The history of the graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, covers a five-decade span of incremental refinements, built on some constant core principles. Several vendors have created their own windowing systems based on independent code, but with basic elements in common that define the WIMP "window, icon, menu and pointing device" paradigm.
Lisa is a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19, 1983. It is one of the first personal computers to present a graphical user interface (GUI) in a machine aimed at individual business users. Its development began in 1978. It underwent many changes before shipping at US$9,995 with a five-megabyte hard drive. It was affected by its high price, insufficient software, unreliable Apple FileWare floppy disks, and the imminent release of the cheaper and faster Macintosh. Only 10,000 were sold in two years.
MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processing counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate graphics that could be used by other applications. It taught consumers what a graphics-based system could do by using the mouse, the clipboard, and QuickDraw picture language. Pictures could be cut from MacPaint and pasted into MacWrite documents.
Historically, the classic Mac OS used a form of memory management that has fallen out of favor in modern systems. Criticism of this approach was one of the key areas addressed by the change to Mac OS X.
MultiFinder is an extension for the Apple Macintosh's classic Mac OS, introduced on August 11, 1987 and included with System Software 5. It adds cooperative multitasking of several applications at once – a great improvement over the previous Macintosh systems, which can only run one application at a time. With the advent of System 7, MultiFinder became a standard integrated part of the operating system and remained until the introduction of Mac OS X.
Andrew Jay Hertzfeld is an American software engineer and innovator who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a designer for the Macintosh system software. Since leaving Apple, he has co-founded three companies: Radius in 1986, General Magic in 1990, and Eazel in 1999. In 2002, he helped Mitch Kapor promote open source software with the Open Source Applications Foundation. Hertzfeld worked at Google from 2005 to 2013, where in 2011, he was the key designer of the Circles user interface in Google+.
System 6 is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers, made by Apple Computer It was released in 1988, and is part of the classic Mac OS series. It is a monolithic operating system, with cooperative multitasking based on an improved MultiFinder. The boxed version cost US$49, and it was included with all new Macintosh computers until 1991, when it was succeeded by System 7.
Susan Kare is an American artist and graphic designer, who contributed interface elements and typefaces for the first Apple Macintosh personal computer from 1983 to 1986. She was employee #10 and Creative Director at NeXT, the company formed by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in 1985. She was a design consultant for Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, and Facebook, Pinterest. As of 2007 Kare was an employee of Niantic Labs. As a pioneer of pixel art and of the graphical computer interface, she has been celebrated as one of the most significant designers of modern technology.
The Apple Macintosh—later rebranded as the Macintosh 128K—is the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. It played a pivotal role in establishing desktop publishing as a general office function. The motherboard, a 9 in (23 cm) CRT monitor, and a floppy drive were housed in a beige case with integrated carrying handle; it came with a keyboard and single-button mouse. It sold for US$2,495. The Macintosh was introduced by a television commercial entitled "1984" shown during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984 and directed by Ridley Scott. Sales of the Macintosh were strong at its initial release on January 24, 1984, and reached 70,000 units on May 3, 1984. Upon the release of its successor, the Macintosh 512K, it was rebranded as the Macintosh 128K. The computer's model number was M0001.
The Command key, ⌘, formerly also known as the Apple key or open Apple key, is a modifier key present on Apple keyboards. The Command key's purpose is to allow the user to enter keyboard commands in applications and in the system. An "extended" Macintosh keyboard—the most common type—has two command keys, one on each side of the space bar; some compact keyboards have one only on the left.
Guy L. "Bud" Tribble is Vice President of Software Technology at Apple Inc.
Randy Wigginton was Apple Computer's sixth employee, creator of MacWrite, Full Impact, and numerous other Mac applications. He used to work in development at eBay, Quigo, Inc and Move.com. In November 2010, he left his position as a "site reliability engineer" at Google Inc., purportedly after leaking news of a $1,000 holiday cash bonus to employees.
Steve Capps is a pioneering American computer programmer and software engineer, who was one of the original designers of the Apple Macintosh computer and co-designers of the Finder in the 1980s. He also led development of the Apple Newton PDA and designed music software such as SoundEdit, before developing user interface (UI) designs for Microsoft's Internet Explorer and online/mobile payment systems.
Chris Espinosa is a senior employee of Apple Inc., officially employee number 8. Having joined the company at the age of fourteen in 1976 when it was still housed in Steve Jobs's parents' garage, writing software manuals and coding after school, he is the company's current and all-time longest-serving employee.
Two major families of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc.
Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made is a nonfiction book written by Andy Hertzfeld about the birth of the Apple Macintosh personal computer. The author was a core member of the team that built the Macintosh system software and the chief creator of the Mac's radical new user interface software. The book is a collection of anecdotes tracing the development of the Macintosh from a secret project in 1979 through its "triumphant introduction" in 1984. These anecdotes were originally published on the author's Folklore.org web site.
Mac OS is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The Macintosh operating system is credited with having popularized the graphical user interface concept. It was included with every Macintosh that was sold during the era in which it was developed, and many updates to the system software were done in conjunction with the introduction of new Macintosh systems.
A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BASIC interpreter to type in programs or to load programs from storage.
Comparison of user features of operating systems refers to a comparison of the general user features of major operating systems in a narrative format. It does not encompass a full exhaustive comparison or description of all technical details of all operating systems. It is a comparison of basic roles and the most prominent features. It also includes the most important features of the operating system's origins, historical development, and role.
