Quote:
Originally Posted by cptjohnstone
let me see if my history is right
Steve Jobs gets Xerox to give him their plans for a mini pc
Bill Gates and Paul Allen worked for Jobs and decided to start their own company, Microsoft?
I remember the old Mdoss (?) when I could program a screen with a list of programs, A-E enter the letter and it took you to the program
All Microsoft did in the BEGINNING was put nice little colored icons on the screen
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Nope, Jobs stole NOTHING from Xerox. In fact he was
invited to view the icon concept Xerox was developing for their next generation of copiers and the Xerox Alto.
From Wikipedia ...
There is still some controversy over the amount of influence that Xerox's
PARC work, as opposed to previous academic research, had on the GUIs of Apple's
Lisa and
Macintosh, but it is clear that the influence was extensive, because first versions of Lisa GUIs even lacked icons. These prototype GUIs are at least mouse driven, but completely ignored the
WIMP concept. Rare screenshots of first GUIs of Apple Lisa prototypes are shown
here and
here. Note also that Apple engineers visited the PARC facilities (
Apple secured the rights for the visit by compensating Xerox with a pre-IPO purchase of Apple stock) and a number of PARC employees subsequently moved to Apple to work on the Lisa and Macintosh GUI. However, the Apple work extended PARC's considerably, adding manipulatable icons, a fixed drop-down menu bar and
drag&drop manipulation of objects in the file system (see
Macintosh Finder) for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...user_interface
Apple gave Xerox stock for the concept, all on the up and up. Now whether Gates "stole" the concept from his friend Jobs is another story. Jobs himself said that (once all the BS lawsuits between Apple and Microsoft were settled) Xerox made a mistake by not copyrighting the concept.
and No, neither Gates or Allen ever worked for Jobs. EVER.
Paul Allen was hired into MITS,
[31] and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque.
[31] Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.
[31] Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates