Xerox a company more known for Business printers and photocopiers, and are not the first, second or even third company that springs to mind when you think of the pioneers of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) aka the fancy stuff on your computers and gadgets. Back in the mid 70’s Xerox created a division of its corporation named PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre) a research and development centre, some of their more know achievement through the years are Laser Printers, Bitmap Graphics and the GUI. In 1973 PARC created their first functional Personal computer named Alto it came complete with three button mouse and a graphical user interface.
Parc were asked to show their research to Xerox, Xerox weren't aware just what they had. Apple at the time was one of the hottest tech companies in the country, and everyone wanted a piece of it, Jobs heard of PARCS achievements and wanted the tech, so he proposed that he would allow Xerox to buy a hundred thousand shares of his company for a million dollars if PARC gave him full access to the GUI. Steve Jobs took a group of Apple engineers and executives on a tour of PARC, Jobs was given full access to view and try the Alto, he then used the PARC GUI he saw to create the Apple Lisa which was the original Macintosh OS. In 1981 PARC introduce the Star the successor to the Alto this came with double click mouse function and overlapping windows functions what we take for granted on our devices now.
Mac I see Windows….
The next project of Apple was to be the Macintosh, from the success of Lisa the Mac would be even bigger and better which is why Steve Jobs took personal control overseeing the Macintosh development process. Jobs was a bit of a slave driver working his Mac team up to 90 hours a week. The Macintosh was about a year from completion when Jobs met with Microsoft, he showed gates and his team the pre-production Mac computer and Gates went to work selling to Steve Jobs that Microsoft would be a great asset with their software they could develop for Apple Jobs then gave Microsoft a loan of 3 of the new Macs.
Mac I see Windows….
The next project of Apple was to be the Macintosh, from the success of Lisa the Mac would be even bigger and better which is why Steve Jobs took personal control overseeing the Macintosh development process. Jobs was a bit of a slave driver working his Mac team up to 90 hours a week. The Macintosh was about a year from completion when Jobs met with Microsoft, he showed gates and his team the pre-production Mac computer and Gates went to work selling to Steve Jobs that Microsoft would be a great asset with their software they could develop for Apple Jobs then gave Microsoft a loan of 3 of the new Macs.
Microsoft were trying to create their own version of the Mac OS, Steve Jobs was getting suspicious of Microsoft and called Bill Gates in for a meeting, Gates convinced Jobs that nothing untoward was going on. At a Mac conference Jobs and Gates had a meeting in Jobs’s conference room, he confronted Gates with an NEC PC running windows OS.
Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him. Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. “You’re ripping us off!” he shouted
“I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!” Gates just sat there coolly, looking Steve in the eye, before hurling back, in his squeaky voice, what became a classic zinger. “Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it. 3 months after this Steve Jobs was fired from Apple and Windows was the OS of the PC.
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