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Just to see if they could do it. steve jobs hears about some of the work going on at this lab and he wants a look. >> xerox park was an invention place. apple was an innovation place. steve was very visual and could see right away the visual graphic interface was different and more communicative than anything he had seen before. he knew it was effective because it was affecting him. >> jobs realizes this is the future of computing. this is a whole different kind of computer to be built. famously, a computer for the rest of us. >> 1984, the ridley scott commercial for the macintosh. >> it depic...

The manufacturers are trying to overcome it by making them what they call user-friendly. >> isn't that pretty. now what do i do? >> making computers easy enough to use for a beginner, it wasn't always true. people have never encountered this stuff. >> don't shift. >> so there is a great disconnect between the ambitions of the apples and microsofts and the realities of people trying to use these things for the first time. >> right now, if you buy a computer system and you want to solve one of your problems, we immediately throw a big problem right in the middle of you and your problem, which is...

Three-quarters of the market. >> this personal computer costs about $1400 and fits nicely on a desk corner. duplicating its performance just five years ago would have cost $75,000 and involve a unit the size of a large refrigerator. >> when the average american thought computer they thought ibm. it made mainframe computers that ran pretty much everything. >> ibm was one of the most powerful corporations in america and in technology, it was the most powerful company that had ever existed in technology. >> because of this activity in personal computers, it started to make ibm look like it was so...

>> the mushrooming industry gives birth to a high tech cult and a place called silicon valley. >> the magic part of silicon valley is that there is this boiling pot of people who were involved in technology, involved in science. silicon valley was hp, sri, xerox and stanford university. that was a hell of a powerful combination. >> there were these two cultures, engineers with ph.d.s and hobbyists. >> it was a time when there was a lot of social [ inaudible ] in and around the area. there was a lot of counter culture people. you had cheap semiconductors, you had people who would look at things...

Crunching business things. >> is there anything you would like the see it do? >> we would love to have it in a book right now about this size but that's technically impossible. >> steve's like i want to make a friendly computer. a computer that comes from a different kind of place. that owes its inspiration to people who are thoughtful and creative and human and humane. >> this is an experimental office system at the xerox research center in california. >> what flowers? my anniversary. i forgot. >> xerox in the 1980s was one of the most exciting companies in america. xerox had this booming cop...