Re: Sharing the Family PC is Patent-Pending

[Dan Ganek]

Barry Margolin wrote:

> In article <2g2eonF3rca0U1@uni-berlin.de>, Daeron <daeron@demon.net> 
> wrote:
>
>
> > Barry Margolin wrote:
> >
> >
> > > > Aren't all the mainframe timesharing systems, some of which were
> > > > around 30 or 40 years ago, which maintain separate user sessions each
> > > > with their own environment, prior art for this?  As I recall, the APL
> > > > system actually called saved environments "workspaces".
> >
> > > 30 years ago, computers didn't even have "desktops", so I don't see how 
> > > they could be considered prior art.
> >
> > The 'desktop' being a metaphor for processes running in a particular 
> > context. The said processes also being restricted as to what they could 
> > access. Nowadays three, at least, of those process controll the mouse, 
> > keyboard and screen. Nothing new here.
>
>
> I thought "the desktop" referred to features of a graphical user 
> interface.  Sure, it's a metaphor for things that existed 30 years ago, 
> but the metaphor itself didn't exist then.

Can you Xerox Parc? By the mid-70's they were well into GUI's.
Bravo, Smalltalk, etc. The first commercial system was the PERQ
circa 1978. Xerox's Star came out soon after. Followed by Apple.

Of course, some of us would say that the PDP-1 had the first GUI.
(circa 1962?) It was the platform for the first computer game -Starwars.
Also the first timesharing system.

/dan





/dan