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Re:Pictures of the first GUIs from Xerox by pavlov on Friday April 15, 2011 @07:58AM (#2450225)
Sure. What I meant that Apple diverged from the Xerox UI path by designing the Mac around the mouse, so that the keyboard was not necessary for any actions. Microsoft basically took up that idea wholesale, simply extending it with more widespread keyboard shortcuts (Alt key for menu accelerators) and new mouse-centric gestures like right-clicking (borrowed from elsewhere of course).

In PC history, there were two opportunities to redesign the input hardware for a new kind of GUI...

First was in 1987 when IBM introduced the PS/2. It was a play for IBM to regain control of the wild west PC clone market, and failed as that, but the PS/2 keyboard and mouse connector standards lived on for more than 15 years. If IBM had revamped the keyboard at that point with something like the Star action buttons, they would have become a part of the OS/2 GUI and subsequently Windows.

Another junction was in 1995, when Microsoft launched Windows 95 and introduced new keyboards with the Windows key. At this point Microsoft carried so much weight with OEMs that I think they would have been able to push through something more radical on the input device front, if they'd wanted.

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