Xerox Star Dead
Xerox Star
KindMachine
Introduced1981
Discontinued1983
StatusDead
ManufacturerXerox
ClassWorkstation
PlatformDandelion CPU
Sourcebitsavers.org ↗
The Alto's commercial offspring — the first system to ship a complete desktop metaphor: icons, folders, WYSIWYG, networked everything. It cost $16,000 and sold poorly; the Macintosh cost $2,495.
1960198020002020
Created by Xerox
The Star 8010 (April 1981) was the Alto's commercial offspring — the first system to ship a complete desktop metaphor: document icons, folders, overlapping windows, point-and-click WYSIWYG, Ethernet filing and printing, laser printer.
At $16,595 it sold maybe 30,000 workstations. Jobs saw the Star and told Lisa's team to copy everything; the Macintosh shipped in 1984 at a fifth the price with most of the ideas.