Steve did see Smalltalk when he visited PARC. He saw the Smalltalk integrated programming environment, with the mouse selecting text, popup menus, windows, and so on. The Lisa group at Apple built a system based on their own ideas combined with what they could remember from seeing the Smalltalk demo, and the Mac folks yet another. There is a significant difference between using the Mac and Smalltalk (or the Star; I don't know if Steve ever saw that, and none of the Mac group did before the Mac came out).
There was no Finder in Smalltalk, and no need for one, really. Drag-and-drop file manipulation came from the Mac group (the Finder prototype was shown to the Lisa group, which implemented their own version), along with many other unique concepts: resources and dual-fork files for storing layout and international information apart from code; definition procedures; drag-and-drop system extension and configuration; types/creators for files; direct manipulation editing of document, disk, and application names; redundant typed data for the clipboard; multiple views of the file system; desk accessories; and control panels, among others. The Lisa group invented quite a few fundamental concepts as well: pull down menus, the imaging and windowing models based on QuickDraw, the clipboard, and cleanly internationalizable software. Smalltalk had a 3-button mouse and popup menus, in contrast to the Mac's menubar and one-button mouse. Smalltalk didn't even have self-repairing windows--you had to click in them to get them to repaint, and you couldn't draw into windows that were partially obscured. Bill Atkinson did not know this, so he invented regions as the basis of QuickDraw and the Window Manager so that he could draw in covered windows and repaint portions of windows brought to the front easily and quickly. The one thing that I can recall where a Macintosh feature is identical to one in Smalltalk is the selection-based modeless text editing with cut and paste, which was created by Larry Tesler for his Gypsy editor at PARC.
The difference between the Xerox system architectures and the Mac's architecture is huge; much bigger than the difference between the Mac's architecture and Windows. Not surprising, since Microsoft was shown quite a bit of the Macintosh design (API's, sample code, etc.), during the Mac's development from 1981-1984; the intention was to help their programmers write applications for the Mac, but having this also gave their system designers a template from which to start designing Windows. In contrast, the Mac and Lisa designers had to invent their own architectures. Of course, there were some ex-Xerox people in the Lisa and Mac groups, but the design point for these machines was so different that we didn't leverage off our knowledge of the Xerox systems as much as some people think.
The hardware itself was an amazing step forward as well. All-in-one design, 4-voice sound, small footprint, clock, auto-eject floppies, serial ports, and so on. The small, portable, appealing case was a serious departure from the ugly-box-on-an-ugly-box PC world, thanks to Jerry Manock and his crew. Even the packaging showed amazing creativity and passion; do any of you remember unpacking an original 128K Mac? The Mac, the unpacking instructions, the profusely-illustrated and beautifully-written manuals, and the animated practice program with audio cassette were packaged together tastefully in a cardboard box with Picasso-style graphics on the side. Never before had a computer been delivered with so much attention to detail and the customer's needs.
Read Guy Kawasaki's books, "The Macintosh Way" and "Selling the Dream," and you'll get an idea about what *really* went on at Apple. In particular, "Selling the Dream" includes the entire Macintosh Product Introduction Plan in an appendix. The Mac project was innovative from top to bottom, from engineering to marketing to sales to evangelism to product design. We can thank Steve Jobs for hiring the kind of people who brought the enthusiasm, creativity, and passion for excellence that made the Mac possible.
Apple could have developed a more complex, sophisticated system rivaling the Xerox architectures. But the Mac had to ship, and it had to be relatively inexpensive--we couldn't afford the time or expense of the "best possible" design at every step of the way. As a "little brother" to the Lisa, we didn't have multitasking or protection, since we didn't have space for the extra code or stack required. Our memory and disk constraints were very tight: for example, the Resource Manager took up less than 3K bytes of code in the ROM, and the Finder 46K on disk. There were *many* design decisions that we regretted to some extent--even at the time some of us were disappointed at the compromises we had to make--but if we had done it differently, would we have shipped at all?
We are not even *close* to the ultimate desktop computing/ information/ communication device. There is *much* more work to be done on system architectures and user interfaces. In particular, user interface design must be driven by deep architectural issues and not just new graphical appearances; interfaces are structure, not image. Neither Copland nor Win95 (or NT for that matter) are the last word on operating systems. Unfortunately, the market forces are slowing the development of the next revolution. Still, I think you can count on Apple being the company bringing these improvements to the next generation systems.
I'm sure that some of the things that I remember as having originated at Apple were independently developed elsewhere. But the Mac brought them to the world.
Bruce Horn
At Xerox I was a student in the Learning Research Group (1973-1981), where Smalltalk was developed. While there I worked on various projects including the NoteTaker, a portable Smalltalk machine, and wrote the initial Dorado Smalltalk microcode for Smalltalk-76. At the Central Institute for Industrial Research in Oslo, Norway (1980) I ported Smalltalk-78 to an 8086 machine, the Mycron-2000.
At Apple (1981-1984) my contributions included the design and implementation of the Resource Manager, the Dialog Manager and the Finder (with implementation help from Steve Capps). I also was responsible for the type framework for documents, applications, and clipboard data, and a variety of system-level design decisions. I consulted on a variety of projects in the late 80's at Apple as well.
Since then I've received a PhD in CS from Carnegie-Mellon University (1993) and have worked as a computer science consultant, working on projects with Apple and other companies.
Date created: 4/11/96 Last modified: 4/11/96 Maintained by: J. Michael Farmer jmfarmer@students.wisc.edu