{"@context":["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",{"Hashtag":"as:Hashtag","sensitive":"as:sensitive","dcterms":"http://purl.org/dc/terms/","gts":"https://gotosocial.org/ns#","schema":"http://schema.org/","exifData":"schema:exifData","PropertyValue":"schema:PropertyValue","interactionPolicy":{"@id":"gts:interactionPolicy","@type":"@id"},"canQuote":{"@id":"gts:canQuote","@type":"@id"},"canReply":{"@id":"gts:canReply","@type":"@id"},"canLike":{"@id":"gts:canLike","@type":"@id"},"canAnnounce":{"@id":"gts:canAnnounce","@type":"@id"},"automaticApproval":{"@id":"gts:automaticApproval","@type":"@id"},"manualApproval":{"@id":"gts:manualApproval","@type":"@id"},"always":{"@id":"gts:always","@type":"@id"}}],"id":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=40524","type":"Article","attachment":[{"type":"Image","url":"https://i0.wp.com/dfarq.homeip.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Xerox_8010.jpg?fit=620%2C465\u0026#038;ssl=1","mediaType":"image/jpeg","name":"The Xerox 8010, or Xerox Star"}],"attributedTo":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/author/admin/","content":"\u003Cp\u003EXerox is a company that people who want to sound smart or to sound visionary should be familiar with. In the 1960s, Xerox was a company that seemed to own the future, in a position similar to the position Apple or Nvidia are in today. The Xerox name was synonymous with photocopying. In the days before digital document retrieval, every office had at least one photocopy machine. Xerox was in the enviable position of its trademark being a verb. If I said I was xeroxing, people knew exactly what I was doing. But Xerox famously invented the GUI and got very little for its invention.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!--more--\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EHow thoroughly Xerox invented modern computing\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cfigure\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/?attachment_id=40525\u0022 rel=\u0022attachment wp-att-40525\u0022\u003E\u003Cimg src=\u0022https://i0.wp.com/dfarq.homeip.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Xerox_8010.jpg?resize=300%2C225\u0026#038;ssl=1\u0022 alt=\u0022The Xerox 8010, or Xerox Star\u0022 width=\u0022300\u0022 height=\u0022225\u0022 /\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003Cfigcaption\u003EThe Xerox Star was a modern computer in 1981, with a graphical interface, mouse, and networking. This wasn\u0026#8217;t a research project either. It was a commercial product Xerox sold to large businesses.\u003C/figcaption\u003E\u003C/figure\u003E\u003Cp\u003EXerox invented many of the core principles behind the modern world. The computer mouse, the graphical user interface, laser printer, and Ethernet were all invented at Xerox. The mouse and graphical user interface completely changed the way we interact with a computer. Your phone or your tablet don\u0026#8217;t use a mouse, but the idea of being able to point at items on your screen and tap on them to make your device do something is a holdover from the mouse. The graphical user interface made computers orders of magnitude easier to use.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELaser printing revolutionized the output. You could draw these impressive graphics, and then you could print them out at high resolution. Xerox even had a technology for scaling the sizes up and down smoothly, to take full advantage of the high resolution.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEthernet is the sleeper of the four. We don\u0026#8217;t think much about networking anymore, it\u0026#8217;s just a given that everything is connected nowadays. But any two things that are connected are probably using Ethernet on some level to do it. Other standards for networking existed like \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-arcnet/\u0022\u003EARCnet\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-was-a-token-ring-network/\u0022\u003EToken Ring\u003C/a\u003E. And if Ethernet had never existed, we would use one of those instead. But Ethernet was less expensive and scaled faster and higher than the competing standards.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EHow to sound visionary when talking about this lost opportunity\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EToday, when someone wants to sound smart, they may talk about how Xerox invented all of these key concepts and didn\u0026#8217;t commercialize any of them. They were stuck on the idea that they were selling photocopying machines while they were inventing the very technologies that undermined their core business. As a result, it is entirely possible that a person graduating college in the year 2025 might not even recognize the name Xerox, when in 1975 it was one of the safest investments in the world.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere are several versions of this story floating around, and the exact details that you believe depend on who your favorite and least favorite technology companies are. But essentially Xerox showed the mouse and the graphical user interface to basically anyone who asked. This included Steve Jobs, \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-bill-gates-became-rich/\u0022\u003EBill Gates\u003C/a\u003E, \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/gary-kildalls-death-investigation/\u0022\u003EGary Kildall\u003C/a\u003E, and probably also dozens of others. In 1983 to 1985, dozens of implementations of Xerox\u0026#8217;s ideas started appearing on small, relatively inexpensive computers. The Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows were the two most famous implementations of the idea, but far from the only ones. Xerox received virtually nothing even as Microsoft and Apple became two of the most valuable companies in the world.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EHow to know a visionary from a charlatan\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHow could Xerox be so short-sighted? That\u0026#8217;s the question to ask if you want to know if you are talking to a visionary or a charlatan. If all they know is that Xerox had three earth-shaking ideas that they didn\u0026#8217;t profit from, then I don\u0026#8217;t think you\u0026#8217;re talking to a visionary. That\u0026#8217;s because there is more to the story than Xerox having a bunch of great ideas and just giving them away. I\u0026#8217;ll go so far as to say the story of Xerox giving it away is a myth, along the lines of \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-dos-came-to-be-ibms-choice-of-operating-system-2/\u0022\u003EGary Kildall flying in his airplane\u003C/a\u003E instead of talking to IBM.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EXerox did NOT give it away and did NOT fail to commercialize it\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere\u0026#8217;s a simple reason why Xerox showed all of this great technology to anyone who asked. They were trying to sell it. It\u0026#8217;s not like this was all some skunkworks project. To be fair, it started out as a skunkworks project, but that was back in 1972. But Xerox continued to develop and refine it. And then\u00a0Xerox released a fully realized computer based on all of these ideas April 27, 1981. The Xerox Star was a computer with a modern GUI, a mouse, Ethernet, and capable of operating as a file server or print server.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd when someone shows up wanting to see a product you have for sale, you show it to them.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENow, to be completely fair, Apple did see the technology in 1979, two years before it was introduced. But in return for it, Xerox received the opportunity to invest in Apple. Whether this was a mistake depends on who you ask.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EThe Xerox Star of 1981\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe problem wasn\u0026#8217;t that Xerox failed to commercialize it. It\u0026#8217;s more that Xerox was ahead of its time and the system was slow and expensive. It wasn\u0026#8217;t priced for the home market. This was a business computer and it was priced as such. The base system cost $75,000 and each additional workstation cost $16,000. Before you get too worked up about the price, the base system included a workstation and a server, each with a 17-inch high-resolution display, a hard drive, a laser printer that could print at 12 pages per minute, and software. All of this in early 1981, so this was as cutting edge as you could get. Of course it was expensive.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt\u0026#8217;s easy to criticize Xerox for pricing it out of the reach of the home market. But Xerox was used to selling to businesses.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EThe Xerox Daybreak\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIts 1985 successor was much less expensive and it was faster and more usable. At $5,000 it still wasn\u0026#8217;t cheap. But Xerox made it more efficient, gave it three times as much memory, an 8 MHz processor, a bigger hard drive, and a choice of displays. But by 1985, the floodgates were open. Atari had entered the market with its bargain priced \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/atari-st-introduced-april-8-1985/\u0022\u003EAtari ST.\u003C/a\u003E GUIs for IBM PC compatibles were available, notably VisiCorp\u0026#8217;s VisiOn and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/whatever-happened-to-gem/\u0022\u003EDigital Research\u0026#8217;s GEM\u003C/a\u003E. \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/amiga-1000-ten-years-ahead-of-its-time/\u0022\u003ECommodore\u0026#8217;s Amiga\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/microsoft-windows-first-announced-nov-10-1983/\u0022\u003EMicrosoft Windows\u003C/a\u003E came out later in 1985. The X Window System for Unix and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-does-unix-like-mean/\u0022\u003EUnix-like\u003C/a\u003E operating systems started development in 1984.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EXerox\u0026#8217;s mistake and why they were essentially forced to make it\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EXerox\u0026#8217;s biggest mistake was that it failed to protect its intellectual property. But there was a reason for that too. In 1975, Xerox had a monopoly on photocopiers. That\u0026#8217;s not hyperbole. Its market share approached 100%. It faced antitrust action and as a result had to license its entire patent portfolio. It also meant, as a monopolist, they weren\u0026#8217;t playing by the same rules as everyone else. Even the appearance that they were trying to use their position in photocopiers to muscle their way into the computer market could be problematic.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the 1980s, Xerox was playing under similar rules to \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/microsoft-antitrust-case-of-1998/\u0022\u003Epost-1998 Microsoft\u003C/a\u003E.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EThe copyright suit with Apple\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo when Apple came along and built the Lisa, and later the Macintosh, Xerox had to be careful. Xerox did sue Apple for copyright infringement in 1989, which they lost. Had Xerox sued in 1983 or 1984 the way Apple sued Digital Research over GEM, it may have been more successful. The courts were more lenient by 1989 than they had been in the early 1980s thanks to legal action between \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-ashton-tate-and-dbase/\u0022\u003EAshton-Tate\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/lotus-second-largest-software-publisher-in-the-world-in-1983/\u0022\u003ELotus\u003C/a\u003E.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut the appearance of one of the 50 largest companies in the world picking a fight with a relative newcomer like Apple likely made Xerox\u0026#8217;s lawyers nervous in the early 1980s, especially since neither the \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/apple-macintosh-vs-lisa/\u0022\u003ELisa\u003C/a\u003E nor \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/was-the-macintosh-a-failure/\u0022\u003EMacintosh\u003C/a\u003E were setting any sales records at the time and AT\u0026amp;T\u0026#8217;s breakup was ongoing.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo it\u0026#8217;s not like Xerox rolled over and played dead and just gave all its best ideas away.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EThe patent alternative\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn retrospect, Xerox would have been better off patenting the elements of the GUI and licensing them rather than relying on copyright law. But even though the first software patent was awarded in 1968, there were still limits on what was patentable in the 1980s. And Xerox themselves had been influenced by work that happened at the University of Illinois, a taxpayer-funded public university.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe other problem with the patent approach was the 1975 consent decree. Under that agreement, Xerox had to license its patents. They couldn\u0026#8217;t pick and choose like Intel does to keep companies like \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/amd-athlon-amds-game-changing-cpu-from-1999/\u0022\u003EAMD\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/via-cyrix-iii-and-c3-cpus/\u0022\u003EVIA\u003C/a\u003E from releasing pin-compatible CPUs.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EXerox gets an unfair shake\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo when I hear someone say that Xerox invented everything about modern computing and then gave it all away to Apple and Microsoft (bonus points if they mention \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-3com/\u0022\u003E3Com\u003C/a\u003E and/or Adobe), I tend to think their understanding of what Xerox did and why is a bit superficial. Xerox could have tried harder to protect its inventions. But it\u0026#8217;s not exactly clear what would have worked and what wouldn\u0026#8217;t have. And the stakes were higher than just losing the GUI. Overstepping its bounds could have resulted in the breakup of the company. In 1985, they ranked #38 on the Fortune 500 list. The last thing a company that size wants to do is break up. Regulators broke up AT\u0026amp;T in 1984 and were eyeing IBM at the time, so Xerox was watching itself.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELosing the GUI seems like a high price to pay to avoid a breakup today, but the management of large companies is paid to think two or three years out, not decades out.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBill Gates has described the Mac and Windows as Apple breaking into Xerox PARC and stealing the TV and Microsoft coming in after and finding Apple stole it first. That\u0026#8217;s a bit of an oversimplification, but not entirely unfair either. Gates learned later, as Microsoft faced its own antitrust action, that monopolies have to play by different rules.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EIf you found this post informative or helpful, please share it!\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=How%20Xerox%20invented%20the%20GUI%20and%20lost%20it https%3A%2F%2Fdfarq.homeip.net%2Fhow-xerox-invented-the-gui-and-lost-it%2F  via @siliconundergro.bsky.social\u0022 title=\u0022Share on Bluesky\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener nofollow\u0022 class=\u0022shariff-link\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022shariff-icon\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022shariff-text\u0022\u003Eshare\u003C/span\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https://s2f.kytta.dev/?text=How%20Xerox%20invented%20the%20GUI%20and%20lost%20it https%3A%2F%2Fdfarq.homeip.net%2Fhow-xerox-invented-the-gui-and-lost-it%2F via @siliconundergro@ioc.exchange\u0022 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class=\u0022shariff-icon\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022shariff-text\u0022\u003Eemail\u003C/span\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/feed/rss/\u0022 title=\u0022RSS feed\u0022 class=\u0022shariff-link\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022shariff-icon\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022shariff-text\u0022\u003ERSS feed\u003C/span\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/li\u003E\u003C/ul\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cimg src=\u0022https://i0.wp.com/dfarq.homeip.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/dave_farquhar_181px.jpg?resize=100%2C100\u0026#038;ssl=1\u0022 width=\u0022100\u0022 height=\u0022100\u0022 alt=\u0022\u0022\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/author/admin/\u0022 class=\u0022vcard author\u0022 rel=\u0022author\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022fn\u0022\u003EDave Farquhar\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDavid Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.\u003C/p\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ca title=\u0022Mastodont\u0022 href=\u0022https://ioc.exchange/@siliconundergro\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow noopener\u0022 class=\u0022saboxplugin-icon-grey\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003Ca title=\u0022Linkedin\u0022 href=\u0022https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-f-12656039/\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow noopener\u0022 class=\u0022saboxplugin-icon-grey\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003Ca title=\u0022Pinterest\u0022 href=\u0022https://www.pinterest.com/davidf3612/\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow noopener\u0022 class=\u0022saboxplugin-icon-grey\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E","context":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/wp-json/activitypub/1.0/posts/40524/context","contentMap":{"en":"\u003Cp\u003EXerox is a company that people who want to sound smart or to sound visionary should be familiar with. In the 1960s, Xerox was a company that seemed to own the future, in a position similar to the position Apple or Nvidia are in today. The Xerox name was synonymous with photocopying. In the days before digital document retrieval, every office had at least one photocopy machine. Xerox was in the enviable position of its trademark being a verb. If I said I was xeroxing, people knew exactly what I was doing. But Xerox famously invented the GUI and got very little for its invention.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!--more--\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EHow thoroughly Xerox invented modern computing\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cfigure\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/?attachment_id=40525\u0022 rel=\u0022attachment wp-att-40525\u0022\u003E\u003Cimg src=\u0022https://i0.wp.com/dfarq.homeip.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Xerox_8010.jpg?resize=300%2C225\u0026#038;ssl=1\u0022 alt=\u0022The Xerox 8010, or Xerox Star\u0022 width=\u0022300\u0022 height=\u0022225\u0022 /\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003Cfigcaption\u003EThe Xerox Star was a modern computer in 1981, with a graphical interface, mouse, and networking. This wasn\u0026#8217;t a research project either. It was a commercial product Xerox sold to large businesses.\u003C/figcaption\u003E\u003C/figure\u003E\u003Cp\u003EXerox invented many of the core principles behind the modern world. The computer mouse, the graphical user interface, laser printer, and Ethernet were all invented at Xerox. The mouse and graphical user interface completely changed the way we interact with a computer. Your phone or your tablet don\u0026#8217;t use a mouse, but the idea of being able to point at items on your screen and tap on them to make your device do something is a holdover from the mouse. The graphical user interface made computers orders of magnitude easier to use.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELaser printing revolutionized the output. You could draw these impressive graphics, and then you could print them out at high resolution. Xerox even had a technology for scaling the sizes up and down smoothly, to take full advantage of the high resolution.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEthernet is the sleeper of the four. We don\u0026#8217;t think much about networking anymore, it\u0026#8217;s just a given that everything is connected nowadays. But any two things that are connected are probably using Ethernet on some level to do it. Other standards for networking existed like \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-arcnet/\u0022\u003EARCnet\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-was-a-token-ring-network/\u0022\u003EToken Ring\u003C/a\u003E. And if Ethernet had never existed, we would use one of those instead. But Ethernet was less expensive and scaled faster and higher than the competing standards.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EHow to sound visionary when talking about this lost opportunity\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EToday, when someone wants to sound smart, they may talk about how Xerox invented all of these key concepts and didn\u0026#8217;t commercialize any of them. They were stuck on the idea that they were selling photocopying machines while they were inventing the very technologies that undermined their core business. As a result, it is entirely possible that a person graduating college in the year 2025 might not even recognize the name Xerox, when in 1975 it was one of the safest investments in the world.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere are several versions of this story floating around, and the exact details that you believe depend on who your favorite and least favorite technology companies are. But essentially Xerox showed the mouse and the graphical user interface to basically anyone who asked. This included Steve Jobs, \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-bill-gates-became-rich/\u0022\u003EBill Gates\u003C/a\u003E, \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/gary-kildalls-death-investigation/\u0022\u003EGary Kildall\u003C/a\u003E, and probably also dozens of others. In 1983 to 1985, dozens of implementations of Xerox\u0026#8217;s ideas started appearing on small, relatively inexpensive computers. The Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows were the two most famous implementations of the idea, but far from the only ones. Xerox received virtually nothing even as Microsoft and Apple became two of the most valuable companies in the world.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EHow to know a visionary from a charlatan\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHow could Xerox be so short-sighted? That\u0026#8217;s the question to ask if you want to know if you are talking to a visionary or a charlatan. If all they know is that Xerox had three earth-shaking ideas that they didn\u0026#8217;t profit from, then I don\u0026#8217;t think you\u0026#8217;re talking to a visionary. That\u0026#8217;s because there is more to the story than Xerox having a bunch of great ideas and just giving them away. I\u0026#8217;ll go so far as to say the story of Xerox giving it away is a myth, along the lines of \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-dos-came-to-be-ibms-choice-of-operating-system-2/\u0022\u003EGary Kildall flying in his airplane\u003C/a\u003E instead of talking to IBM.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EXerox did NOT give it away and did NOT fail to commercialize it\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere\u0026#8217;s a simple reason why Xerox showed all of this great technology to anyone who asked. They were trying to sell it. It\u0026#8217;s not like this was all some skunkworks project. To be fair, it started out as a skunkworks project, but that was back in 1972. But Xerox continued to develop and refine it. And then\u00a0Xerox released a fully realized computer based on all of these ideas April 27, 1981. The Xerox Star was a computer with a modern GUI, a mouse, Ethernet, and capable of operating as a file server or print server.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd when someone shows up wanting to see a product you have for sale, you show it to them.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENow, to be completely fair, Apple did see the technology in 1979, two years before it was introduced. But in return for it, Xerox received the opportunity to invest in Apple. Whether this was a mistake depends on who you ask.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EThe Xerox Star of 1981\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe problem wasn\u0026#8217;t that Xerox failed to commercialize it. It\u0026#8217;s more that Xerox was ahead of its time and the system was slow and expensive. It wasn\u0026#8217;t priced for the home market. This was a business computer and it was priced as such. The base system cost $75,000 and each additional workstation cost $16,000. Before you get too worked up about the price, the base system included a workstation and a server, each with a 17-inch high-resolution display, a hard drive, a laser printer that could print at 12 pages per minute, and software. All of this in early 1981, so this was as cutting edge as you could get. Of course it was expensive.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt\u0026#8217;s easy to criticize Xerox for pricing it out of the reach of the home market. But Xerox was used to selling to businesses.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EThe Xerox Daybreak\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIts 1985 successor was much less expensive and it was faster and more usable. At $5,000 it still wasn\u0026#8217;t cheap. But Xerox made it more efficient, gave it three times as much memory, an 8 MHz processor, a bigger hard drive, and a choice of displays. But by 1985, the floodgates were open. Atari had entered the market with its bargain priced \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/atari-st-introduced-april-8-1985/\u0022\u003EAtari ST.\u003C/a\u003E GUIs for IBM PC compatibles were available, notably VisiCorp\u0026#8217;s VisiOn and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/whatever-happened-to-gem/\u0022\u003EDigital Research\u0026#8217;s GEM\u003C/a\u003E. \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/amiga-1000-ten-years-ahead-of-its-time/\u0022\u003ECommodore\u0026#8217;s Amiga\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/microsoft-windows-first-announced-nov-10-1983/\u0022\u003EMicrosoft Windows\u003C/a\u003E came out later in 1985. The X Window System for Unix and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-does-unix-like-mean/\u0022\u003EUnix-like\u003C/a\u003E operating systems started development in 1984.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EXerox\u0026#8217;s mistake and why they were essentially forced to make it\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EXerox\u0026#8217;s biggest mistake was that it failed to protect its intellectual property. But there was a reason for that too. In 1975, Xerox had a monopoly on photocopiers. That\u0026#8217;s not hyperbole. Its market share approached 100%. It faced antitrust action and as a result had to license its entire patent portfolio. It also meant, as a monopolist, they weren\u0026#8217;t playing by the same rules as everyone else. Even the appearance that they were trying to use their position in photocopiers to muscle their way into the computer market could be problematic.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the 1980s, Xerox was playing under similar rules to \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/microsoft-antitrust-case-of-1998/\u0022\u003Epost-1998 Microsoft\u003C/a\u003E.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EThe copyright suit with Apple\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo when Apple came along and built the Lisa, and later the Macintosh, Xerox had to be careful. Xerox did sue Apple for copyright infringement in 1989, which they lost. Had Xerox sued in 1983 or 1984 the way Apple sued Digital Research over GEM, it may have been more successful. The courts were more lenient by 1989 than they had been in the early 1980s thanks to legal action between \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-ashton-tate-and-dbase/\u0022\u003EAshton-Tate\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/lotus-second-largest-software-publisher-in-the-world-in-1983/\u0022\u003ELotus\u003C/a\u003E.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut the appearance of one of the 50 largest companies in the world picking a fight with a relative newcomer like Apple likely made Xerox\u0026#8217;s lawyers nervous in the early 1980s, especially since neither the \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/apple-macintosh-vs-lisa/\u0022\u003ELisa\u003C/a\u003E nor \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/was-the-macintosh-a-failure/\u0022\u003EMacintosh\u003C/a\u003E were setting any sales records at the time and AT\u0026amp;T\u0026#8217;s breakup was ongoing.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo it\u0026#8217;s not like Xerox rolled over and played dead and just gave all its best ideas away.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EThe patent alternative\u003C/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn retrospect, Xerox would have been better off patenting the elements of the GUI and licensing them rather than relying on copyright law. But even though the first software patent was awarded in 1968, there were still limits on what was patentable in the 1980s. And Xerox themselves had been influenced by work that happened at the University of Illinois, a taxpayer-funded public university.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe other problem with the patent approach was the 1975 consent decree. Under that agreement, Xerox had to license its patents. They couldn\u0026#8217;t pick and choose like Intel does to keep companies like \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/amd-athlon-amds-game-changing-cpu-from-1999/\u0022\u003EAMD\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/via-cyrix-iii-and-c3-cpus/\u0022\u003EVIA\u003C/a\u003E from releasing pin-compatible CPUs.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EXerox gets an unfair shake\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo when I hear someone say that Xerox invented everything about modern computing and then gave it all away to Apple and Microsoft (bonus points if they mention \u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-3com/\u0022\u003E3Com\u003C/a\u003E and/or Adobe), I tend to think their understanding of what Xerox did and why is a bit superficial. Xerox could have tried harder to protect its inventions. But it\u0026#8217;s not exactly clear what would have worked and what wouldn\u0026#8217;t have. And the stakes were higher than just losing the GUI. Overstepping its bounds could have resulted in the breakup of the company. In 1985, they ranked #38 on the Fortune 500 list. The last thing a company that size wants to do is break up. Regulators broke up AT\u0026amp;T in 1984 and were eyeing IBM at the time, so Xerox was watching itself.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELosing the GUI seems like a high price to pay to avoid a breakup today, but the management of large companies is paid to think two or three years out, not decades out.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBill Gates has described the Mac and Windows as Apple breaking into Xerox PARC and stealing the TV and Microsoft coming in after and finding Apple stole it first. That\u0026#8217;s a bit of an oversimplification, but not entirely unfair either. 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class=\u0022shariff-icon\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022shariff-text\u0022\u003Eemail\u003C/span\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/feed/rss/\u0022 title=\u0022RSS feed\u0022 class=\u0022shariff-link\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022shariff-icon\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022shariff-text\u0022\u003ERSS feed\u003C/span\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/li\u003E\u003C/ul\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cimg src=\u0022https://i0.wp.com/dfarq.homeip.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/dave_farquhar_181px.jpg?resize=100%2C100\u0026#038;ssl=1\u0022 width=\u0022100\u0022 height=\u0022100\u0022 alt=\u0022\u0022\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https://dfarq.homeip.net/author/admin/\u0022 class=\u0022vcard author\u0022 rel=\u0022author\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan class=\u0022fn\u0022\u003EDave Farquhar\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDavid Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.\u003C/p\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ca title=\u0022Mastodont\u0022 href=\u0022https://ioc.exchange/@siliconundergro\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow noopener\u0022 class=\u0022saboxplugin-icon-grey\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003Ca title=\u0022Linkedin\u0022 href=\u0022https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-f-12656039/\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow noopener\u0022 class=\u0022saboxplugin-icon-grey\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003Ca title=\u0022Pinterest\u0022 href=\u0022https://www.pinterest.com/davidf3612/\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow noopener\u0022 class=\u0022saboxplugin-icon-grey\u0022\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E"},"name":"How Xerox invented the GUI and lost it","nameMap":{"en":"How Xerox invented the GUI and lost it"},"icon":{"type":"Image","url":"https://i0.wp.com/dfarq.homeip.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Xerox_8010.jpg?resize=55%2C55\u0026#038;ssl=1","mediaType":"image/jpeg","name":"The Xerox 8010, or Xerox Star"},"image":{"type":"Image","url":"https://i0.wp.com/dfarq.homeip.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Xerox_8010.jpg?fit=620%2C465\u0026#038;ssl=1","mediaType":"image/jpeg","name":"The Xerox 8010, or Xerox Star"},"preview":{"type":"Note","content":"Xerox is a company that people who want to sound smart or to sound visionary should be familiar with. In the 1960s, Xerox was a company that seemed to own the future, in a position similar to the position Apple or Nvidia are in today. The Xerox name was synonymous with photocopying. In the days before digital document retrieval, every office had at least one photocopy machine. Xerox was in the enviable position of its trademark being a verb. If I said I was xeroxing, people knew exactly what I was doing. But Xerox famously invented the GUI and got very little for its invention. [\u2026]"},"published":"2026-04-27T11:00:32Z","summary":"Xerox is a company that people who want to sound smart or to sound visionary should be familiar with. In the 1960s, Xerox was a company that seemed to own the future, in a position similar to the position Apple or Nvidia are in today. The Xerox name was synonymous with photocopying. In the days before digital document retrieval, every office had at least one photocopy machine. Xerox was in the enviable position of its trademark being a verb. If I said I was xeroxing, people knew exactly what I was doing. But Xerox famously invented the GUI and got very little for its invention. [\u2026]","summaryMap":{"en":"Xerox is a company that people who want to sound smart or to sound visionary should be familiar with. In the 1960s, Xerox was a company that seemed to own the future, in a position similar to the position Apple or Nvidia are in today. The Xerox name was synonymous with photocopying. In the days before digital document retrieval, every office had at least one photocopy machine. Xerox was in the enviable position of its trademark being a verb. If I said I was xeroxing, people knew exactly what I was doing. But Xerox famously invented the GUI and got very little for its invention. [\u2026]"},"tag":[],"url":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-xerox-invented-the-gui-and-lost-it/","to":["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"],"cc":["https://dfarq.homeip.net/wp-json/activitypub/1.0/actors/1/followers"],"mediaType":"text/html","replies":{"id":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/wp-json/activitypub/1.0/posts/40524/replies","type":"Collection","first":{"id":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/wp-json/activitypub/1.0/posts/40524/replies?page=1","type":"CollectionPage","partOf":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/wp-json/activitypub/1.0/posts/40524/replies","items":[]}},"likes":{"id":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/wp-json/activitypub/1.0/posts/40524/likes","type":"Collection","totalItems":0},"shares":{"id":"https://dfarq.homeip.net/wp-json/activitypub/1.0/posts/40524/shares","type":"Collection","totalItems":0},"interactionPolicy":{"canAnnounce":{"automaticApproval":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public","always":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"},"canLike":{"automaticApproval":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public","always":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"},"canQuote":{"automaticApproval":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public","always":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"},"canReply":{"automaticApproval":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public","always":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"}}}