You’ve almost certainly heard of the Xerox Alto, the machine that pioneered the desktop-mouse-keyboard interface and inspired Steve Jobs to produce the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers. It wasn’t just having a desktop, though– so much of our modern computing paradigm was invented on these machines. Given that, why aren’t we all using Xerox clones instead of Apples or PCs descended from the IBM compatibles? [Ctrl+Alt+Fail] has a video that answers the question: whatever happened to the computer of tomorrow, anyway?

It goes through the whole story of the Alto, from its introduction at Xerox PARC in the 1970s to its demise. At the introduction, the engineers showed of the What You See Is What You Get word processor, networked the machines together to show off e-mail and that anyone could use the office laser printer. It all seems very familiar now, but at the time, it was a revolution. An expensive one. The monitor sitting on the desk wasn’t the computer, after all: that was a large filing-cabinet sized desk sitting underneath. Only about 2000 were ever built, so what happened?

It wasn’t just that the first units cost twelve grand USD to build in 1973 money– about 90 large today by CPI, or for the gold bugs that’s 96 oz or 2.7 kg. It wasn’t worth its weight in gold, but it was close. Still, that wasn’t the problem: later models would be cheaper. The problem was that Xerox refused to sell the thing in the 70s. They saw the potential of a paperless office, and it scared them. Sure, they could sell a computer, once. They wouldn’t get a monthly service fee, nor the cost of the toner, drums and other consumables the Alto wouldn’t need. So they sat on it, and let others like Steve Jobs who didn’t have an existing business empire to lose take their ideas and run with them.

It seems shortsighted, but Xerox had already lost millions on big iron computing around the same time the Alto came along, and every business decision after that was carefully weighed on its projected revenue. Compared to a copier that printed money for Xerox as surely as it printed paper, the Alto just didn’t look like it could pay for itself. It looked likely to lose them a lot of money, which, in fact the adoption of the personal computer ultimately did. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback and say these developments were inevitable and Xerox should have run out in front, but [Ctrl+Alt+Fail] does a good job of explaining the logic from the Xerox boards’ point of view, which makes the video very much worth a watch.

If you can’t get enough Alto, we can also point you to what it takes to restore one, what almost killed one, and why you shouldn’t mine bitcoin with one.

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