Women in Technology  Hear us Roar    Steve Jobs and the History
of Cocoa, Part One Subject:   Apple and NeXT Computer's debt to
Xerox's Smalltalk team Date:   2002-05-17 08:21:44 From:  
plount   It's amazing to me that people can write a history of
Apple and NeXT computer companies without mentioning the impact
of Steve Job's visit to Xerox and the influence upon him when he
saw the Smalltalk-80 system. The Smalltalk team didn't want to
show Jobs the system for fears that Apple would steal the ideas
and thunder. Their fears were correct. Although, in all fairness
Apple did pay Xerox one million in options for Steve's visit to
their labs. A very wise investment by Mr. Jobs, maybe his best
one yet other than Pixar. It was very unwise of Xerox to divest
itself of those stocks so soon after receiving them, as they
would have made their initial investment into Smalltalk back if
they'd held onto them a bit longer.  In Smalltalk Apple saw all
the ideas that they needed crystalized in a working system.
NeXT enters