The
Apple Macintosh is the most well known example of
GUI design, but it's conceded that
Xerox gave them a head start. Interestingly, though Xerox spend most of the resources developing its '
Alto', what should be considered the forerunner to the modern
user interface, they pretty much gave it away to Apple.
Interesting note: Apple eventually hired away several of the Xerox's PARC engineers to work on the Lisa GUI, that's how impressed they were.
http://home.san.rr.com/deans/lisagui.html
A short timeline of the development of the Apple GUI
GUI design, describes, as
daglo said, the look and feel of the program's interface. However,
interface design encompasses the way the user
interacts with the program, as well as the program's
appearance itself. Apple wasn't just designing the
graphical component of the computer, they were also describing how the user would interact with it, in terms of
physical components (the
mouse, specific keyboard keys, arrangement of case hardware).
And we have Douglas Englebart to worship for that, thank you.
http://www.inventors.about.com/science/inventors/library/weekly/aa043099.htm
Invention of the modern computer interface (at About.com)
Of course, we know what happened later.
Microsoft 'innovated' the
Windows GUI from the Apple GUI, and several
incarnations later we have what I suppose is what is considered the interface standard,
Windows 2000. I don't expect Microsoft to change their GUI much, due to their dependence on the
novice user base for much of their revenue, but that doesn't mean that we can't continue to improve upon it:
Litestep
Darkstep
WindowBlinds
eFX
Chroma
CustomEyes
Daya
Illumination
www.deskmod.com
www.skinz.org