Lots of stuff we take for granted today was created at PARC. Jobs more or less “appropriated” the GUI from the Alto systems that had become standard issue at PARC by the time he first went there. When he couldn’t get everything he wanted he started poaching the engineers who designed the tech in the Alto to work on the Lisa and, later, the Macintosh. He might have seen the commercial potential, but he didn’t invent it like so many would have us believe.
I saw a video somewhere of a guy at a computer group meeting demonstrating a computer with GUI, mouse, icons, point and click. Late 60s or early 70s
Jobs paid them, in pre issue apple stock. Which they sold after the IPO. Your appropriated comment makes it sound like he snuck in and stole it. They let him and his team in, no notes allowed.
Now purloining employees with offers is fair game. Done all the time in a capitalist society.
XEROX screwed up by not recognizing what they had and capitalizing on it.
Jobs didn’t have that problem.
XEROX screwed up just like Kodak did. Now iPhones and other camera phones are the point and shoot camera for the masses. And the iPhone *itself*, has revenues that surpass those of the entire companies of Microsoft, Boeing, P&G, Cisco, McDonalds and the like.