Xerox has today announced that Luca Maestri, executive vice president and chief financial officer, is leaving the company on February 28 to become the new corporate controller at Apple. Xerox has credited Maestri for his contributions, which have strengthened the “financial foundation” of the company, it said in a press release today.
Many have called Steve Jobs the father of modern computing, but some would argue that the true credit goes to Jacob Goldman, founder of Xerox PARC. Under Goldman’s guidance, Xerox become responsible for the technology that inspired Steve Jobs to create computers like the Lisa.
The New York Times is reporting that Jacob Goldman passed away this week at the age of 90. He was Xerox’s chief scientist and founder of the Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center — the very place Jobs took his team in December of 1979 to get a demonstration of the technology that drove him to create the first successful personal computer.
Apple has a long history of taking a technology created by Xerox and transforming it into the heart and soul of computing, such as the mouse or the concept of a graphic user interface. Now comes word Apple owns a Xerox patent for location based services. The patent could prompt Apple to sue a wide array of companies, ranging from Android-backer Google to social networking giant Facebook and any others relying on the ability to check users’ location.
Is there a difference between ripping off and inventing? Not when by ripping it off you make it practical, and for all practical persons, Steve Jobs effectively invented the first modern computer mouse in the mid-70s… by stealing it from Xerox.
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