Richard Crowley wrote:

Somewhere around here I have a very old copy of a Scientific
American magazine with an article on the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC). It showed all the things we now
take for granted, overlapping, resizable windows, use of a
mouse and cursor, etc. etc. In the back of the same magazine
is a small 1-column ad with a picture of the "Apple-1" PC
board likely taken in Steve Jobs' garage. Apple and MS
both derived the idea of windows from Xerox. That is why
Apple's suit against MS for "stealing windows" was a big
steaming crock, and the courts agreed.

Yes, but Apple paid licensing to Xerox for the use of the concept, and
Microsoft did not.

That said, my department had a Xerox Star in college, and I thought the
whole GUI notion was a lousy one. Much more cumbersome than a command
line. But then, I still think so.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."