When a lot of us hear the word "gooey," we think about sticky buns or creamy sugary fillings (yum). Others think "GUI", as in "Graphical User Interface." A GUI is what computer types call the system of icons, taskbars, and other objects that our computers use to display and access information. A few of us may wonder how the GUI came to be. We remember the halcyon days of DOS prompts and command line interactions; some of us then take an aspirin and lie down. Others continue to wonder how exactly we got from esoteric UNIX, CP/M, and DOS commands on green screens to playing with pretty pictures and colorful desktops.
This article tells how the GUI came about. It starts with the (possibly apocryphal) story of how Cro-Magnon Glug accidentally developed the GUI (along with the personal computer). It then takes us through the better-documented days of Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad, Xerox’s PARC lab, Alan Kay’s Smalltalk, and the (possibly even more apocryphal) stories of the rivalry between Jobs’ Apple and Bill Gates’ Microsoft that gave us the Windows and Mac GUI-driven OSs of today. Along the way we’ll learn about the memex, the first wooden mouse, "bit-blitting," the Xerox Star, the Apple Lisa, and what really happened that momentous day in the PARC labs when Steve Jobs and company paid a visit, notepads in hand…
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This article tells how the GUI came about. It starts with the (possibly apocryphal) story of how Cro-Magnon Glug accidentally developed the GUI (along with the personal computer). It then takes us through the better-documented days of Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad, Xerox’s PARC lab, Alan Kay’s Smalltalk, and the (possibly even more apocryphal) stories of the rivalry between Jobs’ Apple and Bill Gates’ Microsoft that gave us the Windows and Mac GUI-driven OSs of today. Along the way we’ll learn about the memex, the first wooden mouse, "bit-blitting," the Xerox Star, the Apple Lisa, and what really happened that momentous day in the PARC labs when Steve Jobs and company paid a visit, notepads in hand…
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