It is claimed again and again that in the course of the Macintosh’s development, Apple just resorted to the ideas the research laboratory Xerox PARC had hatched before. Fact or Fiction?
In the USA, the brand name “Xerox” denotes photocopying just as “Kleenex” stands for tissues or “Scotch tape” for adhesive film. After all, already in 1950, the Xerox Corp. was the world’s first company to actually transfer the “Xerography” invented by the American law student Chester Carlson into a functional product.
By the end of the sixties, the Xerox management sensed the threat of Japanese companies catching up on Xerox’s technological advantage. Moreover, the Xerox head worried that the “paperless office” might emerge with the following computer generations, in which the Xerox would no longer have a place. Against this background, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California was founded in 1971.
John Warnock, former researcher in the Xerox PARC and later one of the two founders of Adobe Systems, remembers: “The atmosphere was electric – there was total intellectual freedom. There was no conventional wisdom; almost every idea was up for challenge and got challenged regularly.” Larry Tessler, who later took part in developing the Macintosh and the Newton PDA at Apple, also enjoyed the liberties the PARC provided in the seventies: “The management said go create the new world. We don’t understand it. Here are people who have a lot of ideas and tremendous talent, [are] young, energetic.” The problem, however, was that the company management at the East Coast of the USA did not [care a straw for] the PARC’s research results unless they were directly involved with photocopiers.
In his TV documentation “Triumph of the Nerds” Robert Cringley is interviewing researchers at the Xerox PARC
Within two years, the researchers at the PARC had designed the Alto, which was something like the first personal computer. The Alto did not feature character-oriented graphics, as did all the other computers of that time, but a bit-oriented version instead. A high quality printer could print exactly what the screen displayed.
Xerox Alto
However, this marvelous machine was not freely available on the market. Approximately 1500 units had been produced, 1000 of which Xerox employed in-house; the rest went to universities and public authorities.
An advertising spot for the Xerox Alto taken from Robert Cringley’s TV documentation “Triumph of the Nerds“.
Jef Raskin, who had been charged initially with the Macintosh project at Apple, kept regular contact to the PARC researchers and tried to convince the Apple management to employ a graphical user interface like the Alto contained in the development of the Lisa.
Raskin claimed he wanted to introduce Jobs to the PARC, but due to his personal dislike of Raskin, Jobs simply did not agree to respond to the offer. According to Raskin, it was not until Bill Atkinson supported him that Jobs set out for the PARC. Whatever way the contact was actually accomplished, this visit meant a turning point to the life of Steve Jobs; the three technologies that the 24-year-old encountered there were each revolutionary on their own: the first graphical user interface for computers; networked Alto computers; and object-oriented programming.
Even 17 years after this visit, Jobs can still remember it exactly:
They showed me really three things. But I was so blinded by the first one I didn’t even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object oriented programming – they showed me that but I didn’t even see that. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system… they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn’t even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they’d done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn’t know that at the time but still thought they had the germ of the idea was there and they’d done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day.
Adele Goldberg
Jobs decided to realign Apple’s strategy and fully rely on the “graphical user interface” (GUI) he had seen at the Xerox PARC. Adele Goldberg, who had been a researcher at the PARC at that time, already suspected that Jobs’ visit would entail extensive consequences: “He came back, and I almost said ‘asked’ but the truth is ‘demanded,’ that his entire programming team get a demo of the Smalltalk System, and the then head of the science center asked me to give the demo because Steve specifically asked for me to give the demo, and I said ‘no way.’ I had a big argument with these Xerox executives, telling them that they were about to give away the kitchen sink, and I said that I would only do it if I were ordered to do it, cause then, of course, it would be their responsibility, and that’s what they did.”
Larry Tessler, Adele Goldberg and Steve Jobs about “Apple and Xerox” (taken from: Triumph of the Nerds)
Apple bought access to the PARC by means of a stock deal that seemed lucrative to the Xerox managers on the East Coast: They might buy 100,000 Apple stocks for one million dollars. Holding this admission ticket in the hand, Steve Jobs, Apple’s president Mike Scott, Bill Atkinson, and a number of members of the developing team marched up. “I think mostly … what we got in that hour and a half was inspiration and just sort of basically a bolstering of our convictions that a more graphical way to do things would make this business computer more accessible.”
Larry Tesler, who then took part in the demo as an employee of the PARC, had been fascinated by the visitors: “After an hour looking at demos, they understood our technology and what it meant, more than any Xerox executive understood after years of showing it to them.”
The Macintosh team took up the ideas of the PARC, but it also changed numerous operating modes and added countless new features. Accordingly, the Xerox Alto did not imply, for example, menus flapping down from the upper edge of the screen, but operated with some kind of a pop-up window instead. Moreover, the window did not open automatically by double-clicking on a document, but had to be opened manually. During months of painstaking work, Atkinson had written the QuickDraw routine for the Lisa and the Macintosh, which allowed for overlapping windows to be drawn on the computer screen for the first time.
The screen of the Xerox Star
In contrast to the first Mac, the Alto featured no completed desktop metaphor nor ingenious desktop icons such as the trash can, which made it easier to delete files, and not just for computer novices. The historical accomplishments of the Mac team also included the Macintosh Human Interface Guide, which, for instance, when it detected a document in a Macintosh application, determined that it was to be saved using the command “Apple-S.”
As for Xerox, the bitter aftertaste of having missed an historical opportunity remained, particularly due to the fact that parallel to the Apple developers, Bill Gates and his Microsoft crew also went in and out as they pleased. (By the way, they did so without holding an admission ticket comparable to the one Jobs had procured by means of the stock deal.)
“Basically, they were copier heads that just had no clue about a computer or what it could do. And so they just grabbed defeat from the greatest victory in the computer industry. Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry today,” Steve Jobs said in 1996. “Could have been, you know, a company ten times its size. Could have been IBM – could have been the IBM of the nineties. Could have been the Microsoft of the nineties.”
Besides, in the context of the dispute with Apple about the plagiarism accusations around the first Windows versions, Microsoft had pointed out that Apple and Microsoft had both helped themselves generously at XEROX. This episode is described slightly exaggeratedly in the movie “Pirates in the Silicon Valley”:
James Turner from O’Reilly News interviewed Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original designers of the Macintosh and author of the book, Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made, which chronicles the efforts to create the Mac. Andy Hertzfeld currently works at Google as a Software Engineer. In this Interview James Turner asked some questions about Xerox PARC and the development of the Mac:
JT: In your book you allude to Xerox as being, to Bill Gates, the rich uncle that both Apple and Microsoft stole from. What was the relationship like with PARC when you were developing the Mac and how did the Xerox researchers feel about the Mac?
AH: Well, we had no formal relationship with PARC while we were developing the Mac. We got a single demo before the Mac project got off the ground, when the LISA project, that sort of cousin or bigger brother of the Mac, was in development. And so from that one demo we were already pointed in that direction but I would say that Xerox PARC demo galvanized and reinforced our strong opinion that the graphic user-interface was the way to go. And then the influence of PARC was strong in the project, but not through a formal relationship with PARC; more through PARC people getting wind of what we were doing and coming to work at Apple. The very first one was Tom Malloy on the LISA project. He was sort of a disciple of Charles Simonyi–I write about that a little bit in my book. He was one of the original LISA people who came to Apple in 1978. But later, Larry Tessler was a really key figure coming to the LISA team in the summer of 1980 from Xerox PARC and eventually, mostly after the original Mac shipped, there were a dozen or more. Another person I have to mention is Bruce Horn who started working at Xerox PARC when he was 14 years old; he was one of those kids they picked from a Palo Alto High School to teach Smalltalk to and he was one of the four or five key Macintosh developers. And of course he was steeped in all of the PARC values and through Bruce, a lot of them made it into the Macintosh.
JT: Was there any feeling among the Apple engineers that any – guilt is probably too strong a word, but feeling like you know Xerox had these great ideas. I guess Xerox really let them go to waste but–
AH: Oh there was nothing like that; Steve Jobs has a good quote. It’s actually a Picasso quote that he often cites; he cited it at one of our retreats which was sort of good artists copy; great artists steal. And what that means is that when you’re passionate about what you’re doing you’ll take ideas from anywhere and with no guilt. You want to make the best possible thing and that was our mentality.
JT: I have to say I actually worked for Xerox AI Systems in 1986 and it was kind of frustrating because they really had the mentality there that if you couldn’t sell paper and toner for [them] they weren’t interested.
AH: Oh sure. Xerox in a well-documented fashion – they had at least the possibility of having the world at their feet there with the work that Alan Kay and his team did. But yeah; they completely blew it and most of the best PARC people were really frustrated by the Xerox management. There’s no doubt of that; that’s one of the reasons why Steve Jobs is great. You had someone leading the company who could relate to the customers and appreciate things.
By means of the Macintosh, the Apple management planned to prevent the absolute predominance of IBM. Thereby, they all had underestimated Bill Gates and Microsoft.
Apple boss John Sculley’s marketing strategy for the launch of the Macintosh was obvious. The former Pepsi manager, who had been brought to Apple by Steve Jobs, intended to arrange a duel between IBM and Apple, black vs. white, with Apple playing the role of the underdog. Sculley wrote in his book Odyssey:
So we needed a campaign that would focus on a two-horse race to leverage off of Apple’s underdog status. Dozens of other computer companies were coming out with products and I was afraid we were going to get lost in the crowd. If we could create a two-horse race between us and IBM, we might be able to convince people that there are really only two computer companies competing in the marketplace. In any large consumer industry, few people remember the third- or fourth-largest competitor.
In the fight against competitors such as Atari, Commodore, Sinclair and Amstrad, the Apple strategy paid off well. But Sculley, as well as Steve Jobs, had completely underestimated that Microsoft, being an ally from the outset, would, with the aid of Apple, develop into a dominant power of the PC industry and even dwarf IBM.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen had founded Microsoft as a small software company in Albuquerque (New Mexico) in 1975 and developed the programming language BASIC for the legendary computer MITS Altair in collaboration with other co-workers. Due to fortunate circumstances, Microsoft landed the order from IBM to deliver not only BASIC, but also the operating system for the first IBM PC in 1980. In the negotiation phase, the then leading operating system manufacturer Digital Research (CP/M) did not want to engage in page-filling adhesion contracts from IBM – and thus lost this gigantic deal.
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Though Microsoft did not have any operating system at that time, this did not prevent Bill Gates and his companion Steve Ballmer from playing for high stakes while facing IBM. From their neighboring software shack Seattle Computers (in the mean time, Microsoft had moved to the northwest of the USA) they bought all rights for QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for no less than 50,000 dollars in July 1981 and renamed it as MS-DOS. Gates had been clever enough at that time not to have all rights to the system negotiated away by the IBM crew and was therefore able to win clone companies such as Compaq as customers later.
Microsoft then provided their BASIC for the Apple II as well. Therefore, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates constantly ran into each other at that time. “Even before we finished our work on the IBM PC, Steve Jobs came and talked about what he wanted to do, what he thought he could do, sort of a Lisa but cheaper. We said boy, we’d love to help out”, Gates remembers. “The Lisa had all its own applications, but of course they required a lot of memory, ah, and we thought we could do better, and so Steve signed a deal with us to actually provide bundled applications for the first Mac, and so we were big believers in the Mac and what Steve was doing there.”
Bill Gates praising the Apple Macintosh by its launch in January 1984
Apple urgently needed software for the Mac, as there did not yet exist any program for the new system except for their in-house products MacWrite and MacPaint. Gates promised to have the programs Chart and File written for the Mac in addition to the spreadsheet program Excel. Steve Jobs appreciated the risk Microsoft took, but was not content with the first results though. “Most people don’t remember, but until the Mac, Microsoft was not in the applications business… it was dominated by Lotus. And Microsoft took a big gamble to write for the Mac.”
Apple still could have coped well with having given Microsoft’s new application business a leg up. However, Bill Gates had tasted blood in the Macintosh project. Jeff Raikes, who was responsible for the Office business at Microsoft until early 2008, reviews: “And so we got started in early 1982 on our Macintosh software effort and I think at that point in time, you know, it really clicked with Bill that, you know, graphic user interface was going to be the way, the way of the future. But while Bill was having his own GUI revelation, Jobs believed that Apple’s true enemy was IBM.”
Quote of the movie: “Pirates of Silicon Valley” – Microsoft steals from Apple
However, it was not until November 1985 that Microsoft introduced the first version 1.01 of Windows, which was two years after Gates had announced Windows in his first Comdex keynote at the Fall 1983 Comdex in Las Vegas. The system was based on DOS and was incredibly slow, but it reminded one of the Macintosh GUI in some features. In order to prevent Apple from taking legal action, Gates put the screws on Apple boss Sculley. His message was: As soon as Apple sends out the lawyers, Microsoft will immediately stop the development of Word and Excel for the Mac. Since Apple was depending on the Microsoft applications, Sculley licensed some of the Mac technologies to Microsoft.
As Microsoft went public with the next large version leap of Windows 2.03 at the beginning of 1988, Sculley tried to pull the ripcord and sued Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard for copyright infringement on March 17, 1988. John Sculley had been in a difficult situation, particularly as he had engaged in vague formulations in the contract with Microsoft in 1985, which gave great leeway to Gates and his lot. Moreover, he knew that his chances to win an action against Microsoft had been, purely from a legal viewpoint, not particularly good: “The look and feel, which is how it looks, the experience of using it, was not patentable, but it was copyrightable, but there was no precedent law. This was going to be a precedent setting case.”
Parody of an advertising spot for Windows featuring Steve Ballmer
Bill Gates recalls also reluctant this time.: “But it was a period of five years where, Microsoft er, our whole strategy would have been ruined because Windows was very important to us. (…) We assumed that the lawyers, the judges would all come to the right conclusion which eventually they did.” Sculley: “And Apple lost. But in that period of about six years that this case was going on it may have lulled us into a bit of complacency thinking that we were going to be insulated, you know, from the Windows attack.”
The introduction of Windows 3.1 in 1992 brought Microsoft the breakthrough in the “GUI war.” The system lacked the elegance and usability of the Macintosh system 7.0, but Windows appeared good enough to most PC users. With the help of Windows 95, which had been introduced with gigantic effort on August 24, 1995, Microsoft caught up closer to the Mac and in some aspects even appeared more progressive than the Mac OS, which had become dated in the meantime.
Steve Jobs, who, as the head of NeXT, had observed the advance of Windows from a distance, did not have any kind words for Bill Gates at the launch of Windows 95:
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is – I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product, and you say why is that important – well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that’s where one gets the idea – if it weren’t for the Mac, they would never have that in their products and so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success – I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.
It is claimed that Jobs has apologized to Bill Gates for this remark later.
Steve Jobs about Microsoft (1995)
The relationship between Apple and Microsoft – and thus also the relationship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates – did not get back to normal before the summer of 1997, when Steve Jobs had returned to Apple and engaged in the support of Microsoft in order to make the troubled company profitable again.
Bill Gates on the video screen at the MacWorld Expo 1997 in Boston
Many faithful Apple fans still remember with horror the moment when Steve Jobs announced the former archrival very pragmatically as the knight in shining armor at the MacWorld Expo 1997 in Boston with Bill Gates appearing on an oversized video screen just like “Big Brother.” Introducing Gates, Jobs said: “”We have to let go of the notion that in order to for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. Relationships that are destructive don’t help anybody. The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over.”
Microsoft invested 150 million dollars in 150,000 Apple stocks and, according to certain rumors, paid further 100 million dollars for copyright infringement during the past few years. At the same time, Gates obliged himself to continue the development of the Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office for the Mac for the following five years. Gates drew hisses from the audience of Apple faithful. The crowd also groaned when Steve Jobs said Apple would make Microsoft’s Internet Explorer the default browser for viewing the World Wide Web on Macintosh computers. That development was a blow to Netscape Communications Corp., which made a more popular competing browser and lost later on in the famous “browser war” against Microsoft.
On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of directors after overseeing a 12 year record low stock price and crippling financial losses. Jobs stepped in as the interim CEO to begin a critical restructuring of the company’s product line. He would eventually become CEO and is serving in that position to the present day.
At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be entering into partnership with Microsoft. Included in this was a five-year commitment from Microsoft to release Microsoft Office for Macintosh as well a US$150 million investment in Apple. It was also announced that Internet Explorer would be shipped as the default browser on the Macintosh. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates appeared at the expo on-screen, further explaining Microsoft’s plans for the software they were developing for Mac, and stating that he was very excited to be helping Apple return to success.
Transscript Macworld Expo, Boston, 1997
Steve Jobs:
Now I’d like to talk about meaningful partners. Apple lives in an ecosystem, and it needs help from other partners. It needs to help other partners. And relationships that are destructive don’t help anybody in this industry as it is today. So during the last several weeks, we have looked at some of the relationships, and one has stood out as a relationship that hasn’t been going so well but had the potential, I think, to be great for both companies. And I’d like to announce one of our first partnerships today, a very, very meaningful one. And that is one with Microsoft. I’d like to take you through this. The discussions actually began because there were some patent disputes. And, rather than … [Laughter.] I know. Rather than repeating history, I’m extremely proud of both companies that they have resolved these differences in a very, very professional way. And this has led, I think, to an overall relationship that we’re announcing today that has got several parts to it, and we’re extremely excited about.
First part of it is a patent settlement and cross-license. The two companies have received a full cross-license for all patents that exist and for patents that are filed within the next five years. It has been a very serious patent settlement. The second part of this is, Microsoft is committing to release Microsoft Office on Macintosh for the next five years. They are going to release the same number of major releases as they release on Windows during that time. Their first release, they’re going to target to have it out near the end of the year, it might slip a few months into next year, but they’re working real hard on it, and it looks very, very good. Next, we have taken a look at browsers out there and Apple has decided to make Internet Explorer its default browser on the Macintosh. [Audience boos.] Since we believe in choice, we’re going to be shipping other Internet browsers, as well, on the Macintosh, and the user can, of course, change their default should they choose to. But we believe that Internet Explorer is a really good browser, and we think it’s going to make a fine default browser. Java. We are going to be collaborating with Microsoft on Java to ensure that we can get the best from each other and ensure that there’s compatibility between our virtual machines. We think that will serve everybody’s interests. And lastly, Microsoft is making an investment in Apple. Microsoft is buying $150 million worth of Apple stock at market price. It is non-voting shares. [Cheers] And they’ve agreed not to sell them for at least three years. So what this means is that Microsoft is going to be part of the game with us as we restore this company back to health, have a vested interest in that stock price going up. We’re going to be working together on Microsoft Office, on Internet Explorer, on Java. And I think that it’s going to lead to a very healthy relationship. So it’s a package announcement today. We’re very, very happy about it. We’re very, very excited about it. And I happen to have a special guest with me today via satellite downlink. And if we could get him up on the stage right now …
[Gates appears on screen. Mix of applause and boos.]
Bill Gates:
Some of the most exciting work that I’ve done in my career has been the work that I’ve done with Steve on the Macintosh. Whether it’s the first introduction or doing products like Mac Excel, these have been major milestones, and it’s very exciting to renew our commitment to the Macintosh. We have over 8 million customers using Microsoft software on the Macintosh. We make it very easy for people who use Macintosh to take their, their documents and work with all kinds of machines. We’re very excited about the new release we’re building. This is called Mac Office 98. We do expect to get it out by the end of this year. And we’ve got some, some real exciting features. It’s a product that’s going to require no setup. It’s going to be an easy transition from people in the past. And I think it’s going to really set a new benchmark for doing a good job with performance, and exploiting unique Mac features. In many ways it’s more advanced than what we’ve done on the Windows platform. [Applause.] We’re also excited about Internet Explorer. And we’ve got a very dedicated team that’s down in
California that works on that product. And the code is really specially developed for the Macintosh. It’s not just a port of what we’ve done in the Windows environment. And so we’re pleased to be supporting Apple. We think Apple makes a huge contribution to the computer industry. We think it’s going to be a lot of fun helping out, and we look forward to the feedback from all of you as we move forward doing more Macintosh software. Thanks. [Applause]
Steve Jobs:
Thank you, Bill. You know, where we are right now, is we’re shepherding some of the greatest assets in the computer industry. And if we want to move forward, and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Microsoft to win Apple has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us, that’s great, because we need all the help we can get. And if we screw up and we don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault. It’s our fault. So I think that’s a very important perspective. I think if we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude. We’d like their software. So the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I’m concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, and this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry, to get healthy and prosper again. The last perspective I’d like to leave with you on this is sometimes points of view can really make you look at things differently. Like for me, when I was looking at the statistics and it hit me that Apple is the largest education company in the world, that was like a bolt of lightning. That’s huge. What an incredible base to build off of. Another bolt of lightning is that Apple plus Microsoft equals 100 percent of the desktop computer market. And so, whatever Apple and Microsoft agree to do, it’s a standard. And I think that you’ll see us work with Microsoft more because they’re the only other player in the desktop industry and I think that you’ll want to see Microsoft work with Apple more because Apple is the only other player in the desktop industry. So I hope we have even more cooperation in the future because the industry wants it.
Lastly, I want to just talk a little about Apple and the brand and what it means, I think, to a lot of us. You know, I think you always had to be a little different to buy an Apple computer. When we shipped the Apple II, you had to think different about computers. Computers were these things you saw in movies, they occupied giant rooms. They weren’t these things you had on your desktop. You had to think differently because there wasn’t any software at the beginning. You had to think differently when a first computer arrived at a school where there had never been one before and it was an Apple II. I think you had to think really differently when you bought a Mac. It was a totally different computer, worked in a totally different way, used a totally different part of your brain. And it opened up a computer world for a lot of people who thought differently. You were buying a computer with an installed base of one. You had to think differently to do that. And I think you still have to think differently to buy an Apple computer. And I think the people that do buy them do think differently and they are the creative spirits in this world. They are the people that are not just out to get a job done, they are out to change the world. And they’re out to change the world using whatever great tools they can get. And we make tools for those kinds of people. So hopefully what you’ve seen here today are some beginning steps that give you some confidence that we, too, are going to think differently, and serve the people that have been buying our products since the beginning. Because a lot of times people think that they’re crazy. But in that craziness, we see genius, and those are the people we’re making tools for. Thank you very much.
The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach -- if not the kingdom of Heaven -- the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.
The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.
By the end of the sixties, the Xerox management sensed the threat of Japanese companies catching up on Xerox’s technological advantage. Moreover, the Xerox head worried that the “paperless office” might emerge with the following computer generations, in which the Xerox would no longer have a place. Against this background, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California was founded in 1971.
www.mac-history.de
