Apple: From which company did Steve Jobs “steal” the mouse?

April 27, 1981

Xerox PARC launches first computer with mouse. And yet, the man who is considered the greatest visionary who has passed through the modern technology industry, had already stolen it.

This story begins in 1979, when Steve Jobs was 24 years old and his company, the Apple, was already considered one of the hottest in the industry. Everyone in Silicon Valley wanted a piece of Apple, and so Jobs offered the Xerox people a deal: It would allow them to buy 100,000 Apple shares for $ 1 million at its upcoming IPO. All they had to do was allow him to look “under the skirt” of the company. Practically, take a look at the technologies he developed.

Somehow, Jobs found himself touring the Xerox facility, until he “stuck” in front of the Xerox Alto, the company’s personal computer.

An engineer named Larry Tessler made the presentation. It was still the time when computers were expensive, complex and difficult to use, but Tessler was moving the cursor on the screen with the help of a “mouse”.

It seems obvious today, but for that time, it was revolutionary. Then, to operate a computer you had to type a command on the keyboard. Tessler simply clicked on one of the icons on the screen. It opened and closed “windows” and moved easily from one application to another. He wrote in a beautiful word processor and exchanged emails with other people in the company on the world’s first Ethernet network.

THE Jobs had gone to Xerox with one of his developers, Bill Atkinson. Surprised, Atkinson came as close as he could, watching with his nose almost touching the screen.

But Apple co-founder was also excited. He could not believe that Xerox was no longer using this technology. “Why do you not do anything about it? This is the most important thing. This is revolutionary! ” he said.

And indeed, Xerox did something. The Xerox Alto was launched in 1981. It was slow and weak. And soon, Xerox withdrew completely from the PC market.

But Steve Jobs returned to Apple and demanded that his team – which was already working on the next generation of PCs – change its mindset. He wanted windows and he wanted a mouse!

“If Xerox knew what was in its hands and had taken advantage of its real opportunities, it could have become as big as IBM and Microsoft and Xerox together and the world’s largest technology company,” he would say years later.

But did Steve Jobs finally steal the mouse from Xerox? The reality is that Apple co-founder made his own, better mouse. “You know, the Xerox mouse costs $ 300 to repair and it breaks down in two weeks. You have to design this: Our mouse has to be built at a cost of less than $ 15. It must work well for 1-2 years and I want to be able to use it either on formica or on my jeans “, were the instructions he gave to his people.

And they immediately got to work, buying deodorants (from those with the ball) and saucers for the butter, to do their tests. This is how the Apple mouse was born.

In 1983, Apple released the Lisa computer. It was the first commercial computer with graphical user interface and mouse. It cost $ 10,000 or more than $ 25,000 in today’s money. He was revolutionary, even if commercially, he did not do well. That’s why on January 24, 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, which cost $ 2,500 (about $ 6,122 today). It was a big milestone for the mouse, as the Macintosh was essentially the computer that established it.

In 1985, Jobs explained in an interview why the mouse is so necessary for computers. “If I want to tell you that you have a stain on your shirt, I will not say it with the words: ‘There is a stain on your shirt, 14 cm below the collar and three cm to the left of your button.’ If you have a stain ‘Yes!’ “I will show him,” he said.

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