History of GUI

I still remember my first encounter with the Mac OS back in 1986 (2 years after the Mac was introduced). It was a strange new way of giving instructions to the computer. Why would anyone want to use multiple choice lists, pull-down menus, and icons when they could simply type a run command? Well, once again, I was proven old-fashioned. Almost everyone is using some form of graphical user interface. Guidebook: Graphical User Interface Gallery covers the history of this phenomena with timelines, descriptions, and even screenshots of early GUIs.

Comment: The reason I said "almost everyone" above is that about 2 weeks ago I received a phone call from a former student who needed information about MSDOS. He never could understand what all the Windows/Mac fuss was about. And yes, we did answer his question and solved the problem in the old text interface fashion. Moral of the story: If it still works, it ain't obsolete.