None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Transcript of an article that showed the innovations in the Star workstation, which by then were found everywhere (though they may not have worked as well, and were not yet popular of IBM and Compaq PCs.) The overlapping windows, selection, menus, focus, object-oriented design and of course the mouse itsef were also found in Smalltalk-80. However, the icons, representing documents, folders, printers and so on, were a unique innovation. Did Apple license the Star technology as well as Smalltalk-80?
