GUI paradigm history

Question

hi there

I know that Apple and Microsoft were inspired by Xerox PARC in building the GUI, but my question is: from the hardware point of view, which was the switch to GUI become available? I remember that I've read somewhere about OS running on 80KB at that time. Can you explain me(give some links) about what was necessary from the hardware point of view(also memory, speed) to make the GUI available?

I'm interested about the history of this paradigm switch.

TY.

ps: do you know how were those 80KB used?

Answer 1

here is an excellent article from arstechnica on the history of UI's. Wikipedia also has an article on it.

To answer your question about when the switch was available, i think that a GUI was always available, even in the days of analogue machines. You didnt have a windowing UI back then, but even back in the 60's, there were machines which displayed primitive user interfaces.

Machines that had user interfaces that ran on 64kb memory did so by using a lot of special modes in their hardware to display primitives without using alot of RAM. For example, back in those days, hardware sprites were crucial because that was the only way to get good graphics using low memory. Also dont forget about vector graphics and various other innovations which can create user interfaces without much RAM.