r/interesting • u/tyrion2024 • 19d ago

MISC. After Steve Jobs learned about Windows (which used a mouse & a GUI), he accused Bill Gates of stealing Apple's idea. Gates replied "Well Steve...I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox & I broke into his house to steal the TV set & found out that you had already stolen it."

https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/bill-gates-steve-jobs-friends-feud-a7627431.html
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u/wosmo 19d ago

Something that's often left out of this story, is that Apple had a deal with Xerox to use what they learnt from the PARC demos. In return, Xerox was allowed a pre-IPO buy-in, and ended up with a 1.6% stake in Apple.

Xerox today is worth about half a billion. If they'd held on to their 1.6% share in Apple, that share would be worth 80 billion. Ain't hindsight a bitch.

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u/NotSettle 19d ago

Xerox PARC engineers were reportedly furious with their own corporate management over that visit. Corporate viewed PARC mostly as an expensive research sandbox and had no real idea how to commercialize computing or graphical interfaces, completely missing that they were sitting on the future of the entire tech industry.

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u/Self_Reddicate 19d ago edited 19d ago

Corporate viewed PARC mostly as an expensive research sandbox

It's funny that an enterprise would have the forethought and resources to create and fund and staff this kind of thing, but then completely fail to actually DO anything with it. I think this sort of thing happens all the time. Look at Microsoft and all of their forward-thinking research projects that ultimately fail to be properly implemented and marketed. (If you don't see the potential and the mind-blowingly badass technology behind the Hololens, then I don't know what to tell you. But the fact that they got their just a *little* too early to where they can't really sell it and then basically dropped the whole thing is ridiculous.)

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u/Few_Carpenter_9185 19d ago

Bell Labs then AT&T-Bell Labs, then breakup under anti-trust, was a bit like this. They arguably straight up invented half, maybe three quarters of the foundations for the present day digital world.

They didn't create the first optical flash-pump ruby laser, but held the first papers & patent on it as an extension of the Radio/Microwave maser. They rejected fiber optics in favor of a (in hindsight) rather rediculous idea involving lasers in vacuum pipes. But once the initial papers & research on fiber optics happened, and Corning glass actually produced some, Bell Labs invented the semiconductor diode laser and amplifiers that made fiber optics workable.

Granted, they already operated under heavy anti-trust scrutiny, and had to do things like cheaply license out those innovations such as the transistor & semiconductors, and watch Fairchild, Texas Instruments become new billion dollar companies. And their inventions did make AT&T infrastructure possible, and able to grow.

So, Bell Labs is not a 1:1 "Invented it, then lacked the vision" story like Xerox PARC, with the GUI and Ethernet, etc. But in broadest terms, it might be the biggest example of the overall dynamic.

Even into the early 1990s AT&T, predicted a hell of a lot with startling accuracy. (minus "phone booths.") Although, being fair, "And we'll bring it to you..." could mean fundamental telecom infrastructure, and not discreet products, services, & formfactors.

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u/mnemoniker 19d ago

With the information they had at the time, Xerox corporate wasn't completely wrong, to be fair. They were shown a model that would cost over $100,000 in today's dollars. No matter how cool it was, that is not a viable product. It took 10 years of technological progress before a company like Apple was able to produce something like it for under $2500. And Apple didn't just wait for this moment to arrive. They had been building a whole top down computer company for 7 years before that with the Apple II line, so they were able to hit the ground running when the Mac's time had come. And despite this, the Mac was still a commercial disappointment for years and years after its release. Xerox, a company making money hand over fist in other sectors, probably would have chosen to fail or quit at desktop computers at many points after 1973 had they not done so then.

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u/Self_Reddicate 19d ago

I mean, given my example of the Hololens, this is the EXACT same thing that will inevitably happen with that. The idea of having floating screens (or widgets) of information and media content that can just *be* around you in your environment like your home and office in augmented reality will eventually happen one day. Microsoft's design and implementation of it was SPOT ON, but too limited by the cost and technology of today. So, they dropped it.

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u/Mental-Seesaw-1449 19d ago

Classic hand and and foot doing different things. I'm sure someone understood how important what they had was at Xerox it but if the Execs don't buy your vision it's meaningless.

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u/Independent-Cover-65 18d ago

They like IBM sold hardware. Software was an after thought. Apple knew better but still relied on Microsoft. Gates knew Software was going to be were real money was to be made. 

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u/GetOffMyLawn_ 19d ago

Who invented Ethernet? Xerox PARC. But Xerox couldn't figure out how to use it to sell copiers so they squandered it.

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u/Photodan24 19d ago

And this was just for a glimpse of tech that Xerox wasn't planning to develop into serious products.

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u/wosmo 19d ago

Xerox was a really weird place for Star/Alto to come out of.

Customers didn't want it because it was way too expensive - $16k for a base system, up to $75k for a full system - and it was pretty underpowered for what it was trying to promise. And Apple knew that, because they'd just seen Lisa fail for very similar reasons.

But Xerox didn't really want it either - their entire business model was "profit per page", and they were pretty much at the peak of this. So selling the "paperless office" wasn't just outside their core business, it was harmful to their core business.

Of course, that didn't really work out for them because it just meant someone else got rich off the paperless office instead. But it's really difficult to change course, when the current course is bringing in the big bucks.

There's a lot of parallels to Kodak. We think of them as a camera company, but they were a chemicals company. They didn't really want to sell cameras, but all the consumables - film, developing, printing, etc. So even though they had a head-start in digital photography, they really failed to change direction. It was nothing to do with the cameras, its that their entire business was built around the consumables. We call this a "competence trap" - where you're so good at what you are good at, that it prevents you being able to explore superior alternatives.

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u/Spare-Throat1869 19d ago

I worked in the paperless office. It generated so much more paper!

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u/Photodan24 19d ago

Sometimes, all that is required to tell the future is to recognize what you have right in front of you. Steve Jobs was good at that. (sometimes)

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u/Ok_Option_3 16d ago

The failure of Xerox PARC to capitalise on the goldmine they invented is the real story here. 

Imagine having the foresight to understand that the future of the office is paper-less, then go on to more or less invent graphical user interfaces. Then after all the go "nah, we're good with paper after all".