech you take for granted and probably licensed it for a song. They didn't seem to be in the business to make money at all.
Xerox PARC itself didn’t exist to make money. It was more of an R&D lab for Xerox.
@@awlabrador It sounds right but no company does that. Incompetence i can see, intentionally leaving money on the table is the worst sin a company can commit in the eyes of the shareholders, So your statement has to be false.
Xerox copier and printers, well known in my country not as HP or Cannon but that considered it third option, I think from the beginning their marketing strategies were failure .
@@BaquePhotography it’s definitely incompetence - engineers at the time claimed executives didn’t even understand the value of the laser printer, and that’s such a close cousin of the photocopier (basically just replacing the scanner side with pre-existing data). Anything further-afield was completely un-assessable to them.
Xerox nowadays is known for copy machines.
Another interesting thing to note is that, while Steve and Bill may have been blown away by the GUI interface of the Alto and Alto II, when they were shown these demos there wouldn't have been a full OS-wide GUI. There wouldn't have been a "desktop" environment as we think of it today. What they saw were graphical programs, rather than a fully graphical OS. So while Apple and Microsoft may have certainly taken inspiration from what Xerox was doing, they did end up needing to do a tremendous amount of R&D of their own accord both on the software and, in the case of Apple, the hardware side of things to bring the Xerox vision home with them. After all, it wasn't like they could just reuse the existing Xerox Alto computer designs for themselves. Everything was run without the aid of microprocessors. The GUI draw system was virtualized. And all peripherals were proprietary in their connectivity. So while it may have seemed that Xerox had the total, complete product before they swept through and stole all of their ideas, that isn't actually true. The Xerox Alto was ridiculously impressive, but also a dead-end product from the outset. It was an experiment from start to finish, and was meant as a means to develop and end. It was proof of concept for their ideas and was intended to be used as a platform for their engineers to puzzle out what they needed to in order to develop a final product. I believe, in the wake of the failure to break into the market with the Star, they basically admitted defeat and left it to history, re-investing into the markets they already had dominance in. But man, if those years in the 70's weren't a glorious time to be a research engineer at the Palo Alto facility of the Xerox corporation. Working on the absolute bleeding edge of technology to make things that people in the industry could only have wet dreams about. They made a drawing program, a WYSIWYG word processor, networking using coaxial network expansion boards at 2.5Mbps, disk storage with interchangeable cartridge-housed platters. One of the earliest optical mouse designs, etc. It was truly cutting edge stuff, and that's a fairly novel experience these days, to work in IT research and development on a truly new and unique product with no real predecessors to adapt from.
If you want to learn more about the Xerox Alto, CuriousMarc has a whole series on here about getting one up and running and he even has an episode after they get it to boot where he brings in a couple of engineers that actually worked on the Alto project. It was a fascinating series and I think anyone looking to get into IT should watch it.
To add to this, Jobs apparently wasn't too amazed by the GUI but really thought that Ethernet was going to be the big thing. Only later did the GUI become the main focus.
Love these videos! I can only imagine the amount of background reading and research that's needed for a video like this, but fair play, the dedication really shows. This kind of production deserves to be seen by a wider audience.
Not really. There's SOO much info on this and so many videos talking showing it in more detail that here that research would have been pretty easy. It's like making a documentary about WW2 it's easy af because it's been done to death like 'The Mother of all Demos' here so all info about it is easy to find and you just have to copy it.
Do a documentary about mercenaries in Africa in the 70's for example and THAT'S hard ACTUAL research and DIGGING. That would be impressive research. With this everything is dug already for you. I wanna see more original stuff. Like I said this has been done to death at this point. There's loads of videos and articles about it. I wanna see stuff on this channel that's new ground. Just been watching a video on this channel of why were so many Donald Duck insignias for the US military in WW2. Original content. Not yet another rehash of the same documentaries on UA-cam. I want more FRESH stuff.
It's a great video! But yes, you can read a lot of the details mentioned in the video in Fumbling the Future (the book Phil mentioned in the video), or in a similar book, Lightning in a Bottle.
By the mid-90s, "Fumbling the Future" was recommended reading for Xerox's new hire training. That's the mindset they'd fallen into - "we originated everything, and then let everyone else profit off it." Hell of a message to give to someone who's been working there for a day and a half.
That's kind of a funny quote, because the company that became Xerox (Haloid Co., in Rochester, NY) didn't originate their most famous technology. They bought the xerography technology from the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, OH and the name came from an Ohio State professor of classical languages. Chester Carlson brought his electrophotography idea and a few patents he'd received on it to Battelle, who agreed to develop it into something commercially viable in exchange for a percentage of the profits. Haloid read about the technology in a trade magazine and wanted to invest in exchange for a license to it, and eventually Battelle sold the them the full rights in exchange for stock in Haloid, who changed their name to Haloid Xerox, then dropped the Haloid.
The Mac story reminds me of the Kodak digital camera story. An old tech company builds something new, but another company takes the idea and runs with it to make it ubiquitous while the first company slowly recedes into history. (Yes, I know Kodak is still around; I collect Kodak cameras and memorabilia [mine is still a pretty small collection, but it exists], so I'm very familiar with the story)
My father worked at Bell Labs in Murray Hill. AT&T was aware of the Alto as well. The BLIT terminal was their response. AT&T had not been divested yet so they could not bring it to market since they were prohibited from entering the computer business.
I love your style of videos, informative yet still fun and friendly! Really enjoyed the structure of this video as well!
In 1980 I joined a company called Linotype-Paul, who designed, built and sold equipment for the printing industry. I was a computer programmer on a system the was using some fairly leading-edge ideas at the time. It would consist of a Cambridge Ring network to which a variety of computer stations were linked - justification station of, essentially, layout of the articles that were to be printed, a printer station and various others. I worked there until 1982 - and during the last few months I was there the Xerox Star was being talked about. It simply blew away what we were doing, in many ways. This was when IBM were still regarded as the computer system to buy (no-one got fired for buying IBM). At the time, Apple was barely heard of, as I remember it. There seemed to be something of a fruit connection in small computers - apart from Apple there was Apricot, for instance.
As a programmer since 1978, from a TRS-80 in high school (4K of RAM and a cassette deck) to my parents getting an Apple II Plus, my memory of what made the Lisa (1983) and then the Macintosh (1984) commercially viable was the LaserWriter (1985) and its growing use in the graphic design, publishing, and advertising industries. It was the "killer app" that VisiCalc was for the Apple II series. It's interesting to learn about Linotype-Paul being an Apple II clone. My Dad was an advertising exec in Chicago at that time and was well acquainted with Mergenthaler-Linotype and some of the early computerized phototypesetting systems. His agency was one of the first to get their hands on the Lisa and a LaserWriter. The advent of PostScript and the LaserWriter let them sketch and prototype ideas before committing to typesetting.
Raspberry Pi, Wifi Pineapple, and then there's the Bananaphone.
LoL. Im currently in IT and I heard that exact saying from a Cisco rep. "No one ever got fired for buying Cisco"
This is seriously the best reporting on this little moment in technology history. It’s really an under appreciated moment in history.
This is simply a... "I'm a newly obsessed FAN of Phil Edwards" comment. I've been binge watching your videos for the past two days...completely enamoured by your writing, video production and performance skills. A most enlightening and delightful discovery Mr. Edwards...thank you for your tremendously entertaining and informative work!!!
thanks a lot!
@@PhilEdwardsInc Be careful, or I'll ask you where that phrase came from! You're more than welcome Mr. Edwards...thank you again for your inspirational production!
What an interesting video! In India, Xerox machines were the height of technology we had access to till the late 90s. Sure, our school had PCs running Windows but they were all locked up in airconditioned labs to which we were taken once a week. The Xerox machine though, was right there in the library lobby were we could watch it in action all day long - the light gliding under the scanner glass, the whirr of rollers and the copy sliding out onto the tray! Most copy shops still advertise copies as 'Xerox', even if they use machines of other brands. Wonder what it might have been like if they had made PCs too!
I too associate a certain romance with a good copier.
That's an interesting cultural difference between India and US though - here, Apple had this concerted strategy to make every school a Mac school (I imagine to get kids addicted early). So no matter where you were in the country, you were on an Apple machine in the computer lab. So it's fun for me to imagine a PC world in the classroom.
Here in the US, _Xerox_ has also been genericized in lingo as to refer to any copy machine. Like Velco, Popsicle, or Google which are all brand names but people use to refer to all hook and loop fasteners, ice lollipops, and websearches.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive Yes you are right. Like Kleenex, Javex, Q tips.Funny we kinda do that with the leading brand products.
Nobody's talking about how the video duration is 10:09, a time Apple has historically used in many of their marketing images for Apple Watch. That's a nice detail if it was intentional, thanks for including that
i feel compeled to add a comment and i can assure its a very posative comment. The way you tell storys with facts and using images with just the right amount of satire just enough to raise a smile is so refreshing. most pepole who tell history seem to sound like there reading from a manual but you really had me hooked i like your style and i like that you come accross as genunine
Love the steve jobification at the beginning. They should hire you for the next steve job movie.
you’re absolutely right.
@@PhilEdwardsInc Have you ever tried you hand in acting?
Thank you for finally mentioning what everyone leaves out. When $1 MILLION in pre-ipo stock trades hands, that's not Apple "stealing" that's a purchase in that 1979 visit. When Apple went public the next year, the value of those stocks doubled. Shove this in the face of anyone who says that Apple stole Xerox's IP. They purchased it, and then spent years developing on top of it to define the standard on what has become all of personal computer experience, regardless of platform.
Apple giving Xerox the opportunity to buy $1 million in stock is not a formal agreement or sale of Xerox's technology to Apple.
Man, Iove how you're able to better show off your personal style and humor in this channel. Absolutely fantastic
This channel is so well done that it's just a matter of time until you rightfully blow up. Hoping the pentagon video's success is a sign of things to come. Also, it makes me really happy to see somebody talk about Pirates of Silicon Valley.
Engelbart's demo was transformational - the guy who was widely considered a loon designed the future of computing and work, years before systems that could implement these ideas even existed.
Very cool video. I like the fact you stress history is more complicated. The delivery is also good! I had the chance to work in an area that had some of these machines still running, and so that was hip to see them again.
I'm not going to lie, when you mentioned pirates in this video, all I saw in my head is the Monty Python skit with literal business pirates attacking each other. Great video! Very well done.
I think that what makes these videos so good is that (for me at least) the enthusiasm for the subject matter is transferred and felt by the audience. Thank you, please keep them coming.
Cool. I’m retired from a major aerospace firm located in Seattle. We were a Beta test site for the Xerox machine that you mentioned. One of the young ladies on our graphics department was trained on it and she produced a document that I was working on using it. It was impressive and saved considerable man hours producing the document. I’m confidant that had Xerox gone into full development, our company would have bought several. They were big, but much more useful than the Genigrphics (we had one of those, too).The machine was in our office for at least a year. My document was stored on a big removable platter disk which I saved for years.
Your video brought back a lot of great memories :) Thanks.
Wow! can’t imagine. very cool.
Confident.
You’re content is some of the most underrated content on youtube if there was a way I could support this content I definitely would.
This comment is great support, so thank you!
@@PhilEdwardsInc Love what you’re doing keep it up! 👌
i remember watching Lawrence Gordon Tesler (guy who invented copy/paste) interview about Steve Jobs coming over to Xerox.. Steve know straight away that all computers going to use GUI and kept saying why you don't do anything with that technology.. after many xerox workers joined Apple, Lawrence Gordon too.
I did my college freshman English research paper on this topic in 1989. I love this story. Thanks for making this video 🙏🏼
GREAT VIDEO! In the late 1970s I worked for a company that had two Xerox Diablo 3200. They were great computers for business that could not afford a main frame and the desktop PC were not yet read for medium size businesses. They cost about $35,000 each. I remember Xerox showed us a mouse that cost about $1,000 and we couldn't figure out why.
Really professional and well edited documentary.
I've watched your newest few videos and only just noticed the relatively small number of views and subscribers you have. I just wanted to let you know that your research and easy to follow/consume style of educational videos like these are destined to be successful. Given the lower quality of videos I have seen from much bigger channels, I would say just keep on putting out these high quality videos with the small improvements on each release, and your audience will explode soon enough.
Thanks for the memories! When I was an undergraduate in ‘79, the computer lab got a gaggle of Altos and they were dazzling. There were other up-and-coming GUIs around, like Lisp Machines and the Nu, but none were as mature as the Alto. Also, one of them ran the XGP laser printer, and they all had Maze War, a multi player first-person shooter. In 1979!
Love your videos Phil!! Great editing, archives and narrative. Also loved that you mentioned the mother of all demos, such a fascinating piece of IT history, UX and design
Every time one of these videos comes out it always makes my day :)
People will STILL be asking that question 50 years later……. No!!! Xerox did not invent the GUI by themselves, because it was people who originally worked with Douglas Engelbart who later left to work for Xerox, but, this is worth mentioning since without him releasing a tech demo in 1968, there would’ve been NO XEROX PARC!!!!!!!!! Steve Jobs paid $100,000 for a 1 off license to use Douglas Engelbar’s ideas, PLUS, What Apple did was a HUGE HUGE refinement over anything Xerox could’ve ever come up with…
I just found out this channel and the only thing I can say it's what an amazing content and editing style you have, nice!
I read about a project at PARC which used their internet to perform work on idle computers. A task would be given a goal of some number of computers. It would search the network for computers running the self check program, which had been modified to accept the inquiry and join the group, also searching for more computers. Once the specified count had been acquired, they would move on to the computational task, using those computers. If someone came into their office and saw their computer in use, they would reset it and do whatever they wanted and the remaining computers would search for available ones to join them. Some folks called it a Vampire program because because it hid in the day and came out at night.
Today we have BOINC as a voluntary multi computer task coordinator.
I found you randomly after a Tom Scott Video a few days ago. I enjoy the videos a lot, Phil. I can learn some fun things even while working.
Great video!! Really shows that it innovation comes not only from an idea but also from determination!
Super good dude. Love the way you tie A-roll into your story. V engaging
What Apple did was to improve Xerox design (e.g. inventing the pulldown menu) and especially cut cost. Compared to a $100,000 Xerox Star system or a $10,000 Lisa, the $2500 Macintosh helped popularizing the GUI, inspiring others to cut costs even more (like the $1000 Atari ST released a year later). By the way, several Xerox employees lobbied hard (albeit unsuccessfully) to block any demo made to Apple.
Yeah, that's really the key point. There wasn't a microprocessor in existence at the time of the Alto that could have run a full GUI as they showed. That would take until the 68k and the 16 bit CPUs... And really, even those were painfully inadequate. Proper multitasking would take until the 32-bit era to get right, on home machines.
Great coverage! I remember I just had to do a research project on the history of apple. And they did struggle with the Lisa and other in that era.
Fantastic video as always, Phil!
I really liked this video. I liked that it slowly built up, through discussions about the archetypes and the myths we re-tell about those archetypes, to be more than just "actually xerox weren't clueless nerds and heres whyyy". Instead, the whole video felt like a story you would share at a gathering and not just a factoid you'd use to sound smart, or worse, use to correct someone or mansplain to them.
Great job. Learned a few things. You've got a new fan. Look forward to the next one1
Too informative!! I can't stop watching your videos
Excellent Phil. And really good archival.
It makes me think of Adam Grant's line from Originals- "you don't have to be the first, you have to be the best" (or something to that effect)
Apple almost always waits until they can do a feature extremely well, which is usually several years after the initial technology first came out. ProMotion (their very good variable refresh rate technology) is a good, recent example of this. Android phones have had high refresh rate displays for a long time but they consumed lots of battery. Apple waited until their could deliver all the benefits of high refresh rate displays without the battery drain that typically comes along with it, which meant they were years behind on the move to higher refresh rate displays. But now the iPhone 13 Pro has the best 120hz screen tech in the phone industry and it’s battery life doesn’t suffer from it.
Wow Phil. I respected and enjoyed your videos before, but this is seriously the most nuanced look at what is indeed a very complicated and highly mythologised story. I love Pirates of Silicon Valley, but also know where they got it wrong. This sets the record straight(er). Thank you and much respect for your dedication and research.
I agree Noel Wylie is was and will be the best Steve Jobs outside of Steve himself.
Kudos to the guy who played Steve Wozniak also. 👏
Joey Slotnik army, rise up.
The whole movie is perfectly cast. Minor niggles (and some major - like the ending) aside it’s really the best adaptation of that period in history we are going to get. And for a TV movie too!
Great video, awesome production, good music
Great video. Love the turtle neck!
I feel the turtleneck annoyance 🤣✌ great video!
Great video - great story and I like your take on it.
While Xerox PARC was obviously in Palo Alto, Xerox is based in Rochester, NY. Which is also home to Kodak, another great innovator that failed to fully capitalize on some truly innovative technologies that they'd invented such as digital photography and OLED displays. It's interesting to think of what Rochester might be like in an alternate reality.
Xerox is headquartered in Connecticut now. Sadly, even at the time of your comment, Xerox had sold and completely left their headquarters in Rochester (the tallest building in the city). They moved out in 2018, but still have a small group in the 'burbs in Webster. The former Xerox Tower itself is being converted to apartments, some ground floor retail, and a repurposing of the auditorium as a performing arts center.
Kodak sill has their gorgeous tower (former tallest building in Western NY) as headquarters, but yeah, they're a shell of their former self and their enormous campus north of downtown is a run down ghost town.
@@andrewlwatts Damn that's unfortunate
I got to use a Xerox Star Workstation back in the early 80’s in their Webster, NY copier testing lab. I had already used and owned a PC (pre-Win 3.11), and had already used an early monochrome Mac. The Star station GUI had nearly exactly the same look and functionality as the Mac, and both made the PC look like a dinosaur. Xerox was using the Stars in-house as development tools, but they clearly were as capable as the early Macs.
How does this only have 5.7k views? When is this channel going to catch?
Think I'm going to go on a Phil Edwards binge... our names having nothing in common :p
And I really appreciate the good subtitles too
But thank you for going more in depth, much of the popular yet poor coverage on the Xerox Alto just basically go "Blah blah Steve Jobs saw it and ripped it off then Microsoft ripped off Apple the end". I've definitely learnt a few new things :)
Jobs struggled with cancer after around 2002, and relied on alternative medicine to treat it for most of his time with the disease. His lack of a belt typically, was speculatively because of abdominal distress, and to avoid putting pressure on his pancreas and connected areas.
Discovered you channel yesterday with the Pentagon video.
Really my jam this channel - thanks UA-cam algorithm
Love your work Phil! Big inspiration 🙂
Honored! Your channel’s my favorite new discovery of the past few months.
Love how Phil talks about hating his turtleneck while not wearing one
A lot of times this story gets told without a really important detail: just how expensive a lot of computer technology was at the time. The Alto, Star, and Lisa were prohibitively expensive at a time when the microcomputers available were relatively cheep. The price of the Alto was staggering, even when compared with the mainframe systems that IBM was selling: basically, a company would have to spend the same amount on purchasing and maintaining an Alto-based system as the salaries and wages of the employees who would be using them. Even the famous Macintosh was too expensive when compared with a similar PC in the mid 1980s, since that was the competition. Yes, GUI systems operate on another level, but even in the early 1990s, the extra capabilities needed to justify the costs were just not something most people were interested in yet.
'The Mother of all Demos' from 1968. The first true glimpse of the future of computers. And it shows how we all react while typing and backspacing...oop..oh...wait...
Wow this guy’s channel is blowing up! Sometime last week it was around 88.8k now it’s up to 95k! Crazy!!
May I quibble? Of course I can. Engelbart was not a "Stanford" researcher. Nope, he worked at what was then known as Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International). Although they shared boards of directors, they were considered separate institutions. That sort of relationship was not unique: MITRE descended from MIT. In both cases, the research companies are now non-profit entities.
PS My father worked at SRI while I was a student of the university.
Very fair quibble! Thanks for noting.
A screen oriented the same way paper is - truly revolutionary. But yes - movies.
Hooray for PoSV! I had a bootlegged vhs of it back in the 90s and absolutely loved it. Does not get enough cred these days!
I even tracked it down a couple years ago just to watch it for fun - totally held up (Anthony Michael Hall killed it, too).
Another great one! 👏
Xerox was asked, by Jobs to build a computer together and corner the market. Xerox's response is studied in the business books as a failure, that was: "We want to be a document company". But, xerox did benefit from the royalty they received from Apple. There are many more instances like this in history. MS for tablets, phones. etc. Apple not buying Tesla because Cook was not willing to consider Musk as the CEO.
Pirates of silicon valley should be required viewing in history class in high school.
It should, but with liner notes to the things it does get wrong and or exaggerates for narrative effect
8:06 that's the music from my school timers and I'm in high school
Everyone imitates the turtleneck, but no one wants the Steve Jobs mom jeans.
What if the mom jeans were the true source of Steves magic?
hey what music did you use during the turtleneck segment toward the end of the video?
Brilliant video. As a history buff myself, I really appreciated this less romanticized, but no less intriguing, take on the Xerox-Apple story.
Words where you pronounce the “x” as a z-sound are the coolest words so I think we all lost out on the ability to say I have a Xerox computer.
Yeah, I guess around Xerox they would insist on calling copies "xerographs" - very fun to say.
Interesting video. I remember the fits and starts of the introduction of the GUI back in the early 80's. I was working on a CP/M machine, but remember reading about and sometimes seeing various implementations. Even before that while I was in high school I got to see and use a Plato system. It was networked, multi user, graphical, and had a touch screen (no mouse), and that was in the mid 70's. So I agree with you, the idea that Xerox invented it, and Apple stole it is mostly hype. I suspect many of the Apple guys who worked on the Lisa and the Mac saw and used Plato and other similar systems. Not to take away from the revolution that was the first Mac, but just to say that the story that Xerox invented it whole cloth and Apple stole it is just not true. What Apple did do, is make it mainstream, easy, intuitive, and accessible to millions. Thanks for the great video!
The "copier-heads" were the Xerox HQ folks back in Rochester NY, who just couldn't figure out what to do with the PARC upstarts 3000 miles away. A lot of innovation comes from independent thinkers who buck the corporate culture of the head office and go their own way. That's why truly astounding new products rarely come from within established corporate giants -- their vision is too burdened by the weight of the existing product lines to clearly see the potential of a new concept. Also, to be realistic, Xerox was never going to sell a sub-$10,000 system. Even Apple couldn't (check the price of the Lisa). The Mac at $2500 was much closer to the PC office & enthusiast markets they were aiming for.
Amazing video, feels like I’m watching a funnier and more personal Vox type documentary video! Keep up the awesome work!
Xerox: *makes revolutionary computer*
Also Xerox: eh forget about it
It would be interesting to consider the difference between the GUI on the Alto and the Mac. On the face of it, the Mac was far simpler hardware wise and thus more reliable than the Alto is/was. Even given all of that, by the 90s, the Mac had almost sunk Apple. By the very nature of having a GUI doesn't mean you win the computing race, no more than the Amiga gave us pre-emptive multitasking or the Acorn Archimedes used ARM processors before the iPhone. As you say, there's a lesson in here about iteration of ideas. Perhaps it's only when they are a 'success' the bittersweet aspect is that they 'disappear' for us. Something must continue, but something must be betrayed, seems to be the name of the game.
One of the earliest ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) users was ... Apple, for the Newton in 1993. ARM just lost internal momentum in the company for a long time when the Newton flopped. But Apple worked with Acorn in 1985 on a never released Apple II replacement powered by ARM and then invested a 43% stake when ARM was spun off into its own company in 1990, which they reduced to about 15% in 1999 when they were flailing and needed to sell stuff off for quick cash ($1 billion for the ARM stock). And the original iPod in 2001 was their first successful ARM product.
Great video! What's the name of the song that came on at 7:22?
Thanks! That is "Another Breath" by Futuremono (all these are by them, and they're all via the free UA-cam Studio audio library.)
I think Steve wore a mock turtleneck
I like the opening song, I used it in a video once. And the second song too! lol.
Worked at Xerox in 90s. Heard stories. SImilar to the half-truths you talk about. Thanks for giving us more to go on.
Finally! Someone who got the Apple story right. 🍎
4:58 look's alot like a multilith printing machine. Whilst there were predecessors for example small hand letterset, roneo, etc multilith was pretty much the mainstay of small printshops.. Democractising an industry where costs and barriers to entry were high. That same industry was pretty much wiped by Xerox copiers and Lazer printers.
Long-time Apple fans know about Xerox Parc, etc. We also know that Xerox didn’t show the Alto and other technology to Apple for free, and that the Star was underpowered, less polished, and far more expensive than the original Mac. The title is clickbait, and the video itself could be far more concise.
In retrospect, I realize now that this video isn’t targeted to long-time Apple fans.
HATES BELT! A more complex story indeed.
Hope your channel blows up.
Xerox had a truly brilliant idea in creating the Palo Alto Research Center - or - PARC. But yes - they were a copier company that didn't understand how to use the research their wonderful Research Center had done.
Now though - here is why the Xerox Star and the Apple Lisa failed. Money. They just cost to darn much. I don't remember how much it was - but it was A LOT.
There was a later time when different companies created Work Stations - that were very High End computers - and these were used by people and organizations that desperately needed the power of these systems and - most importantly - could pay for it.
Most people and businesses couldn't.
The real thing that happened here - was not that someone came up with these great ideas - but - that gradually, over time - technological development - got the prices down and these once unaffordable systems became ... affordable.
THAT is what really happened here.
It isn't just that someone came up with a new, powerful way of doing things - it's that technology got to where people could afford the machines that could make those things happen.
And THAT - is the reason Microsoft - not Apple - won the Operating System Wars. Windows Rules and the Mac OS - is now ... Unix ... (last I checked ....).
Microsoft was aware of what these new things were - but - they concentrated on making Windows a system that could run on relatively cheap computers - compared to the Apples.
The Mistake Apple made - was assuming their competitor was IBM - when it wasn't. They were charging a price for their Systems which was competitive with the IBM Systems - but NOT - with the IBM Clones.
Compaq was the first firm to reverse engineer the IBM BIOS - which was the only part of the IBM PC that IBM actually had a creative legal hold on. IBM had not designed all the hardware for their PC themselves - they'd used off the shelf components that anyone could buy (because they were cheaper) - but they did still have legal rights to the BIOS.
After Compaq reverse engineered the IBM BIOS - they could make IBM Compatible Computers - that would run all the same software as the IBM's.
Microsoft also had legal rights to the Operating System. That means - that they could sell Microsoft DOS or MSDOS to anyone running an IBM Compatible Computer.
Thus - IBM had lost the bubble. The platform ... the Industry Standard Architecture IBM had created - now belonged to everybody.
And - everybody and their brother took advantage of it.
When IBM tried to take back their status as Industry Leader - the Industry Standard - won out. The Clones ruled and PS/2 systems failed.
THIS was the reason everyone and their brother could own a computer. If all this hadn't happened the way it did - things could be very different than they are.
Then an other technological threshold was reached and - Smart Phones - became a thing.
.
We have to go deeper!
Brooks shoes are 100x better than new balance. Gratz on your Brooks. They cured my shin splints when playing netball, and since I converted, I have better ankles and knees. Brooks are a life saver in a sport that is as bad on my knees as soccer.
Great job sweeping the myths away and looking at the organic trajectory Apply had. I went to work for Xerox in 1985 and had those systems - multiple systems at/on my desk. I like your take on the Apple evolution that had to take place to make an economically viable product - many approaches to the market before the recipe evolved to just the right thing. For a good 5-10 years Apple found its footing against the IBM PC - it only had 20% of the market back then and everyone thought it had topped out. The eventual rebirths of the company would make a good follow-on to this video.
That's Louis Giambalvo in the Xerox Alta ad!
I would argue that it wasn't the Mac that made Apple what it was today ... they went really close to being irrelevant under Sculley ... it was the iPhone and iPod that Jobs pushed on his return that caused Apple to grow to the insanely large company it it today. That occurred when people didn't view computers anymore as boxes ... they were fashion and the Apple Brand matters to so many people.
thanks phil! i also dont like turtle necks...i used to call them choke-ups as a kid! lol
I am suspicious of any adult man who doesn’t wear a belt, elastic closures, nor suspenders. Why are they willing to have their pants drop at random times?
The story that people rarely talk about when it comes to what Apple first did with the GUI and their half WYSIWYG is the story of the development team of the Lisa and then the Macintosh. It's not very "hollywood" of a story but it's a great one nonetheless. It gets overlooked quite a bit. Jobs really did pit the Mac dev team against the Apple // team and on it's own it was a David vs Goliath battle inside of the battle of Jobs vs IBM (and eventually Microsoft) as a whole.
Love your style of video of man, though it would of been good if you had gone a little more into depth into why Xerox's and other companies gui computers failed to take off before the macintosh stole the show.
Yeah that's a good question. I guess the honest truth is I didn't have enough time to nail down why (especially with the somewhat confounding failure of the LISA). My guess might be that the lower cost Mac targeted consumers rather than offices - and that started a consumer-led surge in computer popularity (since I gather consumers have led a lot of corporate tech transitions). But that's just a hot take.
Dude! I had to watch a VOLVO AD before I could watch your video. Hopefully that bodes well for you being monetized AF. I'll watch this video a couple of times in support the following goal: MAKE PHIL RICH! RICH ENOUGH TO DUMP VOX!
Wow this Volvo news hurts my Subaru owning heart, but I’ll take it.
I can’t wait to see the day when your videos get hundreds of thousands of views regularly!