Legend of the GUI

A Story to tell your children……..

Once upon a time, in the Valley of Silicon, the two-headed Wizard of Apples went for a walk. The two heads, both of which were named Steve, looked around, and spied a beautiful PARC.
“This is truly a beautiful PARC! ” Steve exclaimed.
“Yes, it is, ” agreed Steve. “It is very graphical. And do you see how happy the mice are? ” For indeed, the joyful rodents scampered about, running in and out of windows, around icons, and leaping over the garbage cans.
“Do you think we could make a PARC as beautiful as this? ” Steve asked.
“Nay, ” said Steve. “Not a PARC, but perhaps we can let this inspire us to build a woman. And we could call her… Gertrude. ”
And so they fashioned their woman, but instead of Gertrude, they called her Lisa. And she, too, was nice to mice. But alas, the User rejected Lisa, for it was said her price was too high.
“But this will never do, ” the User cried. “Do you understand me, Mack? ”
And when his two heads heard that word, the Wizard of Apples smiled.
“Of course, ” the Steves exclaimed in unison, “we must make a Mac! ”
Now as the Wizard of apples worked on his Mac, two things happened:
First of all, the Wizard grew a third head, which was called the Skull of E. And second, the Gates Keeper, whose minions were both micro and soft, was brought in to look at Mac, son of Lisa and grandson of the PARC.
Now the Gates Keeper was a man whose tastes were most basic. But when he saw the Mac he was pleased, and he said to the Wizard of Apples “You too, I see, have found the wondrous PARC. ”
And the three heads of the Wizard of Apples looked at each other, and they all said, “PARC? What PARC? ”
The Gates Keeper turned his head toward the window. But he did not see the PARC, or Lisa, or even the Wizard’s parking lot. No, he saw only the window, and it too, was nice to mice.
On the day that Mac was brought forth for the whole world to admire, people laughed, and people cried, and a woman threw a sledgehammer through a large TV screen. For the User could now draw, and paint, and like John Wayne, all he need do was point and shoot.
But though the User was interested, he was still suspicious, and he asked if Mac had anything soft to wear. And lo, the Gates Keeper stepped forward and clothed Mac in words and numbers.
And the Wizard of Apples was most grateful to the Gates Keeper. But then the Gates Keeper cried out upon the User, “Behold, for I have opened the Window, and you need not Mac to get your hands on GUI. ” But the User looked through the Window, and saw that it made the world move slow.
By this time, the Skull of E had grown quite large on the shoulders of the Wizard of Apples, and the two Steves had been removed. The Wizard had gone down to the Adobe Village, where all letters end in a postscript. The Wizard liked what he saw, and he told Mac that he could write a postscript, but that one must never appear on his face.
Now the world of the User had speeded up, so that it no longer looked quite as slow through the Gates Keeper’s Window. The User looked through the Window again, and said that perhaps the Wizard of Apples was no longer needed. And besides, the Gates Keeper was promising to Manage Presentations.
The Wizard of Apples looked upon this and was sore annoyed. He cried, “No one shall take from me that which I have fairly stolen from the PARC! ” and he opened his dungeon, and from there emerged a hideous and enormous lawyer.
The Wizard pointed a glowing joystick at his lawyer and gave the incantation:
Eye of mole and feet of eel;
Go bring back my look and feel!
When the Gates Keeper saw the giant lawyer approach, he was afraid and angry. And he went down to his own dungeon and let his own lawyer out. The two clashed, and the Valley shook!
The Wizard of Apples went up onto a mountain top to watch the battle, and there he saw the Gates Keeper. They greeted each other warmly, and the Wizard said, “While my lawyer fights your lawyer, shall we not go together to the Adobe Village, and see what we can steal there? ”
Now, while all this was going on, the Zear Ox, whose job it was to guard the PARC, had slept. But such beasts are often woken by the sounds of lawyers fighting. And the Zear Ox looked out upon the valley, rubbed its sleepy eyes, and asked the User what was going on.
The User told him that the Wizard of Apples had let loose his lawyer against the Gates Keeper, claiming that only he had the right to the GUI interface. This angered the Zear Ox, who cried that the Wizard “had no right to be gooey in my face! ”
So the Zear Ox returned to his PARC, which he found to be in disrepair. The mice were gone, the windows were boarded up, and the garbage can had not been emptied in years. And the Zear Ox cried, “This is the work of the Wizard of Apples! He must pay! ” And he called forth his own lawyer, who was more hideous that the others, and set him to attack.
The Wizard of Apples was deep in discussion with the Gates Keeper when he saw the Zear Ox’s lawyer. He called for his own lawyer, but
alas, his monster was on the ground, where the Gates Keeper’s attorney was standing on his chest. The Wizard of Apples turned to the Gates Keeper and cried, “Let my lawyer go, so that I may defend myself! ” But the Gates Keeper only doubled up in laughter.
The Wizard turned to the Zear Ox and cried, “You would not dare attack me, for the User doth love me! Don’t you, User? ” But the User had, of late, been hearing the seductive cries of the Window, the Presentation of Managers, and seemingly hundreds of flavored Eunuchs, and he was sore confused.
Thus the Wizard of Apples found himself friendless, hopeless, and surrounded by lawyers.

And the moral of this story is:
Be generous with what you steal, or you may find yourself gooey in the face.

The End