Computer History Museum
6 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2019–2026
1:57:00 · 13K views · Feb 28, 2019
A 1997 Computer History Museum lecture in which Larry Tesler and Chris Espinosa recount how the Apple human interface was born, from the Lisa through the Macintosh. It covers design decisions such as discoverability and the standard editing keys.
HN commenters cite it as a primary source on Lisa and Mac interface history, and a transcription of it was itself discussed on HN.
6 comments from Hacker News
Meh. the Lisa was absolutely, positively, explicitly NOT a Mac. If you don't get that, then you misunderstand the business of computing in the late 70s / early 80s. The author also ignored Jef Raskin's work on the original Mac project (I wrote a serial driver for him in the early 80s for a 6809 prototype he was working on.) If you're going to make one of these Mac hagiographies, it's useful to point out the Canon Cat (which was more in line with Jef's original idea for the Mac) and then point out how different it was from main-stream Macs. And then point out WHY the Lisa was not a Mac. So... Why do people think the Lisa was a prototype Mac? It's easy to understand the confusion. It has a 68k processor, a mouse and a bitmap screen. It was even used as a development platform for the original Macs. But it is not a Mac. The Lisa didn't have "apps" and "files" in the same way we think about them. It had "tools" and "documents." The Lisa was strongly influenced by the Xerox Star. And while it's not exactly true to say the Lisa was Apple's version of the Star, there was definitely a strong resemblance. The Lisa (and the Star) came with all the functionality it would ever have built into the system. (This restriction changed later, but when launched, it was considered a complete system.) It had "apps" in the sense there were tool icons you could (double?) click to create a blank document of a specific type. But it took Apple over a year to decide they wanted to give third-parties the
Hi, thanks for your work. Regarding: "I’ve listened to this bit many times and I’m pretty sure Tesler says ‘foils’, and I guess he’s using the term in its architecture‐related meaning of “a leaf‐shaped curve formed by the cusping of an arch or circle” — But I welcome any correction from native English speakers." He surely talks about preparing the "transparency" foils for presenting them using the overhead projectors: [LINK] "A transparency, also known variously as a viewfoil, foil, or viewgraph" That's how the presentations were done at that time, using the: [LINK] The good side was that you were able to prepare the foils before but then annotate any (i.e. write or draw on it) during the presentation, which had its own dynamic -- it could have been a result of the interaction with your viewers -- like while you were answering some question. The foils were even used in the very talk you transcribed: this video
Separate keys have challenges: in addition to the extra cost, you need to find physical space and train people to look for and use them. The original designers wanted to make it efficient for people who were already typing and as you might have noticed those keys are all close together and convenient for one-handed use: > Why the Z X C V keys? — They were close on the keyboard. We did X because it was a cross out (CUT). We did V because it pointed down like this [he makes a ‘V’ shape with his hands], and you were inserting; it was like an upside-down caret (PASTE). And Z was the closest one, because we figured you’d UNDO a lot. And C for COPY — that was easy. this video via [LINK]
My parents still handle easier the UI where they see the "buttons" for the navigation. They are just confused when some of the text is clickable and some is not. For those who don't know them, the "buttons" like "Cancel" "Next" here: [LINK] Young users don't have such problems, but original iOS was easy to use for the older generations too. Steve Jobs cared about the easy discoverability. That is something that started as early as with Apple Lisa: this video also recently on HN: [LINK] It was a big step back for my parents when iOS removed the buttons present in the older design and replaced them with the plain text.
"A visual history of the development of the Lisa/Macintosh user interface" [LINK] see also: "Origins of the Apple Human Interface” (1997) this video