Evolution of the Computer Desktop

As Neal Stephenson tells us, “In the beginning was the command line…” But then came the Graphical User Interface, or GUI. These point and click environments, as they came to be called, originated in Xerox’s PARC research center. However, the Macintosh was the first computer to bring it to the masses. For someone my age, I experienced most of this as it happened. For you younger readers, you can look back and see how primitive the GUIs used to be. Remember that when they first came out, they were state of the art and some even decried them as pointless. Experience it all here.