You’ve almost certainly heard of the Xerox Alto, the machine that pioneered the desktop-mouse-keyboard interface and inspired Steve Jobs to produce the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers. [Ctrl+Alt+Fail] has a video that answers the question: whatever happened to the computer of tomorrow, anyway? It goes through the whole story of the Alto, from its introduction at Xerox PARC in the 1970s to its demise. The monitor sitting on the desk wasn’t the computer, after all: that was a large filing-cabinet sized desk sitting underneath. They wouldn’t get a monthly service fee, nor the cost of the toner, drums and other consumables the Alto wouldn’t need.