Thanks to Xerox Corp we have computers...

[itninja]

Folks, ive seen a lot of posts that are incorrect as to the beginnings of windows and the current OS.

MS DOS -
was purchased off of a small comptuer company named Seattle computer supply, in downtown seattle for 20,000.  Bill Gates had to buy it because he told IBM that he had an OS, (and at the time he really didnt).

Windows 1.0-
Was modeled after the apple release of LISA, because bill gates knew he was behind apple and needed to get an os out fast, plus he had a contract with IBM.

Xerox-
Xerox's PARC center Palo Alto Research Center is responsible for almost everything we use today.  They devoloped the First, mouse on a computer running a GUI.  At the time xerox's exec's thought it was a joke, and let Apple take whatever they wanted from what PARC had made, (including the GUI, and the mouse).  Later one PARC went on to make a ton of inventions listed at the bottom of my post.

These are the real beginnings of it all.........

[Calum]

IT Ninja, all the things you say are correct, except for the part where you claim that we've all got it all wrong.

Whenever somebody asks on these forums about the origins of DOS, or BASIC, or the relationship between Apple and Microsoft, or IBM and Microsoft, somebody usually answers pretty quick with a real historical answer that puts all the speculation to rest.

I would be interested if you did indeed post some examples of incorrectitudes that you found on these forums (not that i'm saying there aren't any, but i am sure most inexactitudes would have been clarified by somebody else fairly quickly).

[voidmain]

On X11's timeline it says OS X came out in 1999. That's incorrect isn't it?  I thought it just came out this year.  Maybe they meant OS 9 since they didn't mention it earlier but they show pictures of OS X and say 1999?