"The Parc mouse cursor appearance was done (actually by me) because in a 16x16 grid of one-bit pixels... this gives you a nice arrowhead if you have one side of the arrow vertical and the other angled."
"Kay's argument was that on a pixelated screen, it's impossible to do this shape justice, as both slopes of the arrow will be jagged and imprecise."
"Interestingly enough, the top facing cursor returned as one of the variants in Xerox Star, the 1981 commercialized version of Alto... but Star failed, and Apple's Lisa in 1983 and Mac in 1984 followed in Alto's footsteps instead."
Alan Kay created the distinctive shape of the mouse pointer while working on the Xerox Alto, optimizing it for a 16x16 grid of one-bit pixels. The original arrow design from Doug Engelbart's 1968 demo was symmetrical but jagged on pixelated screens. Kay's design straightened the left edge, leading to a more precise cursor. This shape influenced later systems like Apple's Lisa and Mac, as well as Windows 1.0. Despite innovations over the years, the fundamental design has remained largely unchanged since then.
Read at Aresluna
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]