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Now, try rotating either of those characters on either the screen or printer to another angle. . . the one on the right is far easier to rotate without distortion than the one on the left.

Dude, I am quite good at three dimensional vector math, and I have written a lot of code to rotate, shade, texture map, etc, three dimensional objects. I know Jobs didn't come up with any of it, or even the idea of vector based fonts. Why are you trying to give him credit for this?

This was not trivial, contrary to your dismissive claims and required quite a bit of creativity and the other companies did not figure out how to do it, not because they CHOSE to avoid it, but because they COULD NOT!. So they did not.

This is just a rehash of our previous discussion where everything you said Jobs was involved with, I quickly looked up to discover was all done by other people years before he even came on the scene. Jobs simply sat around demanding his software/hardware engineers implement ideas he had already heard of.

Vector graphics were being used all over the place. Remember the game "SpaceWar"?

1977. Vector Graphics.

And what's this?

Spacewar 1962. Vector Graphics.

FUNCTIONALLY of NO CONSEQUENCE???? You are daft? Do you realize the fantastic increase in productivity What You See Is What You Get" editing brought to editing newspapers, magazines, printing, layout work, advertising, banner, every kind of print production work in time and re-workng when you no longer had to do trial and error cut and paste on a paste board approach?

Now I get it. You don't understand how any of this stuff works. To you, it's just "magic." To me, it's just evolutionary advancements of ideas that had already been implemented elsewhere. Printing WUSIWUG is no great difficulty. The essence of every early graphics system is pixel based graphics. Essentially just contiguous locations in memory. If you can draw it, you can print it. Methods of drawing new, neat little things, are just a question of style, not one of brilliant development. (Again, style over substance.)

IBM chose to do Character generator text because it was cheap, saved memory, and allowed them to think they were promoting a "business" computer, rather than a "toy." They deliberately went a different direction.

But now I get it. You don't grasp the nuts and bolts of how this stuff actually works. You don't have the necessary background to recognize it as iterations of the then current art. To you it seems like evidence of Steve Jobs brilliance, to me it just looks like he could browbeat smarter and more knowledgeable people than he was.

It's an early version of an EMPTY BOX with two micro-switches attached to NOTHING.

Yes. Something of about the caliber of a mind as brilliant as Steve Jobs could have come up with. And they thought of it first! :)

The IBM-PC with a single floppy drive and no monitor when it came out was $2499. Happy?

Who would have wanted one of those? They sucked. I wouldn't have been interested in one of those if they had given it to me. Graphics was always my thing, and IBM graphics deliberately sucked in 1980. They didn't come out with anything remotely interesting until around 1990.

No, in 1977+, the best hobbyist computer was the Apple II. Others came out, many of them quite good, but none could match the advantages Apple had from being first and biggest. IBM was crap during this era. It was great for keeping records, or word processing, but I never had any interest in Data Base or that sort of green eyeshade crap.

No, in 1977+, the best hobbyist computer was the Apple II. Others came out, many of them quite good, but none could match the advantages Apple had from being first and biggest. IBM was crap during this era.

I really don't have the time to educate DiogenesLamp, as his statements are all over the place and non-factual. As for the Apple II being too expensive ("$1500" he says), I bought my 1977 Apple II for $1200. Computers back then were expensive, partly because the RAM chips were expensive. A bank of 16K RAM went for about $500 or more. If you wanted a PC that offered a lot of bang for the buck, it was the Apple II (and yes they were advertised as a "PC" meaning personal computer). IBM wasn't even in the game when Apple was playing until a few years later, and then IBM glommed onto the "PC" name as their own. In many respects, IBM imitated features of the Apple II.

IBM chose to do Character generator text because it was cheap, saved memory, and allowed them to think they were promoting a "business" computer, rather than a "toy."

Their target customers were IBM mainframe shops. The users were using 3270 terminals, and the PC was it's replacement. The 8088 was evolved from the 8008, which was designed to do programmable terminal emulation. That it was purpose-built for business application was not imaginary.

Now I get it. You don't understand how any of this stuff works. To you, it's just "magic." To me, it's just evolutionary advancements of ideas that had already been implemented elsewhere. Printing WUSIWUG is no great difficulty. The essence of every early graphics system is pixel based graphics. Essentially just contiguous locations in memory. If you can draw it, you can print it. Methods of drawing new, neat little things, are just a question of style, not one of brilliant development. (Again, style over substance.)

You are an idiot if you think I think it is "Magic" . . . I was one of 100 High School Students in the United States in the mid 60s selected by Bell Labs to participate in some of their projects such as making our own transistors. . . and then later participate in voice creation via electronics. Don't talk to me about me thinking things are "magic," when you try to tell me that converting vector shaped graphics into EDITABLE text is a trivial evolution of 8x8 grid ASCII code text. It certainly is NOT. . . and no one else was able to do it except Apple in 1984. Even the Lisa did not have that function.

Of course, they are plotted as mere dots on a raster screen, but I really do not think you know the complexities involved in maintaining an EDITABLE, contextual TEXT as a vector graphic. YOU are the one who thinks that's magic. . . just a simple series of easily calculable vectors. . . but now put those on a screen and make them EDITABLE with a keyboard as TEXT, and maintain kerning, spacing, proportion, at all sizes possible. That is not an easy task.

Other computer companies could not do it. You are an asshat if you think they just by-passed the capability because they wanted to make only business computers. Bull SH!T. The make excuses because they could not. Steve Jobs and Apple found a way to do that because Steve Jobs insisted on it. . . he drove it. They could have compromised and made a text only system like Xerox did. They did not. As a result all computers today use the system Steve Jobs forced into existence.

Vector graphics were being used all over the place. Remember the game "SpaceWar"? 1977, vector graphics

. . .

Spacewar 1962. Vector Graphics.

You STILL DON'T GET IT. Easy child's play compared to what I just described.

You don't even understand the acronym of WYSIWYG, a extremely well known term in computers. . . you misspell it "WUSIWUG," and claim it is no great difficulty, when getting a one-to-one relationship to what one sees on a computer screen and what is printed on the output of a printer, much less a high-quality offset four or six color ink Printing press is NOT AN EASY THING to do, nor trivial.

Frankly, even Apple was not perfect at doing it. . . because the early MacIntosh had to use some "screen fonts" to represent some commercially available printer fonts. . . instead of the ones it could draw as vector graphics, because the fontographers who made them, did not provide the vector graphic files for screen display Apple used on their own fonts.

You mentioned the Amiga computer by Commodore. I used a piece of software written by one man, Deron Kazmeier, that eschewed screen fonts entirely, embracing vector fonts completely, and it actually provided the BEST WYSIWYG I have ever seen. . . and could produce documents from the size of a postage stamp to a bill board. . . That software was available for the Mac as well.

No one is saying that Steve Jobs invented vector graphics, nor is anyone saying that Steve Jobs invented Calligraphic Fonts. Both of course predated computers by a long time. What Steve Jobs did was realize that computers were an ideal device to use to display, edit, and even print documents using calligraphic fonts for creating documents in an interactive environment in REAL TIME, in a way that the person doing that creative act could EDIT them as see how they looked on a virtual page without printing them, wasting time, effort, and resources. Jobs made it happen when no one else realized it was even possible.

That is no trivial thing and is the very essence of innovation and invention, regardless of how many people Jobs involved in making it happen. YOU could not have done it, and YOU would not have thought of the idea. . . and no one else in Jobs' milieu thought of it either. That is what made his contribution revolutionary.

And they thought of it first! :)

No, they did not. . . It's a walkie-talkie.

Dick Tracy's 2-way Wrist TV circa-1964, by Chester Gould

But that is STILL FICTION and a long stretch from FAKE to a working product that changes the world of smartphones and how they work, the user interface, their shapes, and even their colors. . . all thanks to the vision of one man, Steve Jobs.

The IBM-PC with a single floppy drive and no monitor when it came out was $2499. Happy?

Who would have wanted one of those? They sucked. I wouldn't have been interested in one of those if they had given it to me. Graphics was always my thing, and IBM graphics deliberately sucked in 1980. They didn't come out with anything remotely interesting until around 1990.

No, in 1977+, the best hobbyist computer was the Apple II. Others came out, many of them quite good, but none could match the advantages Apple had from being first and biggest. IBM was crap during this era. It was great for keeping records, or word processing, but I never had any interest in Data Base or that sort of green eyeshade crap.

Um, no. The Apple II was not the biggest nor best hobbyist computer. That would have been the Commodore C64, was entered in the Guinness Book of World records at 17,000,000, while Apple only made around 6,000,000 of the Apple II, including around 1.5 million of the Apple IIgs. Priced at $695, the C64 was more affordable than the Apple so more hobbyists could afford it. There was more affordable software and more free software as well. I programed for both.