What Lifted Jobs And Gates Out Of Their 8-bit Misery

This is what is. A commercial. In 1979 Xerox introduced its vision for the office of the future. Years ahead of its time, the 1972 Xerox Alto featured Ethernet networking, a full page display, a mouse, laser printing, e-mail, and a windows and graphics-based user interface. Although it's high price limited sales, the Alto was a groundbreaking invention. Most everything about the computing (interactive access visual and aural interface) and networking revolution (send around the office or around the world) that was going to come was knowable 40 years ago - for interested and attentive experts and everybody who watched commercials.

Nearly all Computing History Books discuss the dispute between Gates and Jobs or rather their respective companies on who went to PARC first and how secret all of it was. It was not. Xerox gave Smalltalk to a couple of other computer companies to implement, did commercials for its future products and gave demos to a lot more people than only Jobs and Gates. Ads for the Xerox Star also came long before the famous Mac introduction ad.

We do not know if the communication departements of MSFT and AAPL who by their publications had a huge influence on PC history, created the impression by intent or by ignorance. It does not matter too much either. Any which way it is the task of later historians to uncover or recover the best possible approximation of truth.

And - it should be the task of decision-makers in the industry, the media and politics to know that history a lot better than they do to inform their perspective and the settings they implement by laws, regulations and business strategies.

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