undefined | Better HN

0 pointsfatneckbeard2y ago0 comments

sri was never gonna allow a bunch of hippies and bearded longhairs tour their facility in the spirit of academic comradeship. (IE no microsoft, no apple being allowed to walk around and talk to people in the 80s to get the ideas for Macintosh and Windows)

Ironically, Apple and Microsoft would never allow some stranger company to walk into their offices and see everything they were developing either. lol

0 comments

retrocryptid2y ago

By the time apple was founded, many (most) of the people doing research that would be of interest to Jobs had already moved over to PARC. Larry Tesler springs immediately to mind, but Thierry Bardini's book on Engelbart has a more complete list. After the ARC fell apart in 1970, PARC was launching and was a natural place for them to land.

AlbertCory2y ago

Xerox had two meetings with Apple, in December 1979. Neither they nor Microsoft was ever able to "walk into their offices and see everything they were developing ."

smilespray2y ago

Come on. Xerox gave away the crown jewels in those meetings.

AlbertCory2y ago

https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight

"It's a good story. Unfortunately, it's also wrong in almost every way a story can be wrong."

Full details at https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

and there are many other references on the Web about that visit.

2 more replies

retrocryptid2y ago

Xerox was paid for the crown jewels and according to Larry Tesler, it didn't take any arm-twisting to get him to move to Apple as Xerox was dragging their feet commercializing PARC's innovations.

pnw2y ago

Xerox received Apple stock for those meetings which they sold in the IPO. I’ve never seen anyone do a calculation of the present value of that stock but it’s probably a significant fraction of Xerox’s market cap today.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsfatneckbeard2y ago0 comments

Ironically, Apple and Microsoft would never allow some stranger company to walk into their offices and see everything they were developing either. lol

0 comments

retrocryptid2y ago

AlbertCory2y ago

Xerox had two meetings with Apple, in December 1979. Neither they nor Microsoft was ever able to "walk into their offices and see everything they were developing ."

smilespray2y ago

Come on. Xerox gave away the crown jewels in those meetings.

AlbertCory2y ago

https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight

"It's a good story. Unfortunately, it's also wrong in almost every way a story can be wrong."

Full details at https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

and there are many other references on the Web about that visit.

2 more replies

retrocryptid2y ago

Xerox was paid for the crown jewels and according to Larry Tesler, it didn't take any arm-twisting to get him to move to Apple as Xerox was dragging their feet commercializing PARC's innovations.

pnw2y ago

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse