Following the comments in the comment of ocell and my subsequent response , I would like to dedicate this fourth pill at one of the most important myths and legends in the history of microcomputers: Apple's visit to the offices of Xerox PARC.
This legend is well exemplified in the film Pirates of Silicon Valley , which indeed has already been mentioned here on other occasions. Basically, the legend said that Xerox had a good development team that created something so revolutionary that the board of the company was unable to see any value. Then came (why magic?) Jobs and his team and made a visit, they copied what they saw and what would the Macintosh (LISA it is not clear how it fits into all this.) According to the film, Bill Gates is the LISA and decides he likes while having to have it, so go to Apple (again, why would I?) And deceive Jobs for they are assigned a few prototypes of the Mac to copy Windows interface and out. But that is another story to be told at another time, now let's focus on the visit of Jobs and his Xerox PARC. Again, to understand why decisions were taken, and things were done that made you have to understand first what is the background and what moved each.
For starters, who was Xerox? Why enters our computer history? Xerox was the owner of a technology by which it was possible to make multiple copies of documents at high speed. This two crude words, did photocopiers.
The copier business is not that you were wrong, in contrast, were international leaders and earned money to baskets, but for the entry of the 70, with the boom in data centers of enterprises and the dream of paperless office (yes, that dream is as old), at Xerox was thought that if all company documents were no longer on paper to move to an electronic format, then Xerox Technology would be useless, so I decided to anticipate events and create a center focused on the development of the digital office. The center was founded in 1971 and was called Xerox Palo Alto Research Center , better known as Xerox PARC. 
result of this research and development center was the Xerox Alto , a computer developed between 1972 and 1974 which had now completely everyday items but at the time were unique in the world, such as a graphical interface controlled by a curious device called a mouse, a word processor WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get , ie what you see on the screen is what you get for your printer), a programming language called object-oriented Smalltalk or a networking technology called Ethernet, all built within the company. The computer was clearly focused on the office world, as evidenced by the monitor in vertical position, so that we can work more easily in writing of printed documents. Here in the video below you have a small summary of what was the Xerox Alto. And it is not, of course, that Xerox policy not see any value in these accomplishments. They were aware that what in their hands was very valuable, though perhaps not everything was really valuable. However, despite the High was completed in 1974, two years before the founding of Apple and a year before they develop the MITS Altair and start the microcomputer industry, the Alto was just a prototype, very nearly an experiment laboratory that had done spectacularly well, but now Xerox was a problem. How to benefit from all this wonderful technology? And here is where Apple.
There are numerous stories about the deal reached by Xerox and Apple. One of them says that Jobs offered $ 1,000,000 in shares of Apple in exchange for opening their labs Xerox Xerox PARC, in that movie (Pirates of Silicon Valley ) what is shown is that Jobs and Apple employees a few more just go to Xerox, and you're coming, they begin to show the jewel in the crown because other (and not be eager to do so).
The truth is a bit more complicated. At that time (1979) Apple was not yet a publicly traded company, which meant that if you wanted a portion of the company had to speak directly with the owners to sell it to you (if they wanted and the price you got trading) instead of going to market and pay the price that shares are listed. Why
a company will want to sell portions of itself? This really is a complicated issue and this is not the place to explain, but basically say that to get funding. If you go to a bank and ask a loan you must return it with some interest, apart from that first the bank has to consider whether your project is viable and so on. But if you can convince someone to buy a percentage of your company, say 10%, for $ 1,000,000 that someone owns the copyright of 10% of your company, yes, but your company will have $ 1,000,000 of free cash. And it also means that the purchaser has reviewed your company at $ 10,000,000 (if 10% is worth a million ...).
Also, of course, the major shareholders can sell their shares in a personal capacity to earn money. That's how Jobs got his first million $, selling in 1979 a (small) part of its shares of Apple.
But about the history of Apple and Xerox. In 1979 Apple began a program to sell shares to large groups of investors as a way of financing and one of these big investors who were contacted was Xerox. The Apple II was in full swing, especially after the release of Visicalc and some software packages that justified the companies to purchase personal computers for their employees. Besides, the educational market had operate and the Apple II computer was the star with special campaigns for educational institutions.
Therefore, thanks to the skill and charisma of Jobs, Apple managed to put company stock worth $ 7,273,801, of which, as I said, $ 1,050,000 were acquired by Xerox. For Xerox, Jobs gave the impression that Apple was the future and become a giant Xerox whether you entered it or not, so it seemed smart and not very risky to invest $ 1,050,000 in it. Besides, Apple was already working to make an IPO, that is, to go bag, so that the potential of that million $ could be enormous, and indeed it was. But
is, there was no agreement. Xerox did not undertake to teach anything. And Jobs, at least for the moment, did not request anything more than money to Xerox.
So why there is the famous visit? And how is that Jobs knew it was a good idea to go see what they did at Xerox PARC?
Well, in the 70's, when Apple was growing exponentially, so did its employees. Many of them came after having worked in large companies like HP or, as in the case of Jeff Raskin, Xerox.
Jeff Raskin, pictured with Steve Jobs after he was hired by Apple to perform manual BASIC programming for the Apple II, and after good work finally came on staff as manager of the company's publications. However, Jeff was a visionary in his own way of computing also had very clear ideas of how it should be a microcomputer and in 1979 got permission from the first CEO of Apple, Mike Scott, popularly known as Scotty on Apple to explore their ideas by designing a new computer model, which is named Macintosh . Anyway, Jeff, having also worked at Xerox, he knew what had been developed at Xerox PARC. Raskin repeatedly tried to convince both Jobs and Wozniak for a that since they had good relationships with Xerox, they did try that a demonstration of the technology Alto. However, neither case did much to Steve, because both believed that a company the size of Xerox lacked the ability to compete in the fast and dynamic world of microcomputers.
Macintosh project at that time was quite small, with very few people working 100% on it. I think at that time, only Jeff Raskin himself and Burrell Smith, the designer of circuits Mac, however, occasionally other people could work on specific things for the project, and so Jeff was talking to Bill Atkinson, the software wizard interface behind Lisa, telling Xerox designs, all of that mouse, icons, dropdown menus ...
The Lisa project was directed at that time still Steve Jobs. As a principal software engineer, Bill Atkinson was heard and respected by Jobs, so that on waking Bill Jeff's curiosity Jobs asking this over to try to manage a visit to Xerox PARC labs. Jobs finally agreed and began negotiations with Xerox. Why Xerox agreed in turn to teach the jewel in the crown to a potential competitor like Apple? At first glance, it seems very smart, right? Well, as we have said, Xerox was able to build the Alto is a completely revolutionary computer and most advanced in the world for years. However, he had not found out how to return to their achievements. Who could be interested in a computer as well? In its traditional customers, the corporate market, certainly not, they demanded large mainframes and would not know take advantage of the tremendous sophistication of Alto.
Ultimately, the High, how it was conceived, was a personal computer. Was intended to be a single person to sit in front of him and interacted with the computer. It was not the best option of course, for large batch systems, but it was so expensive to produce than anyone would pay thousands of $ to put that computer to a secretary and that she could use only. The Xerox solution would be an alliance as a company like Apple and together build a computer powerful enough to hold all the advances of the High but inexpensive enough to be sold to individuals.
For Xerox, this operation was to give ideas or technology to competitors, their intentions were to work with Apple to get a computer inexpensive enough to be sold as personal computer. So she was willing to teach High Apple people. The visit was Apple going to make no commitment, because what happened was not the head of Xerox people who signed the agreement is that Apple, if I was interested in what they have seen, passed from them to implement their own version from scratch instead of working with Xerox PARC.
Thus, after several days of intense talks, finally reached an agreement and Jobs, Scotty, Bill Atkinson of Apple engineers and four more went to Xerox PARC facilities where Larry Tessler Upper and showed them where it has the legend, he was profoundly shocked by the attitude and questions that made them the people at Apple, the most intelligent that no one, even Xerox's own people, had ever done.
Steve Jobs For the Alto was a revelation. That was another world, had nothing to do with computers that he had known. He kept saying things like "Why did not you doing something with this? Is the greatest thing I've ever seen! Is revolutionary!", Unable to sit still in his seat overcome with emotion. "How much can you take to do all this," Jobs in Atkinson asked that day. "Six months," he said. It was, as I say, 1979. The Apple Lisa, the first attempt, was released in 1983. The Apple Macintosh in January 1984 ...
Bill also was a revelation. I knew the theory, after all Jeff Raskin had often talked of Smalltalk, the graphical interfaces and all that, but it was not to hear or read about something before him there, see it work, play with him. It would be unfair to say that the later designs of Bill Atkinson was a crude copy of the Xerox Alto. Since then, there are apparently inspired by that day at Xerox PARC, but no need to detract from Bill.
In any case, both Xerox and Apple followed different paths. Apple made its own graphical interface implementation would be in the Apple Lisa, 1983 and Apple Macintosh in January 1984.
Xerox, meanwhile, finally built himself a personal computer with high technology. This computer was the Xerox Star, which you can see an image on the right, released in 1981 and being the first personal computer for sale with graphical interface, mouse, Ethernet and laser printer, one of the greatest inventions of Xerox . It cost a whopping $ 16,000 in 1981 compared with $ 10,000 of the Apple Lisa and Macintosh $ 2,495, and was targeted as the next evolution in smart office. But, unfortunately for Xerox, said computer, the first of "his kind" was a resounding commercial failure, reaching to sell only 25,000 units worldwide. 
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