[tchaten]

I had a question: during the Keynote Steve said that the they had four great interfaces, multi-touch, ipod wheel, mouse, and some other ones I think
It made it sound like Apple invented the mouse, I don't that is true is it???

[macnuke]

In 1964, the first prototype computer mouse was made to use with a graphical user interface (GUI), 'windows'. Engelbart received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse U.S. Patent # 3,541,541) in 1970, describing it in the patent application as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system." "It was nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end,"
...
Currently, Douglas Engelbart is the director of his company, Bootstrap Institute in Fremont, California, which promotes the concept of Collective IQ. Ironically, Bootstrap is housed rent free courtesy of the Logitech Corp., a famous manufacturer of computer mice.

Linky

[Philbert]

Jobs didn't say they "invented" the mouse, but that Apple "brought it to the market" (which is absolutely true). Actually, his exact words were, "We've been very lucky to bring a few revolutionary user interfaces to the market", which of course, began with the mouse.

[tchaten]

Okay thanks for clearing that up

[Martian]

Actually, Jobs had toured PARC (Xeroxs Palo Alto Research Center) where he saw the mouse, GUI, and a third technology which I cant remember (maybe it was Ethernet). These innovations just blew him away, and inspired him to develop the Mac.
PARC had a history of unmatched creativity, but the suits of Xeroxs corporate offices seemed to lose the commercial advantage on most of PARCs strokes of genius.
Xerox had a mouse driven GUI computer out before the Mac. It used terminals I think dumb terminals connected to a dedicated server through Ethernet (which was another PARC invention). I remember seeing this system used to compose illustrated technical manuals for military hardware before I had ever heard of Macintosh or Apple.