I look terrible. "This is a day I've been looking forward to..."
"Are you getting it?" That's a lot better.
Now that i am Steve Jobs -ified, i want to talk about the computer that Apple stole.
"This Xerox machine presents your morning mail on a screen." In November, 1972 some well-paid
computer engineers in Palo Alto put together a machine that let them actually see graphics.
This was a brand new thing for computers—actual pictures were finally showing up.
They demonstrated by alternating between two pictures of cookie monster so it looks like he
was eating a cookie. "MMM COWABUNGA!"
The legend is that the Xerox Alto was the first computer with a graphical user interface — GUI,
ethernet, and a mouse, but Xerox was too dumb to let it out of R&D.
And then Apple and Microsoft copied it — except it's a little more complicated than that.
I want to go over the Silicon Valley legend of the Xerox Alto and then get into the more complicated
truth of what actually happened to Apple and to Xerox, and try to figure out what the lesson
might be. "Good morning."
"A new technology called xerography." "Interesting"
"Basically they were copier heads that just had no clue."
"Xerox introduced the Star office information system."
"Uh a computer what it could do."
So i did not buy New Balance shoes for this bit, sorry lack of commitment there.
Did you know that these Steve circa 2006 sneakers were recently re-released for $175.
I do not have that kind of budget! This is the story that's been recounted
in Youtube on Business Casual's "The Xerox Thieves" but also in error-filled National
Geographic documentaries and even a classic tv movie, "Pirates of Silicon Valley."
Seriously, Noah Wiley's Jobs is probably the best of the three main contenders,
in my humble opinion. The basic idea is that
Xerox had an experimental computer that they used around their Palo Alto office
and it had just about everything. "This is an experimental office system
it's in use now at the Xerox research center in Palo Alto, California."
They showed it off unnamed in this commercial, but it was the Xerox Alto.
You could email with it, you could use a mouse, and there was a graphical interface.
And Steve Jobs himself later said that all this was a big deal.
"I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the Graphical User Interface.
I thought it was the best thing I had ever seen in my life. On Reddit, Bill Gates even fed the myth.
The legend behind that part is that Steve got a tour of the Palo Alto Xerox facility, PARC.
These idiots let the barbarians in at the gates. "You know i felt like one of the mongol hordes
coming to loot and plunder a bunch of defenseless villagers."
And as a result of it, Apple got the idea for a graphical user interface for a mouse,
for pretty much everything that let them take over the personal computing industry and the rest is
written: Xerox makes copies, Apple makes history. "It works like magic."
"Trillion dollars in net worth." "Two trillion dollars."
"Worth three trillion dollars." Let's get something clear here:
Steve Jobs would not like this turtleneck. I don't know how he'd feel about my mom jeans,
but, uh, this turtleneck is the wrong turtleneck. His was designed by a very specific person Issey
Miyaki — more on that later and why it matters. And just like that turtleneck, the truth about
Apple and Xerox is more complicated than the myth. Even if you've never heard about this story before
this video, I think the archetypes are pretty universal, and they're useful to deconstruct.
Xerox is the big dumb company stuck in old technology and Apple is the feisty upstart.
Both of these are way too pat. My big source for this is the book
Fumbling the Future — it's a book all about Xerox's failure to become a computer titan.
You know, honestly, it's kind of inside baseball, but I've got a link in the description that you
can check it out if you want. And it's really useful to understand what Xerox did wrong,
but also what they did really really right in the lead up to the computer age.
Xerox had established a brand new research office in Palo Alto, across the country from their new
headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. This was a big leap for them to take,
and they took it all the way across time zones. They also dumped hundreds of millions of dollars
into a computer-related acquisition. They were betting big that this could
be at least a part of their future. You see, Xerox was kind of cutting edge.
Xerox was the company that scooped IBM .Steve Jobs even said this in a sales meeting leading
up to the Macintosh launch. "It is 1958.
IBM passes up the chance to buy a young fledgling company that has invented a new technology called
xerography. Two years later, Xerox is born." They later led with stuff like the laser
printer too, in an age when people were worried that the, like, lasers would burn their kidneys
or something. People were scared of laser printers. But Xerox steamed right ahead.
So this company had a lot of innovation. And on the Apple side, it wasn't just a
feisty disrupter. That got more complicated too. Apple was only there because Xerox had
invested money in them. That investment was why Xerox gave Steve and company that infamous tour.
And it wasn't swoosh, straight from the Alto to the Macintosh. Not even close.
Xerox never released the Alto, but they did release a computer called the Xerox Star before
Apple's graphical computer targeting the office market, the LISA. Two years before
LISA and three years before the Mac. Apple even licensed some Xerox software
to make their machines, and they definitely poached people.
And to add to that both, Star and LISA kind of failed anyway to take over the world of offices.
It wasn't until the Macintosh in 1984, well after Xerox had released a graphical
user interface computer, as had other competitors, when Apple really kind of won.
As if that didn't complicate things enough, there is one more thing.
"Uh one more thing, sir. I almost forgot." That's the wrong guy.
"One more thing." That's better.
"We try nowadays to do our daily work on here." This is a demonstration that's known today as
the mother of all demos, where computer scientist Douglas Engelbart revealed the
mouse and a bunch of other stuff. It was insane. Apple didn't steal the mouse, the word processor,
from Xerox because Xerox didn't invent it. A Stanford researcher had already
come up with all this stuff and it was known about throughout Silicon Valley.
And it all happened in 1968, five years before the Xerox Alto. "And I thank all the rest you very
much for coming to the dedication ceremonies." Ah let's go ahead and close the loop on this
t-neck, as we call it in the industry. The story of steve jobs' outfit is that
he loves Sony. Sony had corporate uniforms and he wanted one for
Apple. Like, everyone atAapple hated that idea. Steve jobs knew that Issey Miyaki was the guy who
had designed them for Sony, so Steve Jobs decided that he would wear Issey Miyake turtlenecks all
the time and make it his personal uniform. I don't know about the jeans though,
especially with no belt. Why did he hate belts? Belts are great.
Anyway, the point is is that the story of Steve Jobs' turtleneck is one of
innovation, but also adaptation and reimagining and failure and iterations.
And yeah it's a kind of dumb example, but i think it's symbolic of the broader way in which Apple
succeeded not by having some big idea but by iterating and executing really really well.
We want a story of pirates — and don't get me wrong i'm not saying "Pirates
of Silicon Valley" was a bad movie. "What the hell are you doing then?"
I'm saying that it misses a richer point about how people and companies succeed in these industries.
Xerox did bet a lot on the future, just not enough.
And Apple did not coast to success — they had a lot of failures along the way to the Macintosh.
It wasn't an idea, it was their determination to keep that idea going
no matter how many times it failed. Only after we understand that
can you appreciate what might have been. "Basically there were copier heads that
just had no clue about uh a computer what it could do and so they just grabbed uh
grabbed defeat from the greatest victory in the computer industry."
All right, that's it for this one. I, uh, bought a turtleneck for this video and I
do not like turtlenecks. I feel like I'm being like strangled by a snake the entire time, so
these are the sacrifices I make for you. This is a personal and history channel
where i do those kind of videos on here. Um, I'd love it if you, uh, liked and subscribed.
It helps out at this stage, it also really helps if you can leave a comment.
I'd be curious uh to know what you think of how i kind of
sliced and diced the Apple and Xerox battle. This was a more complex story than I thought
it would be when I started learning about it, but I'm really glad I did.
I will see you in the next one and, uh, you know, try to stay warm in the meantime. And
maybe, you know, wear a belt. Just just do it. Okay, bye.