The Xerox Star

Driving one of the world's first GUI computer at CHI '98 in LA (the 6085) Original Star keyboard can be seen behind the water bottle. Background Introduced in April of 1981, the Xerox Star was the first commercial computer to use a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Along with its groundbreaking use of windows, the Star also included networking, email and a WYSIWYG wordprocesser in the package. Why didn't it catch on? The US$16,500 price tag might have been part of the reason. More likely it was simply ahead of its time. The mouse had TWO buttons for those that are curious. Three years later, Apple also released a computer with two mouse buttons, except one of them was on the keyboard :) The Xerox Star monitor, keyboard and mouse The 6085 from behind Xerox Star 8010 Displaying its GUI A screen-shot from ViewPoint - Star's successor. The main difference is that the Star did not allow for overlapping windows. Star's Property Sheet window. Editing a formula with Star's WYSIWYG wordprocessor. Negatives So, was the Star perfect? Well, no. The software was both monolithic and proprietary which greatly inhibited new product development. In fact, one major factor contributing to its demise was the lack of a spreadsheet program. Almost every significant platform at the time was able to offer one when they became popular, but the Star's software/political limitations precluded it from being included in this group. Of course, a spreadsheet program eventually was marketed, but it was too little, too late. Also, from my own brief exploration of the system, I was able to (accidentally) crash the system in just a few minutes - and boy, you think that computers today take a long time to reboot... But let's not forget, if it weren't for the Star, we wouldn't all be using Microsoft Windows today! Hmmm... References [1] Bewley, W. L., Roberts, T. L., Schroit, D., & Verplank, W. L. Human factors in the design of Xerox's 8010 'star' office workstation, In Proceedings of CHI '83. ACM, 1983, pp. 72-77. [2] Johnson, J., Roberts, T. L., Verplank, W., Smith, D. C., Irby, C., Beard, M., and Mackey, K. The Xerox Star: A retrospective, Computer 22(9) (1989, Sept.), 11-29.