I first used an Alto around 78 so it’s interesting they had an “ad” in 79. Perhaps it was part of the internal bake off.

Over lunch a few years later Alan told me about trying to get Xerox to sell Altos. There was a bake-off back in NY between the Alto and a orange-screen fixed-character machine (perhaps running CPM?) with no mouse, no network, no bitmapped display, just a small screen. No laser printing. Anyway the latter won.

A few years later Alan was on a plane and when talking to his seat mate found they’d both worked for Xerox — in fact that guy had made the decision or at least was in on it! So Alan asked how the decision had been made and the guy shrugged and said “well they were basically the same, so we went with the one that was cheaper to make”.