Linked by David Adams on Sat 31st Jul 2010 06:05 UTC, submitted by fran
Permalink for comment 434975
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/25/13 0:45 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 23:59 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 22:33 UTC
Linked by Howard Fosdick on 05/24/13 21:41 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 14:44 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 23:22 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:04 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:01 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 17:52 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
More News »
Sponsored Links



Member since:
2009-08-22
A common urban myth amongst techies. Version 1 of the Mac OS was nothing like the Palo Alto system. It had been inspired by the work at Palo Alto but the system that emerged on the first mac had taken another couple of years of refinement. Just as Gauguin inspired Van Gogh - Van Gogh didn't "copy" Gauguin.
In addition the system used at Palo Alto was nowhere near ready for the market let alone capable of being run on the current desktop systems. It took Apple to bring the GUI to the market place and to get the design fundamentals so strong that if you sat down in front of a version 1 Mac today you would know how to use it.
Interestingly what Job's and co didn't notice at Palo Alto was SmallTalk the underlying object based operating system behind the Palo alto desktop. So the first MacOS was written in Pascal (I think). But Jobs sure is a quick learner and when he founded Next after being ejected from Apple he made sure that OS was built use the same concepts of object based programming.
The same Gauguin - Van Gogh metaphor applies. Sure there had been demos of multitouch before, people dragging things around and resizing them ect but there was no practical system available in the market anywhere before the iPhone that used multitouch to actually get complex real world work done. When iPhone OS V1 launched you could use it to manipulate photos, play and manage music, play and manage movies, surf the web, manage your contacts, manage your diary, etec etc. Its was a real working system ready for the masses. Making interesting stuff in labs and putting together demos is kids play to actually making something work and making it ready for the market.
That mistaken concept of what constitutes market ready is why so many companies fail where Apple often succeed. Apple's design by iteration approach means starting with the pared down core functionality of what needs to be present to make something do its basic work. If the device is intended to play music all the work goes into making damm sure that its easier to play music on it than anything else. Apple avoids bundling extra functions for the sake of it. Get the core basic right and then you can build. and that's why they can then proceed to role out such a steady and solid programme of upgrades and improvements.