From the net:

The truth is Steve Jobs toured Xerox PARC in 1979 and saw three things
destined to change the face of the software/hardware industry in the
1980's and set the stage for the 1990's. Those things where, the
graphical user interface, object oriented programming and Ethernet.
Jobs got the religion Jef Raskin had been preaching about the GUI. They
shoehorned a GUI into the Apple Lisa. The product failed miserably.
Gates became obsessed with GUIs after seeing the Visi On computer
system at a trade show in 1982, before Lisa was released. He was
convinced Microsoft needed a graphical operating system. But Gates and
Microsoft had to deal with the hardware platform they had. Apple had
complete control over hardware and software and still does, so of
course they shipped something sooner and better. The final truth is
many people, from Vannevar Bush to Douglas Engelbart, thought about
these problems long before Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Sun and Oracle came
into being.

Also a nice GUI timeline at:

http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline.html

> Sorry.
>
> It was actual Xerox-park who came up with the gui.
>
> Cheers.
>
> James h.
>
>
> From:
> Date: Mon Sep 22, 2003 2:44:57 PM US/Mountain
> To:
> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Off topic
> Reply-To: "Visit http://www.utahastronomy.com for the photo gallery."
>
>
>
> Rich,
>
> Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Bill Gates steal the GUI idea from
> Apple
> Computer? I have to be careful at home so my mom doesn't hear me swear
> about
> Bill Gates and his operating system. LOL. Sometimes it can be a pain
> in the
> but.
>
> My 2 Cents,
>
> Debbie
>
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