Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!bagate!dsinc!ub!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!mcnc!taco!hobbes!kdarling From: kdarling@hobbes.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: Mac and Amiga (Innovations) Message-ID: <1991Mar15.111919.22673@ncsu.edu> Date: 15 Mar 91 11:19:19 GMT References: <1991Mar13.221028.8703@neon.Stanford.EDU> Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: North Carolina State University Lines: 25 torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie) writes: >Isn't there an urban legend that Apple did indeed license technology >from Xerox before announcing the Lisa. There was mention of this in >one of the books on Silicon Valley, but it seems to be fairly >uncertain whether this is actually true. I'm glad you've got a healthy skepticism about those books. But yes, I believe Apple licensed Smalltalk from Xerox. One of the more interesting interviews in BYTE magazine btw, was with the Lisa team back when it was unveiled... Q: "Do you have a Xerox Star here that you work with?" A: "No, we didn't have one here. We went to the NCC when the Star was announced and looked at it. And in fact it did have an immediate impact. A few months after looking at it we made some changes to our user interface based on ideas that we got from it. For example, the desktop manager we had before was completely different; it didn't use icons at all, and we never liked it very much. We decided to change ours to the icon base. That was probably the only thing we got from the Star, I think. Most of our Xerox inspiration was Smalltalk rather than Star." kevin