Xerox Star

Raised as a usability problem by 6 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2011–2025), in 7 threads.

People raised many different problems with Xerox Star, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 7 complaints

Move and copy needed selecting object, pressing verb button, then modal destination selection2025-06-25
Copying or moving icons requires selecting them and pressing a Copy key instead of dragging2024-05-05
Two-button selection is mysterious and feels odd compared with standard mice2022-06-15
Top-bottom button arrangement was hard to use; people figured out it was awkward2014-11-05
Required different mouse buttons for distinct operations, making it hard to use2013-02-27
Xerox Star was unusable, with the comment alluding to heavy weight and slow boot2012-09-10
Unclear whether commands like Show Properties act on the selected object or the cursor location2011-04-14