Steve Jobs and the Xerox Star demo

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4 pointsnickb3 comments

Why would Steve Jobs be freaking in 1981 when he already saw it back in 1979?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star

Also Folklore.Org says the same thing: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...

"This is obviously the biggest single jump in the entire set of photographs, and the place where I most wish that Bill had dated them. It's tempting to say that the change was caused by the famous Xerox PARC visit, which took place in mid-December 1979, but Bill thinks that the windows predated that, although he can't say for sure."

Maybe because he knew how far away his Mac launch was and it made him nervous to have the Star out there already.

With that price tag?

"Although a single unit sold for $16,000, a typical office would have to purchase at least 2 or 3 machines along with a file server and a print server. Dropping $50,000 to $100,000 for a complete installation was not an easy sell."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com