Replies

another interesting telling of the Jobs visit to PARC...

Thanks BTerclinger, that is a great article that gets the story absolutely correct. Amazing. Most articles on the Steve Jobs/PARC story try to claim that Apple and Jobs stole the tech from Xerox. It correctly points out that Apple paid for the visits and the ideas they got during the visit through the negotiated pre-IPO stock purchase.

Part of what was not told in the article about the two Apple PARC interaction is that there were two visits, one with just Steve for eight hours, and then the second where Steve brought back his team of about twelve software and hardware engineers a week later for another eight hours. At neither meeting were any of Apple’s people allowed to take notes, photos, or copy any code. The only things they could leave with were ideas and their memories and impressions of what they saw and were told by the PARC scientists and engineers. Another thing not mentioned in most narratives of the PARC visit was that the PARC people also got some ideas from the Apple people in exchange.

I heartily recommend that article to everyone not just for the PARC/Apple visit story but for the general history in it as well. Fascinating.