[discostu]

Actually the move to point-and-click was about capturing the home market. Corporations didn't mind the difficult computer interfaces because at that point very little of their business had moved to computers and there was no problem with their computer using employees having to be smart. But the home market didn't like the blank screen and the blinking cursor, the big question the home market had for computers was "what do I do with it" and the c-prompt was incapable of answering that question, but a GUI with all your programs arranged nicely by category could answer it. Also the home market didn't want to have to spend hours learning wierd stuff, they wanted a simple appliance no more difficult than their TV or microwave (actually they still want that, the industry is getting closer).

[theFIRMbss]

>Actually the move to point-and-click was about capturing the home market. Corporations didn't mind the difficult computer interface . . .

No. You're not seeing
the big picture. LONG before
ease-of-use made news

for home machines, Wang
revolutionized office
work with their systems.

Every company
was trying to duplicate
Wang's penetration

of the corporate world.
All the graphic elements
of home systems first

appeared in elite
corporate machines like the Star,
research systems like

the Smalltalk machines
and Lisp Machines targeting
defense contractors.

The home market was
a natural follow-on
to all the work done

to expand the Wang
success through the corporate world.
That's where the bucks were