It's disputed quite how much the early days of Apple owe to photocopier giant Xerox, but the stories passed around are far from just urban legend. Steve Jobs was definitely part of a tour of the company's research laboratory Xerox PARC in 1979, and there were definitely working on a certain kind of interface there. The interface, in fact, that has become standard for all modern computers ie using a mouse and clicking on icons instead of typing in commands in green text on a black screen which was an innovation brought to the general public with Apple's ground breaking Apple Lisa and the original Mac OS. Did he steal the idea from Xerox, though? The PARC lab had the same sort of anything goes! spirit of research evident in modern tech companies like Apple and Google, and they certainly did have a prototype with that interface. But it's the computer work they did that, honestly, it looks like Jobs was at least inspired by (if not totally ripped off).
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
