this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
160 points (81.2% liked)
Technology
59322 readers
5123 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't think anything beginning with "They took" answers what OP is asking
What do you think “improved” means in the OP?
When paired with "innovate/innovation", not "taking" something.
Taking a thing and then improving it to the point that it has massively larger appeal has value, innovative or not.
But if it's not innovative, then it's not innovative, which was the question in the post title, lol
Every innovation is built on top of other ideas. All of them.
You're getting hung up mostly on the word "took". They could have said "started with". But what was built was successful both by being innovative and well-executed.
That and other people were already working to use what PARC had developed.
But I'll give Apple the credit for being the first to implement a personal computer that made computing much more approachable, with the MAC.
It was years before Windows had anything close in Windows 3.1, which frankly wasn't actually all that close.
NT 3.1 is probably the first Windows OS that had the consistency of Mac OS, with modern (non-DOS) underpinnings.
And the reality is it was heavily influenced by the DEC Alpha system because MS had hired much of the Alpha team from DEC. Technet Mag had a great article about it circa 1996.
3.1 was a kludge, 3.11 was a disaster. Windows didn't come close to Mac like usability until Windows 95.
Pretty much every other GUI was ahead of Windows until 95.
Agreed on the GUI.
NT 3.1 at least had modern underpinnings, and using the Norton Desktop on it instead of the Windows Shell made it much like what we got with "Chicago" - the 95/Win2k UI.
Wow, you got me thinking about that stuff and remembering Norton Desktop. I'd forgotten ever using it on NT back then. Gonna have to go look for a copy now.