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From: berry@tolerant.UUCP (David Berry)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Re: DRI agrees to change GEM ; why??
Message-ID: <174@tolerant.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Oct-85 05:16:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: tolerant.174
Posted: Mon Oct 14 05:16:02 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Oct-85 08:11:16 EDT
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Organization: Tolerant Systems, Inc.  San Jose, CA
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The opinions expressed below are mine, and not necessarily those of my
employer or even of Tolerant Systems.

> If I were to go out and design a work station that copied the Xerox star
> interface, right down to the icons, I would expect to get sued.  However,
> I would have no qualms about using some of the ideas that Xerox developed
> (and Apple refined) in developing a mouse based interface.  Look carefully
> at Xerox products, then look at the Mac.  The lineage is evident, and,
> though many argue that the Lisa and Mac "stole" ideas from Xerox, few claim
> that Apple did a wholesale rip-off of the Xerox interface.  Yes, they both
> use mice and window, and menus of differing flavors, but nobody is going to
> confuse a Star with a Mac.  Now look at GEM, compare it to the Mac user
> interface, and see it you can make the same statements.

Another point which I don't remember having seen yet is that Apple has
licensed the Xerox Star user interface for usage in the Lisa/Macintosh.
I don't remember where I picked up this tidbit but it was probably in
a very early issue of MacWorld.


David W. Berry