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Sorry, your english is very good so that's why I felt alright with correcting you. If I had known it was your second language I would have cut you some slack. So, good on you and bad on me! It was the heat of the moment.

Yes, military companies have certainly influenced all our lives but I guarantee you, as someone who had to use computers before Mac and Windows existed, Apple profoundly changed my life when the first Apple computer entered my life in 1985. More directly than any of those companies you listed. And I have to wonder what ANY computing (including whether mobile devices would even exist) would be like now if Jobs hadn't identified the potential in that GUI that Xerox management didn't feel the need to put any effort into developing further. He's the reason Microsoft found out about it and stole it from Apple to create Windows. Up until then, people muddled through with text-only computers and computations on huge mainframes. Being just 17, you have missed a TON of real computing history that has changed the world as much as any war has. You take being able to see what you are doing on a computer while you do it for granted. I don't.

But that's the thing, even if a story was completely fictional ("Steve Jobs' visit at the Buran launch site in Kazakhstan", for example) it would still have to capture the personas of the actual people referenced in the title.



If the word had been "historic" you may have had reason to shudder, even though any number of people would disagree, but "historical" simply refers to actual events in the past.

I stand corrected :rolleyes:
 
Yeah, but like I said, many people still need a computer that is usable during the time when they are away from their docking station and you can't do typical "Office" work on a phone comfortably. At best, a docking solution for a laptop or tablet, which is the most common docking station situation in use, is the replacement for a traditional desktop that still offers decent mobile computing.

It depends on your usage scenario. If you do a lot of work while you're away from a desk, it isn't an ideal solution for the very reasons you stated. You might as well get a laptop or tablet. But if you're someone who hops from desk to desk, it could be very useful. All you have to do is undock your smartphone, slip it in your pocket, then plug it back in when you arrive at your next location.

But for it to work, it'll have to offer a reason for people to want to use it, then it'll have to be simple, smooth, inexpensive, and well designed. Really, if I'm honest about it, something like this is more another selling point among selling points than it is a raison d'etre for a particular smartphone.
 
Commodore started designing the Amiga around the same time Apple was making their first steps with the Macintosh, and released it not long after. Apple was far from being the only company to see the appeal of the GUI, or the potential of the PC.

True, but if the GUI had depended on Amiga's not so elegant designs, I wonder where we would be now? Would we still be on those delicate 5.25" floppies? Because Apple brought us to the 3.5" hard "floppies" in the 80s and then to no floppies at all.
 
True, but if the GUI had depended on Amiga's not so elegant designs, I wonder where we would be now? Would we still be on those delicate 5.25" floppies? Because Apple brought us to the 3.5" hard "floppies" in the 80s and then to no floppies at all.

It'd be a little bit different, certainly. But I don't think it'd be a comparative wasteland. You gotta give props to Apple for being one of the few tech companies truly focused on presentation and ease of use, but I don't think they're the only ones capable of doing what they've done. If Apple never existed, another company would've filled that void at some point with their own take on the elegant PC.

If there's a market for something, there's someone with an idea that'll cater to it.
 
Sigh. I guess, like the untrue "fact" that Al Gore said he "invented" the Internet, there's no killing the lie that "Apple stole" the interface from AT&T. They paid some millions of dollars to just take a look at the system. They wanted to see an example of a windowed system with a mouse. They took some ideas, and compensated the company for the visit. Now we have the Wozniak character repeating the lie in the trailer.

First, Xerox, not AT&T. Second, Apple didn't pay Xerox anything.

The reality is that Xerox themselves we not really interested in building their own computers, and though that Apple would be better than them to create product using the technologies they had developed. So Xerox bought millions of $ of Apple stocks and part of the deal was that they would let Apple visit their research center.

Xerox Development Corporation (XDC) bought 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock, with the thought that perhaps Xerox might later sell Apple computers in their stores.

Jobs used this loose XDC marketing connection to wrangle (Xerox insiders say bully) his way into a demo of what a totally different section of Xerox was working on... the GUI.

However, a visit does not equal a license.

Xerox later made a ******** of money with those stocks following Apple successes.

Well, no.

Xerox paid $1.5 million for the stock in 1979. The stock later split, and Xerox sold 800,000 shares in 1981 for under $7 million.

So no, they stole nothing.

Xerox thought otherwise. As noted in a 1969 NY Times article when Xerox sued Apple for theft:

"Xerox's suit, which was filed in Federal District Court, charges Apple with copyright misrepresentation and seeks more than $150 million in royalties and damages.

"Xerox contends that the Lisa and Macintosh software stems from work originally done by Xerox scientists and that it was used by Apple without permission."


Here we go again with this PARC Xerox ridiculous myth. This movie is all bout generating profits. To maximize profits, the producers will jettison "accuracy or facts" for "fiction". Do a search "PARC scientist Larry Tesler recalls Jobs' famous Xerox visits" to get a real idea of what really happened.

All Tesler said was that Jobs talked his way into visits. He never said that Apple was given license to use what they saw during the visits.

Indeed, there were plenty of people at Xerox who have gone on record to say that they thought at the time that it was a huge mistake to show Jobs their GUI.

One was the Xerox developer/manager whom Jobs specifically asked to give the demonstration, Adele Goldberg, who famously warned Xerox management that Apple was going to steal their work. Her boss, Robert Taylor, was out of town at the time, but later said he would've told Jobs to "get out".

In short, the only myth being repeated here, is the idea that Apple somehow paid for a license to copy Xerox's work. They did not. Moreover, even in court, Apple never claimed that the 1979 visit gave such permission.

The idea that a courtesy demo somehow magically conferred permission to copy what they saw, is an internet myth, and not even one that makes sense. It's like someone claiming that being allowed to see an iPhone prototype, is the same thing as getting permission to copy it.
 
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And I have to wonder what ANY computing (including whether mobile devices would even exist) would be like now if Jobs hadn't identified the potential in that GUI that Xerox management didn't feel the need to put any effort into developing further. He's the reason Microsoft found out about it and stole it from Apple to create Windows.

Hardly.

Xerox's GUI work was known, and even published in personal computing magazines, such as BYTE.

1981_aug_byte_windows.png


Years later, by the time Apple came out with the Lisa in 1983, and the Mac in 1984, GUI concepts were already well known to those of us in the field. Many people were working on them (including me). Btw, notice the overlapping windows in the image above, something that many clueless fansites mistakenly claim Apple invented.

As for what things would be like, well, while some Xerox researchers like Tesler went to work for Apple, others went to work for places like Digital Research, where they invented GEM which was used on Ataris, etc.

One big difference was that Apple made their GUI simple, but that meant it was also crippled in some ways. For example, several competitors had multitasking while the Mac did not. (Sound familiar? It's Apple's M.O.) Not to mention that the original Macintosh was black and white, while other GUIs were in color.
 
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I guarantee you I would NOT be able to create motion graphics with a phone cpu. And no phone is going to have the fast storage I need. Yes, people whose jobs consist entirely of writing short text documents and some minor spreadsheet work could get away with it but they would need an external keyboard and monitor. How mobile is THAT? There are different form factors for different situations and mobile people need those in-between solutions like laptops and tablets. How is someone going to work on their slide presentation while on the plane to the meeting?

Considering how few people own a Windows phone there doesn't appear to be a market for your solution. Docking stations have been around for decades and have always been a niche product. Just don't see it happening.

Desktops will always be around, well at least for the foreseeable future, in those industries which need the horsepower. I don't believe anyone is stupid enough to think we are talking about replacing a graphic engineer's or CGI person's desktop... yet.

I do, however, think you highly underestimate the capabilities of the CPU's which are out now, and that's not even taking into account that new CPU's are about ready to be released. "short text documents", "minor spreadsheet work", that's not the reality. The reality is you can do very complex text documents, high level spreadsheet work, etc. As I mentioned you can run heavyweight stuff like PhotoShop, although with smaller files, but once again I'm not espousing replacing professional level gear. Same with storage speed, you are behind the times. The memory in the new Samsung phones is UFS 2.0 with conservative numbers putting it at 350 read/150 write, no it's not as fast as a traditional SSD but it's more than fast enough for the vast majority of non professional users. Keep in mind the majority of desktop/laptop users are still on traditional platter hard drives.

External keyboard and mouse? Well, yeah obviously. We are talking about a docking situation here. You go home and dock your phone, there's your computer. You go to work and dock it, there's your computer. When it's not docked it's a smartphone, like every other smartphone in the world. You GAIN a full computer when docked, but lose NOTHING when not docked. Desktops aren't made to be mobile. Laptop docks are quite feasible and some companies have even experimented with them, I can't see a tablet dock being any more difficult. I don't understand your example of the person on the plane, how would that person accomplish the same slide presentation with an iPhone? With continuum you bring a laptop dock, same bulk/weight you would carry with a separate laptop but now you don't have to sync. Allowing for a universal docking standard you show up to an office across the world and simply dock your phone into someone else docking station. The possibilities of eliminating computers is fascinating.

I understand windows has zilch market share, but I think they are on to something here. What you are missing is the inexorable march of technology. Thinner, lighter form factors. Better battery life. Stronger CPU/GPU's. More RAM, faster storage. Heck we may even see foldable screens next year, which would take away the need for laptop/tablet docks. No, being stuck in 1998 with iOS isn't for me, with no foreseeable major advances from Apple even hinted at. The doomsday crowd already predicted the surface tablets wouldn't go anywhere, but there are consumers who want a full computer with them on the go, but that also can be a simple consumption device if need be.
 
I kind of shutter when you use the term "historical events" about the launch of consumer products, that would mean the launch of the iphone would be in line with other historical events like ww2 or the cold war.

Well that term is relative. In terms of technology, the computer era, geeks, etc. the Macintosh and iPhone were certainly "historical events." Of course they don't have the gravity of WWII nor the widespread (life or death) effect the war had on the world. But the Mac and iPhone certainly affected tens of millions of people (maybe hundreds), but in a different way.

Certainly when it comes to Appel/Jobs, those events were historical, and to the industry in general. After 1984, how many computers stayed with command line? After 2007, how many phones stayed non-touch?

So yeah, I'd say those were historical moments.
 
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I don't know, the lines they have coming out of Jobs' mouth feel like fortunes from the egotistical/god complex/all knowing fortune cookie. If they have him talking like that in every scene, wow, that's gonna be a long movie for me. And I still cannot connect the actor and Jobs. It's still like I'm watching a movie about some tech guru who is not named Steve Jobs. Maybe they could have used some makeup to build up some of Job's features? Christian Bale would have killed this role. He must have known something about the script that we don't.
 
I really wish they had cast some unknowns.

With Fassbender and Rogen in the trailer, I felt like I was watching an ad for "Magneto versus The Green Hornet!"

The whole thing just comes across as very awkward. It's almost like they took the least interesingt facet of his life as the basis for the movie, then had to inject some false drama into it, and hired whoever they could find to take the part and told them to pretend they weren't portraying people who actually existed.
 
Woz isn't happy: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/07/03/wozniak-responds-to-new-steve-jobs-trailer

According to Bloomberg, Wozniak doesn't believe Seth Rogen's portrayal of him in the film is accurate, citing a scene in which the character accuses Jobs of hogging the spotlight.

"I don’t talk that way," he said. "I would never accuse the graphical interface of being stolen. I never made comments to the effect that I had credit (genius) taken from me."

That said, he still plans to see the film and enjoyed the trailer, despite its inaccuracies. "The lines I heard spoken were not things I would say but carried the right message, at least partly," he added. "I felt a lot of the real Jobs in the trailer, although a bit exaggerated."
This is why fictionalizing real events is a bad idea. How would you feel if you knew someone was purposely falsifying your life for drama and $$? It's bad enough a lot of the history we learn in school is inaccurate (Columbus was actually an awful human being we shouldn't celebrate with a day). Isn't REAL history interesting enough??
 
It'd be a little bit different, certainly. But I don't think it'd be a comparative wasteland. You gotta give props to Apple for being one of the few tech companies truly focused on presentation and ease of use, but I don't think they're the only ones capable of doing what they've done. If Apple never existed, another company would've filled that void at some point with their own take on the elegant PC.

If there's a market for something, there's someone with an idea that'll cater to it.

I still think Jobs had a unique point of view where he figured out what people would want before they knew they wanted it and made it so compelling that it was obvious to people when they see it, they want it. One of the reasons the Amiga never took off is because their implementation was poor and no one saw the need to have one. And most other CEOs are all about playing it safe and making tiny changes to the status quo to not stick their neck out too far. There are only so many Steve Jobs, Elon Musks, etc. Most CEOs are unimaginative, risk-averse number crunchers (hence the failure of Scully at Apple).
 
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Woz isn't happy. "I don’t talk that way," he said. "I would never accuse the graphical interface of being stolen. I never made comments to the effect that I had credit (genius) taken from me."

Well, in iWoz, he takes credit for just about doing everything and being totally awesome and doesn't waste one page telling you how genius he really is.

But to his point, he's right. In this trailer that just came out, NOBODY talks like that. There is no way Steve Jobs walked around all day talking like they have him. I mean, everyone has the great comeback every now and then, and Steve had a quick wit about him, but to be reeling off these (pretentiously) deep, though provoking comeback lines at every turn. Gosh. If you watch the trailer, his life must have been miserable, being in constant battles with everyone over everything. If that were the case, he was lucky not to drop dead of a heart attack long before he died.

Time is so limited with a movie. You have 90 to 120 minutes generally to get your point across. If you fill it with fluff, you aren't impressing anyone. I think there are certain things we all want to see in this movie, they won't get to them all, but they at least have to get to the consensus moments. If you turn this into a drama about child support and paternity....

I was so psyched to finally watch 'The Theory of Everything'. Then they turn it into a love story and forget the science part.

I care about Steve Jobs the Apple co-founder. I don't really care too much about Steve Jobs the guy who had this girlfriend and blah blah blah. I want to know about the stuff that involves COMPUTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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First, Xerox, not AT&T. Second, Apple didn't pay Xerox anything.



Xerox Development Corporation (XDC) bought 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock, with the thought that perhaps Xerox might later sell Apple computers in their stores.

Jobs used this loose XDC marketing connection to wrangle (Xerox insiders say bully) his way into a demo of what a totally different section of Xerox was working on... the GUI.

However, a visit does not equal a license.



Well, no.

Xerox paid $1.5 million for the stock in 1979. The stock later split, and Xerox sold 800,000 shares in 1981 for under $7 million.



Xerox thought otherwise. As noted in a 1969 NY Times article when Xerox sued Apple for theft:

"Xerox's suit, which was filed in Federal District Court, charges Apple with copyright misrepresentation and seeks more than $150 million in royalties and damages.

"Xerox contends that the Lisa and Macintosh software stems from work originally done by Xerox scientists and that it was used by Apple without permission."




All Tesler said was that Jobs got a visit in 1979. He never said that Apple was given license to use what they saw during that visit.

Moreover, there were plenty of people at Xerox who have gone on record to say that they thought that it was a huge mistake to show Jobs their GUI.

Heck, the Xerox person whom Jobs asked to give the demonstration, Adele Goldberg, famously warned Xerox management that Apple was going to steal their work. Her boss, Robert Taylor, was out of town at the time, but later said he would've told Jobs to "get out".

In short, the only myth being repeated here, is the idea that Apple somehow paid for a license to copy Xerox's work. They did not. Moreover, even in court, Apple never claimed that the 1979 visit gave such permission.

The idea that a courtesy demo somehow magically conferred permission to copy what they saw, is an internet myth, and not even one that makes sense. It's like someone claiming that being allowed to see an iPhone prototype, is the same thing as getting permission to copy it.


So the management at Xerox, who weren't supporting the GUI work, wanted something from Apple and invited them in to get it. Jobs was smarter than that and said part of the deal was being able to see what they were developing ( apparently to you that means just for sh!ts and giggles SMH). Since Xerox management was desperate, they say yes, still thinking Apple would get nothing out of it or they wouldn't have done it. And totally too inept to have Apple sign some kind of contract to not use anything they saw. Jobs lets it be known in their meetings that they have something and Xerox management STILL doesn't do anything about it, like demand a license. In the video people reference, the guy says that Apple people were trying to keep Jobs quiet about his enthusiasm about the GUI because they were still negotiating terms (where Xerox could have had the opportunity to put licensing terms to the GUI but apparently didn't or it actually WAS tied to the stock purchase). Not until years later and the GUI was actually implemented and Xerox management could finally see how awesome it is did they decide to sue. Hmmmm, sounds like Xerox management sour grapes to me. Like people who sell something old for a couple bucks thinking they unloaded it on a moron and find out later it's an incredibly valuable antique. Too bad, so sad. And Xerox lost their lawsuit against Apple, btw.
 
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I still think Jobs had a unique point of view where he figured out what people would want before they knew they wanted it and made it so compelling that it was obvious to people when they see it, they want it. One of the reasons the Amiga never took off is because their implementation was poor and no one saw the need to have one. And most other CEOs are all about playing it safe and making tiny changes to the status quo to not stick their neck out too far. There are only so many Steve Jobs, Elon Musks, etc. Most CEOs are unimaginative, risk-averse number crunchers (hence the failure of Scully at Apple).

Actually, the Amiga ended up becoming a considerably more popular machine than the first Macs, though it ultimately (and kinda obviously) failed to maintain that advantage. It's fall mirrors Apple in a way, though to considerably worse degrees. The incredibly bright people responsible for its success ended up being replaced very quickly by a bunch who'd make Scully look like a forward thinking genius. They didn't follow up on that initial success, and ended up running the entire company into the ground.

And here we are. Macs are selling better than ever, and Amigas have been relegated to history. Nothing but a fond memory for some oldschool computer nerds.
 
you also have to consider you've been a member here for 13years so once you see the look of the movie (via the trailer), you can pretty much fill in the rest of the blanks.. amiright?

No. I looked at the movie as a movie. I didn't see a story arc, just a nasty termpermental Steve Jobs character. Who wants 2 hours of that? I also saw a lot of cliches and wooden acting. That's why I thought it was not compelling, and likely wouldn't be to anyone to whom Apple is just a company that makes the iPhone.
 
Why are so many people obsessed with the fact he doesn't look exactly like Jobs. Who cares. I'd much rather have an actor who understands the characters rather than someone who simply looks like him. After watching for a few minutes, if the actor is good, you'll buy him as the character. If the actor is not good, you won't buy him as the character no matter what he looks like.
 
Why are so many people obsessed with the fact he doesn't look exactly like Jobs. Who cares. I'd much rather have an actor who understands the characters rather than someone who simply looks like him. After watching for a few minutes, if the actor is good, you'll buy him as the character. If the actor is not good, you won't buy him as the character no matter what he looks like.

People aren't obsessed with how he *looks*. They are commenting on how he doesn't resemble Jobs in *any* way - not the way he looks, the way he carries himself, the way he speaks, the attitude he projects, the things he says. Nothing about what we have seen of the portrayal makes you think "this reminds me of Steve Jobs."
 
Woz isn't happy: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/07/03/wozniak-responds-to-new-steve-jobs-trailer

According to Bloomberg, Wozniak doesn't believe Seth Rogen's portrayal of him in the film is accurate, citing a scene in which the character accuses Jobs of hogging the spotlight.

"I don’t talk that way," he said. "I would never accuse the graphical interface of being stolen. I never made comments to the effect that I had credit (genius) taken from me."

That said, he still plans to see the film and enjoyed the trailer, despite its inaccuracies. "The lines I heard spoken were not things I would say but carried the right message, at least partly," he added. "I felt a lot of the real Jobs in the trailer, although a bit exaggerated."
This is why fictionalizing real events is a bad idea. How would you feel if you knew someone was purposely falsifying your life for drama and $$? It's bad enough a lot of the history we learn in school is inaccurate (Columbus was actually an awful human being we shouldn't celebrate with a day). Isn't REAL history interesting enough??
Seemed like it works out fine for motion pictures which everyone knows are dramatizations even if they are based on real events. Worked fine for "The Social Network" (to use one of the more recent and relevant examples) among many other movies.
 
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