[vcf-midatlantic] Xerox Wildflowers - Dandelions and Daybreaks

[Adam Michlin]

My father, who was working at Exxon at the time, got special permission 
through his boss to visit PARC some time, he thinks, between 78-82... 
not entirely sure. He is pretty certain it was before Jobs visited, but 
he can't be sure. Apparently he had to all but sign his first born away 
(*phew*) that he wouldn't leak any secrets.

What he is crystal clear on is that he was shown the Alto and the Dorado 
and not the Star and that Xerox had no commericial products of the GUI 
computer ilk. He would later purchase a Star as part of responsibilities 
at Exxon, probably around 1983.

As to how Xerox could have dropped the ball.. it is more like how could 
they not have dropped the ball. They were a *copier* company and they 
were making money hand over fist selling copiers. This new fangled 
computer business? Meh. They also lost out on the personal laser printer 
and Ethernet (double doh!).

On 8/17/2020 3:07 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> Turns out it was Altos. The Star was the commercialized successor to the
> Alto.
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 2:59 PM Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <
> vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:08 AM Andrew Diller <dillera at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I know DavidG has done some amazing work (along with other members) on
>>> VCF's 8010 (*Dandelion)*... And strangely enough the same day (yesterday)
>>> someone on the SGI Discord I frequent posted this amazing video, which I
>>> thought I'd share to interested people here:
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Dlr5rY9SI
>>>
>>> Of a Daybreak (*Xerox 6085)* booting up into ViewPoint 2.0 and using the
>>> apps. VCF also has a Daybreak which would be great to get fully
>> functional
>>> again as well.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Daybreak
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm not sure of the dates, but do people know if the Xerox Star would
>> have
>>> been the system that Jobs and the Apple team viewed at Xerox back when
>> they
>>> had their infamous visits? Or were those Altos?
>>>
>> I wonder if the book "Dealers of Lightning" has any details about this.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> -andy
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> =========================================
>> Jeff Brace
>> Vice President & Board Member
>> Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner
>> Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity
>> http://www.vcfed.org/
>> jeffrey at vcfed.org
>> cell: 732-759-1783
>>