It's kind of funny. I've been working on a write of Xerox history following my article on SRI/ARC at ARF. And I've been working on this question.
- There were two visits.
- Xerox held a stake in Apple in exchange for the visit.
- People from SRI and from Xerox were already at Apple.
- To whatever extent Apple "stole" from Xerox, Xerox had already "stolen" from ARC.
- The Apple projects were underway prior to these visits.
- The primary effect (as far as I can tell) was in convincing all the executives at Apple of the value of the GUI.
The key take away from this bit is honestly that employers should work harder to keep talent. Companies need the talent more than the talent needs the company. Over and over, my research into tech history shows that great talent can flourish at any number of companies, and there are far more great business managers, accountants, and marketers than there are extremely good and visionary engineers.
I do not mean to downplay the impact of great executives. They are important. The talented and visionary engineers are just more rare.
> The Apple projects were underway prior to these visits.
Some interesting Polaroid screenshots are found in "Busy Being Born" by Andy Hertzfeld [1], showing windows and a pointer interface for the Lisa, probably predating the PARC visit.
Andy Hertzfeld:
> (…) a mouse/windows based user interface. This is obviously the biggest single jump in the entire set of photographs, and the place where I most wish that Bill [Atkinson] had dated them. It's tempting to say that the change was caused by the famous Xerox PARC visit, which took place in mid-December 1979, but Bill thinks that the windows predated that, although he can't say for sure.
PS/Edit: It may be of interest to note that it wasn't a secret, at all, what was going on at PARC. At this point, hundreds of visitors had been given the tour, and some (or most?) had been given an even more extensive one than the one Apple was eventually given. It would have been trivial for folks at Apple to have a cursory knowledge of the ongoing GUI developments, even when they hadn't seen it with their own eyes, yet. And they were by no means the only ones: when the Lisa was eventually introduced, it was just one of 3 commercial systems with a GUI introduced that year. (The PERQ 2 / ICL 8222 being one of the more prominent examples.)
> - The primary effect (as far as I can tell) was in convincing all the executives at Apple of the value of the GUI.
That's my takeaway as well. Larry Tesler says as much somewhere.
I'm not sure about the talent thing. The overall vision for the Mac as a shipping product came from Steve Jobs, who was never really an engineer. The original Mac team members have been very clear on this point. The engineers, however talented and visionary, necessarily had smaller scope (which is why they were engineers and not executives).
I spent 20 years at Xerox, including research. Even in the 90s and beyond the company had no interest in anything that didn't involve putting dots on paper. Now it's stuck in a rapidly shrinking industry and buying competitors to capture market share. Oh, what could have been.
Notably, the Apple teams weren't shown the Star, but individually GUI enabled Alto applications, which didn't feature a coherent interface.
Xerox did have a fair chance to monopolising the desktop with the Star (developed by Xerox SDD El Segundo) and was first to market. Also, Apple licensed a lot from Xerox (like the mouse, while they actually came up with their own designs.)
The idea of the "stolen GUI" probably comes from the "Look and Feel" court case, where the argument was irrelevant, as it was found that Apple had unknowingly granted an unlimited license for the desktop GUI to Microsoft. (If the technology had indeed been stolen, would Apple been in any position to grant a license, in the first place? In this sense, the argument is somewhat contrary to its intentions.)
- There were two visits.
- Xerox held a stake in Apple in exchange for the visit.
- People from SRI and from Xerox were already at Apple.
- To whatever extent Apple "stole" from Xerox, Xerox had already "stolen" from ARC.
- The Apple projects were underway prior to these visits.
- The primary effect (as far as I can tell) was in convincing all the executives at Apple of the value of the GUI.
The key take away from this bit is honestly that employers should work harder to keep talent. Companies need the talent more than the talent needs the company. Over and over, my research into tech history shows that great talent can flourish at any number of companies, and there are far more great business managers, accountants, and marketers than there are extremely good and visionary engineers.
I do not mean to downplay the impact of great executives. They are important. The talented and visionary engineers are just more rare.
Some interesting Polaroid screenshots are found in "Busy Being Born" by Andy Hertzfeld [1], showing windows and a pointer interface for the Lisa, probably predating the PARC visit.
Andy Hertzfeld:
> (…) a mouse/windows based user interface. This is obviously the biggest single jump in the entire set of photographs, and the place where I most wish that Bill [Atkinson] had dated them. It's tempting to say that the change was caused by the famous Xerox PARC visit, which took place in mid-December 1979, but Bill thinks that the windows predated that, although he can't say for sure.
[1] https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html
PS/Edit: It may be of interest to note that it wasn't a secret, at all, what was going on at PARC. At this point, hundreds of visitors had been given the tour, and some (or most?) had been given an even more extensive one than the one Apple was eventually given. It would have been trivial for folks at Apple to have a cursory knowledge of the ongoing GUI developments, even when they hadn't seen it with their own eyes, yet. And they were by no means the only ones: when the Lisa was eventually introduced, it was just one of 3 commercial systems with a GUI introduced that year. (The PERQ 2 / ICL 8222 being one of the more prominent examples.)
That's my takeaway as well. Larry Tesler says as much somewhere.
I'm not sure about the talent thing. The overall vision for the Mac as a shipping product came from Steve Jobs, who was never really an engineer. The original Mac team members have been very clear on this point. The engineers, however talented and visionary, necessarily had smaller scope (which is why they were engineers and not executives).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBiWtJJN5zk
Xerox did have a fair chance to monopolising the desktop with the Star (developed by Xerox SDD El Segundo) and was first to market. Also, Apple licensed a lot from Xerox (like the mouse, while they actually came up with their own designs.)
The idea of the "stolen GUI" probably comes from the "Look and Feel" court case, where the argument was irrelevant, as it was found that Apple had unknowingly granted an unlimited license for the desktop GUI to Microsoft. (If the technology had indeed been stolen, would Apple been in any position to grant a license, in the first place? In this sense, the argument is somewhat contrary to its intentions.)