272K views · Jan 4, 2014 · 9:41 · 0 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2016–2025
A short video telling how Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and how Steve Jobs's 1979 visit influenced Apple's Lisa.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN cites it as a reference in debates over how much Apple borrowed from Xerox and what Xerox management failed to see.
“I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface.”HN comment, 2025
“Here is the piece[1] where Adele Goldberg explains how she warned Xerox executives about not giving away the kitchen sink to Steve Jobs”
Adele Goldberg explains warning Xerox about giving Jobs access to their technology.
Here is the piece[1] where Adele Goldberg explains how she warned Xerox executives about not giving away the kitchen sink to Steve Jobs (taken from Robert Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary) [1] this video
Offered alongside other sources as contradicting Gladwell's account of Xerox and Jobs.
Dealers in Lightning would seem to contradict Gladwell's account plus the first video with the others being background. link this video link
“They copied Xerox's Alto idea”
Shows Apple copying Xerox's Alto ideas.
They copied Xerox's Alto idea: this video I have a similar idea, link To build a FOSS Apple, one needs to build what Xerox did: A time machine. link link
“I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface.”
Jobs recounts being blinded by the GUI at Xerox PARC.
To be fair, Steve Jobs acknowledged this in a 1990s interview: "And they showed me, really, three things, but I was so blinded by the first one that I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object-oriented programming. They showed me that, but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was really a networked computer system. They had over 100 Alto computers all networked using email, etc., etc., but I didn't see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I've ever seen in my life." this video Jobs would revisit object-oriented programming and networked computing when he started NeXT in 1985. NeXT is closer to the Smalltalk environment than the original Macintosh was, with its support for networking thanks to its 4.2BSD underpinnings and with its object-oriented APIs and programming environment, coded in Objective-C, which is essentially the Smalltalk object model on top of C. There's another Xerox PARC-inspired technology that was a core part of the NeXT experience: Display PostScript, which was NeXTSTEP's foundation for rendering graphics. While PostScript is an Adobe product, Adobe was founded by the creators of Interpress, an earlier page description language that was a Xerox PARC project. Steve Jobs definitely knew a good thing when he saw it :)
