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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Wednesday, April 16, 2003Apple, its fans, and revisionist historyApple Computer and, to an even great extent, its fans routinely rewrite history in order to make Apple look like more of an innovator than it is. One recent example is Apple's digital hub strategy, which Apple fans will tell you was ripped off by Microsoft. However, as readers of WinInfo know, Microsoft actually announced its connected home strategy days BEFORE Steve Jobs announced the digital hub at MacWorld SFO 2001. This simple fact doesn't stop crazed Apple fans from trying to change history by misreporting the events that lead both Microsoft and Apple to embrace digital media and home networking, but whatever: The point here is that Apple copies Microsoft and other companies more often than it leads. The ultimate example of this, however, is the Macintosh itself, which was very clearly "influenced" by the various products at Xerox PARC. How this happened has been clearly documented. And yet, in recent days, there's been an attempt to discredit this fact, and make it seem like the Mac and its GUI software was somehow a design inspiration from Steve Jobs and others at Apple. It all started when John Markoff wrote an article for the New York Times that correctly documents how Apple stole ideas from Xerox. This brought the revisionists out of the woodwork, including lead revisionist (and major jackass) Jef Raskin, who likes to take credit for the original Mac development for himself (Raskin was indeed the first person working on the Mac, which under his tutelage was a character-driven computer like the Apple II. Do the math). Anyway, on MacInTouch this week, some clueless readers actually responded to Markoff's article with statements like, "The Lisa project was well underway by the time the Xerox visit [by Jobs and other Apple employees] ... clouding the true extent of the innovation within Apple which was independent of any contact with Xerox... in fact, some accounts of the meeting claim that the Xerox people were greatly impressed with developments at Apple, rather than the other way round." Ah yes. The problem with this reasoning, of course, is that it's untrue. Also, it turns out that this particular poster got his facts from ... yup, Jef Raskin. So today, Bruce Horn, who designed the Mac Finder, set the record straight, however. "I felt Markoff's article was excellent and quite accurate," Bruce says, and he should know. He was at Xerox PARC during the design of the Alto, and at Apple for the Mac. "I do consider that the Mac (and the Lisa before it) is a distinct descendent of the Alto ... Raskin's history is, to put it bluntly, skewed and in places simply incorrect. Iconic displays, popup menus, windows, modeless text editing, direct manipulation user interfaces, etc. were all developed at PARC and SRI well before Raskin ever visited PARC. The Lisa project shifted directions dramatically after Apple visited ... (I was there at that meeting too)... To credit Raskin with these concepts is to fail to credit the original innovators at PARC and SRI, and the people who came from PARC to further their work at Apple." Excellent, and take that, revisionists. And for an interesting historical look at the similarities and differences between PARC's work and Apple's, check out this old article by Horn. [ Posted at 10:36 AM | Permalink ]
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