Pair of Twiggys

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Mon Mar 20 12:16:14 CDT 2017


On 15 March 2017 at 18:40, Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Star introduced the concept of icons representing files (and other
> things) in 1981.  Smalltalk invented scrollbars (they were clumsier than
> Apple's though) in the mid 70s.
>
> Also, don't forget that the Mac was designed by a number of ex-PARC
> researchers.  It may have been invented at Apple, but it was strongly
> influenced by what went on at PARC.

OK, fair points. I went off and did a little cursory (pun intended)
research, since you've shown me up for relying on sketchy recall. I
never saw these machines new at the time; I was a primary school pupil
when the PC shipped and only in secondary school when the Mac did.
This is just based on what I've read over the years.

So, some cited Apple innovations. The first few come from the Lisa,
AIUI, the later ones more from the Mac:

* global menu bar
* the desktop metaphor
* the trash can
* desktop icons for drives
* drag-and-drop file manipulation
* self-repairing windows
* the Human Interface Guidelines and standardised UI across apps --
keystrokes, menu entries, etc.

Citations:
http://www.mac-history.net/computer-history/2012-03-22/apple-and-xerox-parc/3
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt

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