Every time this gets brought up it makes me want to mess with SmallTalk again.
this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
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Back in 1995, I did "0300" work for AT&T - customer service for residential long distance customers. We used Xerox machines of some sort. I don't remember all that many details, but it was probably a successor to the Star systems. There was a GUI and windows, although almost everything we did used terminal-type windows, connecting to various systems to look up information and make necessary changes. I do remember there was a GUI-type app for the ANI - automatic number identification - that basically gave us caller ID (number, no names) when we got a call. It didn't always give us the number, but usually did.
I was so young and hadn't learned yet (with my then-undiagnosed ADHD) that phone jobs were NOT a good fit for me...... I'd log in each day to customize the colours and sizes of things, which it wouldn't save once I'd logged out. But I couldn't stand the defaults, and also it slowed me down getting on the phones (although it counted against me and was part of the reason I lost that job - time spent outside of the queue. heh)
Well it didn't really bring it to us because they never sold it to anyone. They could have been the top dog in computing
Do you mean that sales were poor? If not, and you mean that literally, then they did – about 25,000 units, making it a commercial failure, but nevertheless "brought".
Xerox made a bunch of bad business decisions that caused a household name to disappear.
Xerox invented the GUI, mouse, and Ethernet. But basically because sales didn’t immediately do well they killed revolutionary innovations and let IBM, Apple, and Microsoft benefit from their work.
PARC Life
The first I used was gem on the Atari ST, was pretty cool and highly intuitive
Wow, always thought this was just a demo, the apps actually look pretty well fleshed out