Xerox Star 8010

The Xerox Star, released in 1981, was a groundbreaking system that significantly influenced the direction of personal computing. Developed at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), it introduced many concepts that are now standard in modern computing.

For interaction design, the most obvious point is that it first showcased a relatively complete Graphical User Interface, Called GUI to the public in the business field. This technology is not unfamiliar to people today, simply put, it is “what you see is what you get”. This means that the screen display matches the printed output, and people can intuitively click and interact with the computer. The use of icons to represent files, programs, and functions simplifies the computing experience and inspires future systems to focus on visual metaphors rather than text-based commands.


At the same time, the mouse has once again been mentioned in computer systems, which is a second and more flexible input device different from the keyboard.


It can be said that this product directly affects the future production of Macintosh by Apple and the Windows operating system by Microsoft. Steve Jobs visited the famous Xerox PARC, where many of Star’s ideas were integrated into the first-generation Macintosh, helping to bring GUI-based computing to the public.

Apple Macintosh

Microsoft Windows 1.0