Lisa and early MacOS are tremendously different in their details than the Alto operating system. While there was clearly a transfer of inspiration, Apple engineers like Bill Atkinson made countless small and large innovations to simplify the Xerox GUI model and improve its usability based on extensive in-house R&D and user testing (and in some cases implement features that the Apple team presumed Xerox had but actually didn't exist on the Alto). It is simply ahistoric to build narratives around Apple stealing Xerox ideas wholesale.
replyFor more details on Apple's early UI evolution, Atkinson kept polaroids of a variety of prototypes and mockups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0mHFcB510
> the million dollar stock deal could seem a bit like trading beads to Native Americans for Manhattan Island
replyBut in both cases the value only existed because of the people offering the deal. XeroX doing nothing with a UI or native Americans doing nothing with some land would mean the UI and the land would continue to be worth nothing. It was the others coming with ideas and effort that made them valuable.
"Valuable" as quantifiable in a capitalist economy.
replyYou just reveal your own ignorance by equivocating value with monetary value.
Dollar value aside, if the argument you’re making is that the land now called NYC would have equivalent or greater value if it were today as it was then - that the subway system, roads, schools, hospitals, restaurants, apartments, etc. have no increased relative value over the undeveloped land - you’re likely to be considered ignorant by most of the inhabitants of the developed world.
reply