Picked up an Interesting piece in The Guardian the other day talking about the well known story of Steve Jobs visiting PARC (Xerox's research center in Palo Alto) and being blown over by his first look at a GUI. So much so, that he immediately got his engineers working on its development, first with the Lisa... Remember that? Then in the Mac.
As the article points out, he missed the significance of other PARC riches, including Ethernet, OOP, scaleable type, laser printing etc, etc. Nearly all of which were brought to life by PARC engineers after they had left and started their own companies.
Funny thing is though... PARC is still there and still being funded to the tune of many millions a year by Xerox. And they've been doing it for thirty years. Unlike many other companies that merely pay lip service to research. Wonder how much Apple spends in comparison to Xerox?
George Parker
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