The glorious inelegance of the 1990s family computer

[gadgetgirl02]

@fnordius

Apple invented the idea of usability guidelines with their famous Human Interface Guidelines. Apple was the only computer maker for a long time with any sort of research into how people actually use computers.

I’ll give you part of the second sentence because he wasn’t in the consumer computer business as such, but Douglas Engelbart, end of discussion.

In addition to inventing the mouse, he came up with windowed interfaces, copying and pasting between applications, and groupware. Those are only a few items from a very long list. Steve Jobs got hold of some of Engelbart’s work via Xerox.