Duckspeak vs. Smalltalk: Decline of the Xerox PARC Philosophy at Apple (2011)
This has been something that I&#x27;ve been thinking quite a lot about for the past few years.  The early Apple was heavily influenced by the work that came out of Xerox PARC.  Even during Apple&#x27;s low point in the 1990s, Apple maintained a research lab that was the logical successor to many of the ideas that came out of Xerox PARC.  The Dylan programming language would have been an interesting environment for programming Newton applications, and OpenDoc would have brought the idea of larger applications and compound documents composed from smaller applications and documents, which I find quite similar to the Smalltalk vision in some ways.  Unfortunately Apple&#x27;s research lab would be shuttered in 1997, but the rationale was understandable; Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy back then and Apple desperately needed to focus on its core product strengths.<p>Apple used to be the champion of personal computing.  Personal computing is about empowering individuals by giving them access to computation in a relatively accessible and affordable fashion.  Apple&#x27;s mission was to empower the user through usability, and they applied the research from Xerox PARC and other places to accomplish this.  Even though the classic Macintosh operating system is not as powerful as the Smalltalk environment, and even though certain important proposed additions such as OpenDoc unfortunately were cancelled, Mac OS enabled people to be more productive and more creative, and it even helped create many industries such as the desktop publishing market and the early web design market during the 1990s.  Apple&#x27;s usability guidelines for Mac programs were well thought out and enforced a coherent vision of usability for the entire platform.  Mac OS X in the 2000s was the pinnacle of Mac, combining the Mac&#x27;s focus on usability and good design with a solid Unix foundation that provided features that the classic Mac did not have such as preemptive multitasking and protected memory.  And, let&#x27;s face it, once competitors like the Amiga and BeOS died, Apple seemed to be the only major player remaining in the computer industry to have a coherent view of personal computing for the masses.  If the Mac at its peak was like In-n-Out Burger, then Microsoft Windows is McDonald&#x27;s, and the desktop environments for Linux are like frozen microwaveable burgers from the grocery store.<p>Unfortunately once Apple started making piles of money from the iPhone and other parts of the iOS ecosystem, Apple started to neglect the Mac (especially on the desktop hardware side) and the overall vision of personal computing as a way of empowering the masses.  It seems today that all Apple is concerned about is the iOS ecosystem, which is a locked-down walled garden instead of the freedom and empowerment that the Mac provides.<p>Right now personal computing needs a champion.  Many hundreds of millions of people, if not billions of people, rely on personal computers in order to carry out their business and creative tasks.  Unfortunately there are no companies that are passionate about personal computing.  Apple has become the iPhone company, Microsoft is focused on upholding its monopoly and building its cloud business, Google is all about mining personal data, and the Linux desktop world is too fragmented in order to put up a united front.  Even worse, many of the major players in personal computing bought into the notion in the late 2000s and early 2010s that personal computers will be replaced with smartphones and tablets.  This led to Apple&#x27;s neglect of the Mac, Microsoft&#x27;s failed Windows 8 Metro interface, and some odd design decisions in the early days of GNOME 3 and for Ubuntu.  While the industry has been backing away from the thought that tablets will supplant personal computers, personal computing still lacks a champion.<p>My dream is for either a company or a team of open source software developers to pick up from where Alan Kay, Don Norman, and other people left off and create an personal computing operating system that combines the best ideas of Smalltalk, Lisp machines, Hypercard, OpenDoc, and Apple&#x27;s usability guidelines from the Mac OS 8-9 days.  It will be an operating system that is focused on composable documents similar to OpenDoc but with Smalltalk-like levels of flexibility and control.  It will also have a strong emphasis on usability with a &quot;back-to-basics&quot; viewpoint instead of the flat design promoted by contemporary desktop and mobile GUIs.