Interesting piece in The Guardian talking about the well known story of Steve Jobs visiting PARC (Xerox's research center in Palo Alto) and being blown over by his first look at a GUI. So much so, that he immediately got his engineers working on its development, first with the Lisa... Remember that? Then in the Mac. As the article points out, he missed the significance of other PARC riches, including Ethernet, OOP, scaleable type, laser printing etc, etc. Nearly all of which were brought to life by PARC engineers after they had left and started their own companies. Funny thing is though... PARC is still there and funded to the tune of many millions a year by Xerox. And they've been doing it for thirty years. Unlike many other companies that merely pay lip service to research. Wonder how much Apple spends in comparison to Xerox?
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Yeah... But at least I picked a good one!
Well in 2003 Apple spent around $470 million on R&D. I think that places them in the top 100 in the U.S. in R&D spending. Of course that was four years ago, I'm not sure what they spent in 2007. A little research couldn't hurt your blog.
Posted by: kubricklove | May 20, 2008 12:55 PM | Permalink to Comment