No, I knew about that too.

Was Lisa "commercial"?

Yes.

It could be bought as a standard package, off the shelf, at a not unreasonable (for the time) price.

Not as a bespoke special-order system that came into the major capital investment category.

Pre-dated by Xerox Star, however

In reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star:

The Star workstation, officially known as the Xerox 8010 Information System, was introduced by Xerox Corporation in 1981. It was the first commercial system to incorporate various technologies that today have become commonplace in personal computers, including a bitmapped display, a window-based graphical user interface, icons, folders, mouse (two-button), Ethernet networking, file servers, print servers and e-mail.

I knew several people who had Lisa's, how many do you know who had a Xerox Star?

It's like saying that Cray Inc commercialised supercomputers.

just read it and by the way you can register for free access on ft.com.

useful for only occasional use.

The article basically says microsoft are gong to be more agressive on new releases (bad in my opinion, android eg, is a aweful OS and has a very fragmented user base as a result of frequent updates), they going to be moree agressive on touchscreen hardware sales to try and get more of windows users on touchscreen devices (also bad in my view) and are going to allow a default boot to desktop option. There is no indications at all that they going to put focus back onto desktop. They are also considering making office for non windows OS.

Whats notable is they consider the issue of angry windows user been uneducated rather than themselves getting design decisions wrong.

I see nothing here that is going to make me be using windows in 5+ years time. A migration for me to linux desktop is looking more and more likely.

by the way direct links are helpful.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7266e47c-b72f-11e2-a249-00...

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 07-May-13 23:07:40)

yeah hes the idiot who made silly decisions like this.

http://www.windowsphonedaily.com/2012/05/windows-8-t...

Whilst I agree microsoft are commited to windows 8 i dont agree its amazing, I think its their worse OS probably since windows ME. Its only a good OS if you a fan of touch devices, its aweful to use with a mouse, has various functions removed, and is buggy.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

by the way direct links are helpful.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7266e47c-b72f-11e2-a249-00...

Possibly, but if you're not registered, links to a sign-up page aren't.

and a link to the home page is better?

probably not.

So for mice, 1st was Telefunken TR-440, 2nd was Xerox Star and 3rd was Apple Lisa. I guess 4th was Apple Mac and it suddenly seems rather anachronistic that 30 years later we're still using them.

Maybe Microsoft are actually correct?