Lisa's scores

From: starling_at_umr.edu <(starling_at_umr.edu)>
Date: Thu Jun 26 16:07:08 1997

> > However, the Lisa still lives on. Every time you pull down a window
> > you're using Lisa technology. Lisa was also the first to have an
> > integrated office suite which could cut-n-paste between apps. Xerox
> > provided much of the inspiration, but Lisa polished the GUI into a usable
> > system. It's really quite impressive for a machine designed 78-81 and
> > released in 82.
>
> Actually, Xerox had a working GUI-based system (the name eludes me at the
> moment) well before the LISA, which is where Jobs got his inspiration
> from. So your comment about windows being based on Lisa technology is
> not fair to Xerox. Of course Bill would disavow any knowledge of both of
> these machines and tell us that Windows is, in fact, the One True God.


I'm well aware of this. I mis-typed when I said "pull down window" I
meand "pull down menu". This feature was unique to the Lisa, as was
other GUI concepts essential to GUIs we know and hate today. But other
things like the window, icon, mousepointer, changing mousepointer (from
arrow to hourglass, to "I" bar, to whatever) were all blatantly stolen
from Xerox.

One of the things that originated in the Lisa GUI that never was used
anywhere else was the concept of a "pad of paper". In order to create a
new LisaWrite document, you "tore off" a pice of LisaWrite paper off the
LisaWrite pad. Kind of an odd concept... not particularly useful.


Okay... I'll shut up about the Lisa now... :)

-starling
Received on Thu Jun 26 1997 - 16:07:08 BST