How Steve Jobs got the ideas of GUI from XEROX
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as a reference in debates over how much Apple borrowed from Xerox and what Xerox management failed to see.
What it is
A short video telling how Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and how Steve Jobs's 1979 visit influenced Apple's Lisa.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2016 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites toni · 2016-04 · on “3 women who radically changed the course of technology”
Here is the piece[1] where Adele Goldberg explains how she warned Xerox executives about not giving away the kitchen sink to Steve Jobs (taken from Robert Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary) [1] [this video]
Cites protomyth · 2016-09 · on “Restoring YC's Xerox Alto: how our boot disk was trashed with random data”
Dealers in Lightning would seem to contradict Gladwell's account plus the first video with the others being background. [LINK] [this video] [LINK]
Cites initramfs · 2023-01 · on “Ask HN: Can't we just get a FOSS version of what Apple did?”
They copied Xerox's Alto idea: [this video] I have a similar idea, [LINK] To build a FOSS Apple, one needs to build what Xerox did: A time machine. [LINK] [LINK]
Cites linguae · 2025-10 · on “Remembering Steve Jobs”
To be fair, Steve Jobs acknowledged this in a 1990s interview: "And they showed me, really, three things, but I was so blinded by the first one that I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object-oriented programming. They showed me that, but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was really a networked computer system. They had over 100 Alto computers all networked using email, etc., etc., but I didn't see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I've ever seen in my life." [this video] Jobs would revisit object-oriented programming and networked computing w