Xerox PARC turns 40

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Peter Everhard
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Xerox PARC turns 40

The Pirates of Silicon Valley
There is a famous scene in The Pirates of Silicon Valley, the tv movie about the early days of the PC, in which Steve Jobs confronts Bill Gates about Stealing Technology from Apple. Without blinking, the Gates character tells the Jobs character that Apple stole it from Xerox

Computerworld - For 40 years, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (commonly called Xerox PARC, now just PARC) has been a place of technological creativity and bold ideas. The inventions it has spawned, from Ethernet networking to laser printing and the graphical user interface (GUI), have led to myriad technologies that allow us to use computers in ways that we take for granted today. Computerworld

John Seely Brown on Xerox inviting Steve Jobs to tour its technology
The former chief engineer at legendary tech incubator Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) explains why Apple and Microsoft didn't steal from him the ubiquitous point-and-click computer interface - contrary to urban legend. And Brown shares his thoughts on how videogames like "World of Warcraft" cultivate valuable social skills in children. CLICK HERE

The Pirates of Silicon Valley

The music licensing fees for the movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley must have cost a considerable amount of money. The movie is worth seeing again just for the music. The movie ends with "Burning Down The House" playing.

I'm fairly sure that Apple licensed some GUI technology to Microsoft. So, Microsoft Windows could not have come as that much of a surprise to Apple (as represented in the movie). And, as indicated above, Xerox invited Jobs to tour PARC in exchange for stock in Apple. "Pirates" represents that Jobs "raided" technology from PARC - in accordance with PC Lore. Also,

I remember reading somewhere that Hewlett Packard was an early investor in Apple Computers. In the movie "Pirates", Hewlett Packard is presented as an employer of Wozniak who had first dibs on anything Wozniak created but HP wasn't interested in the Apple Computer. In fact, Hewlett Packard, or at least the men who founded Hewlett Packard, had a reputation in Silicon Valley for funding a lot of innovative startup companies. The idea that the founders of Hewlett Packard were stuffy "suits" who could not see the potential of the personal computer does not really jive with what I've read about HP.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Interview

You know, when you are talking to two people who know each other intimately, you can never really be sure of what is being communicated. For example,

I just watched an interview with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and, on the surface, it all seems very cordial and friendly. However, there are some things about Steve Jobs , Apple and Bill Gates that I know about which seem (to me at least) to be tiny little insults being traded, mostly by Bill Gates against Steve Jobs. For example,

1. When asked what they admire about each other, Bill Gates said that he admired Steve Job's taste. There is a video clip of Steve Jobs on youtube insulting Microsoft in an interview by saying that Microsoft had no taste and that, as a result, all of Microsoft's products were third rate.

2. Most people who know anything at all about Apple Computer know that Apple was big in education because Apple was essentially locked out of the business market by Microsoft and IBM. At one point in the interview between Gates and Jobs, Gates says that Microsoft was targeting the education market with its technology because nothing much was being done in that segment.

I'm sure there are more little "digs" that were traded back and forth between Gates and Jobs in this interview that only they know about.

Peter Everhard
My Forum @ Drama NYC ™