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| The Lilith: a graphical, mouse-driven workstation from 1980 |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-08-30 09:16:34 |
| Just driving yesterday's point home some more: "The Lilith was one of the first computer workstations worldwide with a high-resolution graphical display and a mouse. The first prototype was developed by Niklaus Wirth and his group between 1978 and 1980 with Richard Ohran as the hardware specialist. [...] The whole system software of the Lilith was written in Modula-2, a structured programming language which Wirth has developed at the same time. The programs were compiled into low-level M-Code instructions which could be executed by the hardware. The user interface was designed with windows, icons and pop-up menus. Compared with the character based systems available at that time, these were revolutionary metaphors in the interaction with a computer." Jos Dreesen, owner of one of the few remaining working Liliths, wrote a Lilith emulator for Linux. |
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| Comment by Laurence |
| By Laurence on 2012-08-30 12:33:33 |
|
I know it's just down to what you're used to / familiar with, but vertical screen just look weird. Particularly on old CRTs: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki... |
 - Score: 2 |
| RE: Comment by Laurence |
| By henderson101 on 2012-08-30 13:16:14 |
|
It looks a little like a sony eVilla : http://cocktailmarketing.com.mx/... http://www.winsupersite.com/cont... No idea why BeOS and Be Inc has to arrive in all things, but apparently it does :-) |
| - Score: 4 |
| And... |
| By henderson101 on 2012-08-30 13:25:03 |
|
... standing by what we discussed yesterday - nice achievement, but it's hardly on a par with what Xerox was doing, and then Apple with the Lisa and Mac. Again, no one said Xerox invented the idea of a user interface, they didn't. I've sat in front of enough BBS and Mainframe's to verify that the UI was alive and well in the early 70's. And don't think of these UI as being just text, they were amazingly graphical in their own ways. The modern concept of a Graphical User Interface with bitmapped (or vector, or whatever) graphics is the next logical step, but this is a proto-GUI. It is mainly text based. The pointer is there to direct input, but as with the Blit yesterday, it is not a GUI as we define today (windows, xwindows, aqua, whatever), it harks back to the earlier terminals driven by keyboard and NCurses. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: Comment by Laurence |
| By anevilyak on 2012-08-30 13:32:59 |
| If memory serves, didn't the Xerox Alto have a similar screen orientation? |
| - Score: 2 |
| Cool Stuff |
| By Alfman on 2012-08-30 14:12:32 |
|
I don't know why old technology is so cool, whether it's oil wells, farming equipment, aviation, robotics or computers, it's just neat to watch how it all worked. The industrial technology of the past was totally user serviceable and could probably be built at home given sufficient craftsman skills. That can't really be said about today's specialised technology built in multi-million/billion dollar fabrication facilities. I'm impressed with that whole era, shows that innovation did happen before the damn lawyers got involved. Mark my words, lawsuits are going to be the downfall of this country (US). |
| - Score: 8 |
| RE: And... |
| By saso on 2012-08-30 14:53:50 |
|
> ... standing by what we discussed yesterday - nice achievement, but it's hardly on a par with what Xerox was doing, and then Apple with the Lisa and Mac. As I understood it, the point of these articles isn't to say that Xerox/Apple did nothing but copy others. It is to show, using clear evidence from the time, that GUIs were a convergent trend across the entire industry and that it was merely a question of months, if not weeks, of when they'd spill on the grand scene. The technology had matured enough, the need was there and skilled developers tend to come up with similar ideas given the same set of problems. This is to counter Apple fanboy statements that Apple and Steve are the most inventive minds in the whole world of computing. In fact, they simply were a product of their time and general mindshare. Nobody here has a problem with Apple taking credit for the markets they helped build. What we object to is if they subsequently turn around and use underhanded legal tactics to prevent anybody else from following them. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. |
| - Score: 9 |
| RE: And... |
| By tupp on 2012-08-30 15:19:59 |
|
> ... standing by what we discussed yesterday - nice achievement, but it's hardly on a par with what Xerox was doing, and then Apple with the Lisa and Mac. Again, no one said Xerox invented the idea of a user interface, they didn't. The Lilith was just one of many GUIs that came out before any Apple GUI. In the late 1970s and early 1980s computer world, there was considerable excitement about GUIs. Other players had more sophisticated GUIs, including the Perq (mentioned in the BLIT thread). The Perq had all the elements of a modern GUI, and it first appeared in 1979 -- four years before the first Apple GUI. |
| - Score: 4 |
| Demo of Lilith on Youtube |
| By cogumbreiro on 2012-08-30 15:41:13 |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o... |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: And... |
| By Alfman on 2012-08-30 15:55:55 |
|
saso, I agree, common development is inevitable since most of our technology evolves in lockstep. It's pathetic that a player should take credit for the whole enchilada. Being at the forefront should be enough of a reward. It's tough enough for new players to join an oligopoly market, but when bloodthirsty suits are screaming "all your base are belong to us" in court, that discourages competition and innovation. I think we have become over dependent upon litigation. It should be applied in exceptional cases rather than become routine business. Over a 50 year interval, US population has grown 78%. Over the same interval, the number of lawyers has risen 350%. http://i.imgur.com/ZuE8n.png |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[2]: And... |
| By whartung on 2012-08-30 17:43:09 |
|
> As I understood it, the point of these articles isn't to say that Xerox/Apple did nothing but copy others. It is to show, using clear evidence from the time, that GUIs were a convergent trend across the entire industry and that it was merely a question of months, if not weeks, of when they'd spill on the grand scene. The technology had matured enough, the need was there and skilled developers tend to come up with similar ideas given the same set of problems. It's also from a time when the IP landscape was quite different, and from a more open culture (academia). Back then, the creators did not have and/or chose not to utilize or enforce the mechanisms of IP protection that are available and mature today (notably design patents, and software patents). WHETHER YOU AGREE WITH THOSE PROTECTIONS OR NOT, they are available, and Apple et al are leveraging those protections for their designs. Apple, specifically, has obvious experience with seeing it's work taken by others. That experience likely fueled their drive to protect the IP that they feel "make Apple Apple". As Jobs said, and I paraphrase, "We patented the crap out of this." Apple has zero motivation to fuel a market of clones and copycats. Now much of this is being challenged, and we get to wait and see how much of it sticks. |
| - Score: 1 |
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