Graphical user interface (GUI), a computer program that enables a person to communicate with a computer through the use of symbols, visual metaphors, and pointing devices. Best known for its implementation in Apple Inc.’s Macintosh and Microsoft Corporation’s Windows operating system, the GUI has replaced the arcane and difficult textual interfaces of earlier computing with a relatively intuitive system that has made computer operation not only easier to learn but more pleasant and natural. The GUI is now the standard computer interface, and its components have themselves become unmistakable cultural artifacts.
In March 1976, Wozniak built the first Apple, the Apple I. It was a cobbled-together curiosity made of circuit boards and LED displays stuffed into a wooden box, but it stirred enough interest in the computing community to inspire Jobs and Wozniak to found Apple on April Fools’ Day, 1976 to sell their little beasties. Jobs sold his VW minibus, and Wozniak his HP scientific calculator, to finance the startup.
In the early 70s, as part of a (sadly abortive) project called “Dynabook” that envisioned notebook-sized, hyperlinked computers, Alan Kay and others developed an interactive object-oriented programming language called Smalltalk. Kay had previously worked with a team at the University of Utah that developed a programming system called Flex. This was a design for a flexible simulation and graphics-oriented personal computer, with many ideas derived from the Norwegian-developed Simula programming language, another programming language called LISP, and Sutherland’s Sketchpad. Kay also borrowed ideas from a highly graphical language called Logo, which was designed to teach programming to children. Smalltalk featured a graphical user interface (GUI) that looked suspiciously similar to later iterations from both Apple and Microsoft.
The first real-life, usable GUI appeared in Xerox’s Alto computer, which debuted in 1974 and was envisioned as a smaller, much more portable replacement for the mainframes of the time.
Jef Raskin, a project manager with Apple, first told Jobs and Wozniak about the research being done at PARC. And it’s obvious, that it allows Apple to start their own project.
1979 – Birth of Apple Lisa

Lisa is worth a paragraph or two on her own. Jobs and his buds envisioned Lisa (named for the original chief engineer’s daughter, and also standing for Local Integrated Software Architecture) as the first of a new, GUI-based PC family, but developed her primarily for business use. It’s notable that the new product line came on the heels of the 1981 failure of the Apple III line, which was so flawed that it had to be recalled.
1983 – Mac Arrives
Jobs was no longer the only alpha male in the Apple pack (if he ever was). John Sculley, the corporate executive brought in to reshape Apple into a “grown-up” business, took Jobs off the Lisa project because of Jobs’ poor project management skills, and turned him loose on the next Apple project, a slimmed-down and considerably cheaper “daughter” of Lisa, eventually to be known as the “Macintosh.” The Mac was named for team leader Jef Raskin’s favorite strain of apple, but spelled differently in order not to offend audio manufacturer McIntosh. Under development since September 1979, the Mac lost much of Lisa’s bulk and price tag (the first Mac sold for $2500), and was the first popular PC to feature a graphical user interface.
Microsoft began just as small and insignificantly as Apple did. Starting out as a two-man operation out of the backseat of Bill Gates’s car, Gates and cohort Paul Allen saw the MITS Altair and in the span of a month had a BASIC interpreter ready to go for the beastie. The code wasn’t tested until they demonstrated the program for MITS, and Allen’s first time even touching an Altair was when he inputted the code into MITS’ machine. MITS bought the product – the first programming language written specifically for a personal computer – and Allen joined MITS as Director of Software. By July ’75, BASIC 2.0, a Microsoft creation, was running the new, more powerful Altairs. The name “Microsoft” wasn’t chosen until November ’75.
1977 Microsoft and Apple team up
Allen rejoined Microsoft in time to christen the company’s new offices in Alberquerque. In early 1977 Microsoft licensed “AppleBASIC” to Apple for the flat fee of $21,000, which turned out to be a steal of a deal, as Apple sold over a million computers with AppleBASIC running the show (Wozniak actually wrote the integer BASIC for the early Apples). By the end of 1979, Microsoft had participated in porting both FORTRAN and COBOL languages to microcomputers, moved to Washington State, entered into agreements with ASCII Corporation of Japan, and expanded into Europe. The two-man operation was now employing 40 people and bringing in over $7 million. Microsoft’s congenial association with Apple continued into the 1980s, with Microsoft bestowing the Z-80 SoftCard upon Apple in 1980.
But it was only temporary. Soon Apple and Microsoft became the main competitors in the market of operating systems. Microsoft in 1995 made a real breakthrough by releasing its Windos 95, becoming the dominant company in the market, and Apple began to expand the market by releasing gadgets that were ahead of their time.