Who invented the graphical user interface was it IBM, Apple or Microsoft?

[theluggage]

The Sumerian abacus appeared between 2700 and 2300 BC.

Well, it was announced in 2700 BC, but delays in the new 2 centi-cubit bead production process meant it didn't ship in quantity until 2300 BC...

 

[seabasstin]

Who invented the graphical user interface was it IBM, Apple or Microsoft?
I'm wondering when the GUI got started and who had the best looking GUI at the time?

I hear Windows 3.1 came out in 1992. But in the 80s DOS was used lot by IBM and Microsoft.

I hear there was Atari computer and had OS in 1985 and Amiga computer and had OS in 1985 as well. But Microsoft took over the market shares with DOS.
The Atari OS in 1985 seems pretty basic at the time.

View attachment 2627077

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MultiTOS.png

——

The Amiga computers had GUI in 1985

AmigaOS 1.0 was released with the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. The 1.x versions of AmigaOS by default used a blue and orange color scheme, designed to give high contrast on even the worst of television screens

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS

Note Atari computers seem more ahead at the time and OS better than Amiga.

hey there,
I am not being mean here, I am just trying to understand why you are asking this question here?
This is a very studied fairly clear aspect of the history of computing with many resources and much documentation explaining this history in detail, so what specifically are you asking about in relationship with the history of the GUI?

If this is just a general comment, there are many general encyclopedias that have accessible historical accounts (Britannica/Wikipedia) as well as specialized magazines like ArsTechnica, Wired that have written about it, and importantly there is also a lot of books about this, in most languages.
Here is an old tech article from ieee spectrum (1989) about the subject that is great to read for perspective.
(this is written from a perspective before windows 3, mac os 7, OS/2 etc)

Here is a visual timeline of the mainstream history of GUIs from ArsTechnica from 1997: (it has some misses here that are corrected in newer articles as well as on the wiki and Britannica.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

what is Xerox Alex?

 

[IvyKing]

I would argue that Air Traffic Control displays were sort of a GUI.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

I would argue that Air Traffic Control displays were sort of a GUI.

I would say those are just a display?

 

[chrono1081]

Not the whole GUI concept (that would be Xerox), but a lot of the underpinnings of modern human/computer interaction (including the mouse) were demonstrated by Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute during “The Mother of All Demos” in 1968:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

Anyone interested in computing should watch that video. I'm so glad it was saved somewhere.

As others said, it was Xerox who was sitting on a goldmine of invention/creativity they did absolutely nothing with. The story goes that Jobs (and I think Woz) were invited to Xerox and could take away any ideas (but no product) in exchange for a lot of Apple shares (there was a number given but I don't remember what it was).

As far as consumer GUI's, Apple was first.

 

[theluggage]

I would argue that Air Traffic Control displays were sort of a GUI.

Yup, turns out Trackballs (the ancestors of mice) started in 1946 in conjunction with early radar tracking systems...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackball

Light pens in the 1950s... and, Of course, what is Pong (1972) if not a GUI?

Pong - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I've mentioned the 1968 Mother Of All Demos linked previously - which started to engender the idea that interactive graphical/spatial interfaces could serve as a metaphor for day to day computing/office activities involving text and files alongside visual media.

The point of the Xerox GUI work was that it was a whole software suite built around a visual/spatial metaphor rather than just a collection of "special cases" (like, say, a graphics app or game) and did turn into an actual (if unsuccessful) commercial product. It was probably the first example of something that started to look like a modern GUI operating system.

As far as consumer GUI's, Apple was first.

True insofar as you really couldn't describe the 1981 Xerox Star as a "consumer product" and keep a straight face. It was a commercial product, though, not just a demo - albeit not available/accessible to actual consumers.

 

[boswald]

Just look at those interfaces back then and compare them to now. We can complain about Liquid Glass, rounded corners, etc., but at least it doesn't look like THAT anymore.

 

[theluggage]

Just look at those interfaces back then and compare them to now.

Those images were rendered on 640x200 or 320x200 displays (yup, horribly rectangular pixels) - with analogue interfaces, sometimes further garbled by RF modulators and domestic TVs. About the same number of pixels as a couple of modern file icons, and only a handful of colours.

I'd like to see the MacOS 26 designers do better with those constraints.

GEM was a bit of a MacOS cargo cult (it looked better on the high-res mono display) and, yeah, Amiga OS always looked hideous (but functional), but a lot of thought went into the human/computer interface design of MacOS and there were extensive style guides based on actual research (which does not mean asking focus groups how they felt). Things like how to word button labels, how to lay out dialogues, how to make icons with different outlines so they were visually distinctive (as opposed to a row ofnear-identical chiclets)...

The big, largely uncelebrated, impact of GUIs wasn't so much how it looked but the way it introduced consistency across applications. Before that, VisiCalc, Wordstar, Lotus etc. all had their own ideas as to how menus should work and be organised, how you saved and loaded files, what keys you pressed to copy and paste, how you chose preferences etc... GUIs made that consistent. Re-designing the look and feel of MacOS every year doesn't really help that.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Those images were rendered on 640x200 or 320x200 displays (yup, horribly rectangular pixels) - with analogue interfaces, sometimes further garbled by RF modulators and domestic TVs. About the same number of pixels as a couple of modern file icons, and only a handful of colours.

I'd like to see the MacOS 26 designers do better with those constraints.

GEM was a bit of a MacOS cargo cult (it looked better on the high-res mono display) and, yeah, Amiga OS always looked hideous (but functional), but a lot of thought went into the human/computer interface design of MacOS and there were extensive style guides based on actual research (which does not mean asking focus groups how they felt). Things like how to word button labels, how to lay out dialogues, how to make icons with different outlines so they were visually distinctive (as opposed to a row ofnear-identical chiclets)...

The big, largely uncelebrated, impact of GUIs wasn't so much how it looked but the way it introduced consistency across applications. Before that, VisiCalc, Wordstar, Lotus etc. all had their own ideas as to how menus should work and be organised, how you saved and loaded files, what keys you pressed to copy and paste, how you chose preferences etc... GUIs made that consistent. Re-designing the look and feel of MacOS every year doesn't really help that.

Dude, nobody could do anything with the constraints in programming, UI/UX, or anything else. We are all spoiled now.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

Here is a visual timeline of the mainstream history of GUIs

Sun Microsystems &etcetc should be included in there somewhere. The Sun GUI was somewhat useful, but the Sun-3 became the default lower cost platform for the X Window System GUI. Affordable for programming, engineering, and science environments (but too pricey for ordinary consumers). Then SGI for the first semi-affordable for engineering 3D graphics, and its rather nice Unix GUI.

 

[BotchQue]

...As others said, it was Xerox who was sitting on a goldmine of invention/creativity they did absolutely nothing with. The story goes that Jobs (and I think Woz) were invited to Xerox and could take away any ideas (but no product) in exchange for a lot of Apple shares (there was a number given but I don't remember what it was).

Walter Isaacson's biography Steve Jobs stated that Apple did pay Zerox for the GUI idea, although it was a pittance.

 

[Bubble99]

Those images were rendered on 640x200 or 320x200 displays (yup, horribly rectangular pixels) - with analogue interfaces, sometimes further garbled by RF modulators and domestic TVs. About the same number of pixels as a couple of modern file icons, and only a handful of colours.

I'd like to see the MacOS 26 designers do better with those constraints.

GEM was a bit of a MacOS cargo cult (it looked better on the high-res mono display) and, yeah, Amiga OS always looked hideous (but functional), but a lot of thought went into the human/computer interface design of MacOS and there were extensive style guides based on actual research (which does not mean asking focus groups how they felt). Things like how to word button labels, how to lay out dialogues, how to make icons with different outlines so they were visually distinctive (as opposed to a row ofnear-identical chiclets)...

The big, largely uncelebrated, impact of GUIs wasn't so much how it looked but the way it introduced consistency across applications. Before that, VisiCalc, Wordstar, Lotus etc. all had their own ideas as to how menus should work and be organised, how you saved and loaded files, what keys you pressed to copy and paste, how you chose preferences etc... GUIs made that consistent. Re-designing the look and feel of MacOS every year doesn't really help that.

Why do you mean programmers are wasteful today and can’t code for 640x200 or 320x200 displays?

 

[RUGERMAN]

These threads you are making are all questions you could quickly answer with a Google search. What’s the point of asking here?

The Mac ca=me out in 198 and some of you guys keep referring to 1985?? Xerox had photo type and Jobs got the idea from that but the Mac was out in 84. I had one.