In the 1980s, home computers were clunky, dull, and utterly unexciting. Sure, they were useful for business applications and storing recipes, but they needed something more. They desperately needed innovation.
Then, amazingly enough, Xerox—the company famous for making copiers—developed something revolutionary at their Palo Alto Research Center back in the 1970s. They understood that computers would someday be in everyone’s homes, and recognized they’d need to be easier to use. They created the Graphical User Interface, or GUI.
Xerox, being somewhat clunky themselves, invited a young man named Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, into their laboratory to showcase this innovation. Steve Jobs immediately recognized its potential and took the idea. He knew his own computers were clunky, dull, and not exciting—despite the Apple II’s revolutionary impact and his smart decision to place computers in schools.
In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, the first mass-market computer featuring a graphical user interface. They took Xerox’s foundational ideas, refined them, and made them better.
I first experienced a graphical user interface at a Pinellas IBM Users Group meeting in Largo, when a company introduced their version called GeoWorks. This software transformed ordinary IBM-based computers into magical machines. The owner gave me a copy that day, and I couldn’t wait to get home—or more accurately, to my office in Tarpon Springs.
I installed that set of eight 9.5-inch floppy disk into my DOS-based computer, and it transformed from a clunky machine into something absolutely magical and creative. Suddenly, I could do desktop publishing, create gorgeous-looking documents, and design logos. I shared a copy with my friend Gerald Holt, and his wife immediately used it to create the logo for their company. The capabilities amazed me—what a clunky computer could become.
You have no idea how many nights I spent in that small office creating beautiful things.
Today, if you visit our office at the Tampa Bay Technology Center, you’ll find computers running Windows, which now has its own graphical user interface. It started with Windows 3 and has evolved all the way to Windows 11. Yet in my opinion, computers seem a little clunky again. It’s time for something new.
What that something is, I have absolutely no idea. But I’ve learned something valuable from my experience with original clunky computers and the magical machines that followed: technology improves, creativity improves, and people’s ideas transform into absolute magic.
So here’s my thought: let’s find an extremely smart, creative thirteen-year-old—like my grandson—who will create the next beautiful, wonderful thing in technology.
We’ll see you next Wednesday.