Editing Xerox Alto (section)

==Xerox and the Alto==
Xerox was slow to realize the value of the technology that had been developed at PARC.<ref name=fumble>{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Douglas K. |last2=Alexander |first2=Robert C. |year=1988 |title=Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer |publisher=William Morrow |location=New York |isbn=978-0688069599 |url=https://archive.org/details/fumblingfutureho0000smit |url-access=registration}}</ref> The Xerox corporate acquisition of [[Scientific Data Systems]] (SDS, later XDS) in the late 1960s had no interest to PARC. PARC built their own emulation of the Digital Equipment Corporation [[PDP-10]] named the MAXC.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Fiala |first=Edward R. |date=May 1978 |url=https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/1978/05/01646959/13rRUy3gmXN |title=The Maxc Systems |magazine=[[Computer (magazine)|Computer]] |volume=11 |issue=5 |pages=57–67 |doi=10.1109/C-M.1978.218184 |s2cid=16813696 |access-date=April 29, 2021 |archive-date=April 29, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210429050254/https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/1978/05/01646959/13rRUy3gmXN |url-status=live }}</ref> The MAXC was PARC's gateway machine to the [[ARPANET]]. The firm was reluctant to get into the computer business again with commercially untested designs, although many of the philosophies would ship in later products.

''[[Byte (magazine)|Byte]]'' magazine stated in 1981,{{r|wadlow198109}}

{{quote|It is unlikely that a person outside of the computer-science research community will ever be able to buy an Alto. They are not intended for commercial sale, but rather as development tools for Xerox, and so will not be mass-produced. What makes them worthy of mention is the fact that a large number of the personal computers of tomorrow will be designed with knowledge gained from the development of the Alto.}}

After the Alto, PARC developed more powerful workstations (none intended as projects{{clarify|date=June 2013}}) informally termed "the D-machines": Dandelion (least powerful, but the only to be made a product in one form), Dolphin; Dorado (most powerful; an [[emitter-coupled logic]] (ECL) machine); and hybrids like the Dandel-Iris.

Before the advent of personal computers such as the [[Apple II]] in 1977 and the [[IBM Personal Computer]] (IBM PC) in 1981, the computer market was dominated by costly mainframes and minicomputers equipped with dumb terminals that time-shared the processing time of the central computer. Through the 1970s, Xerox showed no interest in PARC's work. When Xerox finally entered the PC market with the [[Xerox 820]], it pointedly rejected the Alto design and opted instead for a very conventional model, a [[CP/M]]-based machine with the then-standard 80 by 24 character-only monitor and no mouse.

With the help of PARC researchers, Xerox eventually developed the [[Xerox Star|Star]], based on the Dandelion workstation, and later the cost-reduced Star, the 6085 office system, based on the [[Xerox Daybreak|Daybreak]] workstation. These machines, based on the Wildflower architecture described in a paper by [[Butler Lampson]], incorporated most of the Alto innovations, including the [[graphical user interface]] with icons, windows, folders, Ethernet-based local networking, and network-based laser printer services.

Xerox only realized its mistake in the early 1980s, after the [[Mac (computer)|Macintosh]] revolutionized the PC market via its bitmap display and the mouse-centered interface. Both of these were inspired by the Alto.<ref name=fumble/> The Xerox Star series was a relative commercial success, but it came too late. The expensive Xerox workstations could not compete against the cheaper GUI-based workstations that arose in the wake of the first Macintosh, and Xerox eventually quit the workstation market.