“...Jobs... ripped off Xerox.”
How so?
You don’t know that Xerox invented the first GUI?
The Mac interface as in many ways a copy of Xerox heck there is even a video that shows them using the first “mouse” that the speaker says he hopes gets a different name...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6_X04XwrUY8
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_%28company%29 for an overview, and most especially, the Alto and Star. Xerox PARC, Alan Kay and others, can rightfully claim paternity for windowed graphical user interfaces and the mouse.
And Ethernet and the Laser Printer, if anyone is counting.
Whether this is a “rip off” or not is debatable but that Xerox did the R&D is not.
The mouse, the GUI were “borrowed” from PARC/Xerox. The touchpad technology was borrowed as well although improved upon a little. Almost all of that technology has been around for 10 years. Gates also did some liberal borrowing, sometimes from the same sources. Gates actually did develop/coinvent some of the original technology he employed. Considering the economic and business history of the two firms I would say that Gates was more of a genius without the acid than Jobs was stoned. MS thrived and grew while Apple almost went under with their overpriced and proprietary hardware and software. Jobs was probably always a bit jealous and it showed, for instance, when Apple built a huge base of users by giving away hardware and software to schools and then years later sued MS for anti-competitive practices for setting up the same type of program. He was an overhyped, hippie, pimple on the ass of time. By the way; Dennis Ritchie who died the same week was a real inventor and creator of technology without which Apple and MS would have never been successful.
The graphical user interface and the mouse was born at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which was a Xerox R&D facility.
Under duress, the design team was forced to demo it to both Gates and Jobs.
Good movie to watch that is a more than rough approximation of the truth is ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley’.
Excellent movie.