When Apple unveiled the Macintosh computer in 1984, there was one thing in particular that captured people’s attention. It was the System 1 operating system boasting a clean, black-and-white graphical user interface (GUI), which filled the screen with windows and icons.
For anyone familiar with a command-line interface, it felt revolutionary. In fact, as Lawrence J Magid wrote in the Los Angeles Times in January 1984, the computer “started a fever in Silicon Valley that’s hard not to catch”.
In extolling its virtues, he compared it to a previous Apple release: the Lisa, which also made use of a GUI. The difference, he noted, was that the Lisa retailed at $10,000 while the Macintosh was selling for a more wallet-friendly $2,495. “The new Macintosh has gotten off to a delicious start,” he proclaimed.
Yet Magid didn’t mention the computer that had inspired Steve Jobs to create both machines – a computer that, as time attests, was arguably the most influential of them all. Then again, it was easy to overlook the computer in question – the Alto – primarily because its maker’s management failed to do anything meaningful with it.
That company was Xerox, founded in 1906 as a manufacturer of photographic paper and equipment. After 1959, it had achieved huge success with the 914 plain paper photocopier, generating close to $600 million revenue in just two years.
For Xerox, the main focus was on copiers and
