Xerox PARC: the minds behind the GUI, ethernet, laser printing & more

Yes, a really great place that had a lot of good ideas and products that Gates and Jobs could build their companies from in the 70's. Between the hardware Xerox came up with and the Software (GUI)... Wondering If Hewlett or Packard visited the place too and got the idea of the laser printer and expensive ink/toner from them.
 
Thank goodness there are still a few people around who recognize how much bs has been shoveled around about Apple and Steve Jobs. Since his death, Steve Jobs and Apple have been credited with inventing everything from the personal computer to the internet. And I'm really tired of hearing such lies. Unfortunately the very young and the uninformed believe most of that crap so it's refreshing to see the truth in print for a change. Go Xerox!
 
It's about vision and marketing.
EXACTLY. The better mouse trap seldomly wins, but the better marketing team almost always does.

Back when the Big Blue Mainframe was THE system (aka System/360) companies were afraid of being locked into IBM (justly so too).
However, no manager was ever fired because he/she bought IBM - - the same could not be said for the competition.

Xerox PARC management just didn't have the vision to see the ubiquitous nature of PCs; a sin that neither Gates nor Jobs suffered from.
 
I was a Xerox employee for 43 years and saw upper management run the company into the ground.Not using all the technology that was invented at Parc was only part of their mistakes. The company, Xerox, is only a shell of what is used to be. They no longer care about their employees current or retired.
 
1949pilot

The sad thing is that Xerox is still out there, clawing their way to the bottom. When I started with them in 1972 they were 95 cents of every dollar spend worldwide for copying. Now they are in fourth place-being led down the path by the three musketeers. Sad indeed.
 
1949 pILOT, I too worked at Xerox, Cleveland Oh. Diamond Shamrock Bldg. LOVED it. I was amazd at the TECH being invented or enhanced. The STAR 8010. Networking. Mice. Problem is as someone said, TOP Management was selfServing. To think, had THEY beeen thinkers, they'd be FABULOUSLY rich as well as famous. Greed. Stupidity.
Amazing how Apple's founder admitted ( youtube " I hired the wrong Guy ) Seeing this and having an Epiphany. Yet HE and HIS company is credited as creating the entire Nice. APPLE as JOBS admits OWES it LIFE to XEROX. JOBS admits it in th e interview. SOmhow I missed the HAND-HELD device . NEAT ONE.
 
Too bad they have been ahead of their time. I guess such inventions won't pay big until they invent time travel. Think about it...
 
Thank goodness there are still a few people around who recognize how much bs has been shoveled around about Apple and Steve Jobs. Since his death, Steve Jobs and Apple have been credited with inventing everything from the personal computer to the internet. And I'm really tired of hearing such lies. Unfortunately the very young and the uninformed believe most of that crap so it's refreshing to see the truth in print for a change. Go Xerox!

Particularly since Jobs was just the Ad man at Apple when he and Wozniak started Apple. While Jobs lead the teams on the McIntosh, he certainly was not the brains behind it. That's not to take away from his leadership, but far too many people have been mislead into believing he was some kind of computer genius. Once Woz was booted out of the company, all Apple products became "closed systems" making it difficult to play with the guts, which most of us really enjoyed about the Apple, Apple ][ and Apple ][e. Contrary to popular belief, the Apple ][e could sit on the Apple Talk network and one little known fact was that the first IBM System 38 network was created by Apple to run their then factories ..... lots of innovation, but it didn't come from the top, not by any means.
 
We owe a lot to the bright minds at Xerox. On the managerial side though, with the benefit of hindsight admittedly, there were some colossal misses at capitalizing on the talent they had and the products they developed.
 
Almost every 'seminal' work has a predecessor, perhaps hidden, perhaps suppressed. Xerox was probably not the birthplace anymore than Apple. There were almost certainly many unsung minds whose innovative ideas informed the moneyed development of the 'official' creators. No matter, we have 'the stuff'.
 
I was a Xerox employee for 43 years and saw upper management run the company into the ground.Not using all the technology that was invented at Parc was only part of their mistakes. The company, Xerox, is only a shell of what is used to be. They no longer care about their employees current or retired.

I started in the photocopying machine business in 81. I remember how hard it was to compete against X-Rocks
because they even had the "brand" of "I need you to xerox this". But, I guess as you say, their upper management didn't know what they had, sat back on what they had and the competition just crushed them.
 
I wonder if they still kick themselves over the fact that they basically just gave what would become windows and the mouse away for free.
Maybe thats why they are more known as a copy machine instead of a computer company, thats gotta hurt a little.
 
Not exactly a household name that the generation younger than me will recognize, but I remember even as late as Windows XP, there was a default folder in the system named Xerox, that had a lot of system files that were needed for imaging licensed to Microsoft. Not only that, but I believe Windows even had support up through XP for a lot of the legacy Xerox protocols before TCP/IP was the standard (I think there was even support built in for Novell but that might have been removed before XP).
 
If it was up to Xerox, we'd still be using command line on our computers. OK, realistically someone else would have thought up the same thing later but good ideas are just that. Ideas. You also need someone to take the risk to implement them and at least for the GUI, that was Jobs and Apple.
 
Kinda sad that Xerox is best known as a copy machine brand rather than an innovator in personal computing.

Our company "took on" xerox copiers a couple years ago. Their hardware is pretty good. Their SUPPORT system (technical support) is terrible. Heck, they still mandate that you use internet explorer to load their service manuals! And, they have to include a repair utility so that after a windows 10 update breaks it so the IE interface stops working, you have to run the repair utility to make it work again.
 
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