Rebuilding VisiCorp's Visi On UI reveals how Apple defined the GUI era
(2025/12/08)
- Reference: 1765188960
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/12/08/visi_on_deep_dive/
- Source link:
Reverse engineering VisiCorp's pioneering GUI for commodity PCs shows how little modern GUIs get from Xerox – and how much we all owe Apple.
Another year, another magisterial chunk of software history from Nina Kalinina: [1]On recreating the lost SDK for a 42-year-old operating system: VisiCorp Visi On . Kalinina has deconstructed an early PC GUI that made so little splash that it makes OS/2 look like a big hit – and she's even come up with some tools for writing new apps for it.
A few weeks short of a year ago, The Reg FOSS desk was working on a historical opinion piece on [2]how the OS/2 flop shaped modern software . Soon after we finished it, we came across Nina Kalinina's remarkably in-depth history of Windows 2, and we [3]wrote about that as well . Since then, we have been following [4]Kalinina's Mastodon feed with fascination. Recently she has been taking apart VisiCorp's Visi On – one of the first GUIs for IBM-compatible PCs. We recommend the amusingly discursive [5]Wikipedia article on Visi On .
[6]
[7]VisiCorp's own ad doesn't show much
[8]
[9]
VisiCorp is better known for VisiCalc. Launched for the Apple II in 1979, this was the first spreadsheet program for personal computers. Later, VisiCalc was [10]supplanted by Lotus 1-2-3 , as developed by [11]MIT laureate Mitch Kapor – before 1-2-3 was outcompeted by Excel. It was [12]very rudimentary indeed , but it was transformative and created an entirely new category of software.
VisiCorp invested some of the profits from VisiCalc into writing Visi On, which it [13]previewed in 1982 – not merely before [14]Apple launched the Macintosh , but even before it [15]launched the Lisa in 1983.
[16]
In other words, although it took a few years to make it to release, Visi On was designed before Apple showed off its first GUI computer. Visi On is a WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) GUI that was laid out without any influence from Apple's design, and wow, does it show. You can get a very vague impression from perusing screenshot galleries – we reckon that [17]ToastyTech has the best – but static images don't convey its profound weirdness well. You need to see it running, and that's what Kalinina has done – and much more besides.
This vulture has been working with Macs since the era of System 6, and if we had $1,000 for every time we've read someone saying that Apple stole everything from Xerox… well, we wouldn't be working for The Register , we'd own it. No matter how loud and how confident, they're wrong – but Kalinina brings the video evidence of just how wrong.
[18]Junk is the new punk: Why we're falling back in love with retro tech
[19]Commodore Amiga turns 40, headlines UK exhibition
[20]Vintage computing boffin releases expansive Intel 286 test suite
[21]Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment
When the Macintosh turned 40, we [22]wrote about the significance of its design . For this product, Apple invented important features we all take for granted – simple but fundamental things like Load and Save dialog boxes, which simply didn't exist before.
More recently, we [23]described the remarkable LisaGUI – not an emulator, but a recreation of the Lisa's GUI inside a web page. It's very different from the Mac and all subsequent GUI desktops: it doesn't really have "apps" that you run to create "documents" – instead, applications are stationery templates, from which a double-click tears off a new document that you can save and name.
Aside from the software itself, the result is a [24]nearly 10,000-word essay about resurrecting ancient software and getting it working. It's a fascinating read if you're interested in software archaeology. She decided not to embed animated GIFs in the document, which in our opinion is a sad loss. For the action shots, and if you just want to see it happen, we refer you to her [25]Mastodon thread of demos .
[26]
Seeing a pre-Lisa GUI in motion and in use, and seeing things like the very strange ways that windows are positioned and resized, really emphasizes how strange the pre-Apple GUI era was, in a way that somehow the demos of exotic Xerox prototypes, or products that cost as much as a house, don't. Never mind standard things like pull-down menus, as [27]Kalinina describes , Visi On barely had identifiable buttons. Over months, she slowly worked out [28]how graphics are displayed , and how to [29]show a terminal window .
Xerox laid down a path, but it's Apple that laid the trail that everyone else followed – and seeing what it looks like down one of the other tracks is fascinating and very educational.
Bootnote
We've included a YouTube clip by way of an illustration, but don't take VisiCorp's own advertisement as a good demonstration. It isn't. The point is that until Kalinina's remarkable work, there was very little to choose from. We recommend her demos instead of VisiCorp's. ®
Get our [30]Tech Resources
[1] https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/vision-sdk/tree/main/item/note/index.md
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/05/microsoft_os2_flop_future/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/18/how_windows_got_to_v3/
[4] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visi_On
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc4wFeVvKTI
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/31/when_lotus_met_excel/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/30/mitch_kapor_mba/
[12] https://stonetools.ghost.io/visicalc-apple2/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2008/11/11/windows_past/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/27/watch_steve_jobs_launch_the_first_apple_mac/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/18/feature_apple_lisa_is_30/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] http://toastytech.com/guis/vision.html
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/25/straight_outta_1996_why_were/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/19/getting_handson_with_the_commodore/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/intel_286_test_suite/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/22/dec_reading_museum/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/mac_at_40_real_significance/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/24/lisagui_lisaos_apple/
[24] https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/vision-sdk/tree/main/item/note/index.md
[25] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115441288889029356
[26] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[27] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115600946276282395
[28] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115589709854085279
[29] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115567570830987098
[30] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Another year, another magisterial chunk of software history from Nina Kalinina: [1]On recreating the lost SDK for a 42-year-old operating system: VisiCorp Visi On . Kalinina has deconstructed an early PC GUI that made so little splash that it makes OS/2 look like a big hit – and she's even come up with some tools for writing new apps for it.
A few weeks short of a year ago, The Reg FOSS desk was working on a historical opinion piece on [2]how the OS/2 flop shaped modern software . Soon after we finished it, we came across Nina Kalinina's remarkably in-depth history of Windows 2, and we [3]wrote about that as well . Since then, we have been following [4]Kalinina's Mastodon feed with fascination. Recently she has been taking apart VisiCorp's Visi On – one of the first GUIs for IBM-compatible PCs. We recommend the amusingly discursive [5]Wikipedia article on Visi On .
[6]
[7]VisiCorp's own ad doesn't show much
[8]
[9]
VisiCorp is better known for VisiCalc. Launched for the Apple II in 1979, this was the first spreadsheet program for personal computers. Later, VisiCalc was [10]supplanted by Lotus 1-2-3 , as developed by [11]MIT laureate Mitch Kapor – before 1-2-3 was outcompeted by Excel. It was [12]very rudimentary indeed , but it was transformative and created an entirely new category of software.
VisiCorp invested some of the profits from VisiCalc into writing Visi On, which it [13]previewed in 1982 – not merely before [14]Apple launched the Macintosh , but even before it [15]launched the Lisa in 1983.
[16]
In other words, although it took a few years to make it to release, Visi On was designed before Apple showed off its first GUI computer. Visi On is a WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) GUI that was laid out without any influence from Apple's design, and wow, does it show. You can get a very vague impression from perusing screenshot galleries – we reckon that [17]ToastyTech has the best – but static images don't convey its profound weirdness well. You need to see it running, and that's what Kalinina has done – and much more besides.
This vulture has been working with Macs since the era of System 6, and if we had $1,000 for every time we've read someone saying that Apple stole everything from Xerox… well, we wouldn't be working for The Register , we'd own it. No matter how loud and how confident, they're wrong – but Kalinina brings the video evidence of just how wrong.
[18]Junk is the new punk: Why we're falling back in love with retro tech
[19]Commodore Amiga turns 40, headlines UK exhibition
[20]Vintage computing boffin releases expansive Intel 286 test suite
[21]Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment
When the Macintosh turned 40, we [22]wrote about the significance of its design . For this product, Apple invented important features we all take for granted – simple but fundamental things like Load and Save dialog boxes, which simply didn't exist before.
More recently, we [23]described the remarkable LisaGUI – not an emulator, but a recreation of the Lisa's GUI inside a web page. It's very different from the Mac and all subsequent GUI desktops: it doesn't really have "apps" that you run to create "documents" – instead, applications are stationery templates, from which a double-click tears off a new document that you can save and name.
Aside from the software itself, the result is a [24]nearly 10,000-word essay about resurrecting ancient software and getting it working. It's a fascinating read if you're interested in software archaeology. She decided not to embed animated GIFs in the document, which in our opinion is a sad loss. For the action shots, and if you just want to see it happen, we refer you to her [25]Mastodon thread of demos .
[26]
Seeing a pre-Lisa GUI in motion and in use, and seeing things like the very strange ways that windows are positioned and resized, really emphasizes how strange the pre-Apple GUI era was, in a way that somehow the demos of exotic Xerox prototypes, or products that cost as much as a house, don't. Never mind standard things like pull-down menus, as [27]Kalinina describes , Visi On barely had identifiable buttons. Over months, she slowly worked out [28]how graphics are displayed , and how to [29]show a terminal window .
Xerox laid down a path, but it's Apple that laid the trail that everyone else followed – and seeing what it looks like down one of the other tracks is fascinating and very educational.
Bootnote
We've included a YouTube clip by way of an illustration, but don't take VisiCorp's own advertisement as a good demonstration. It isn't. The point is that until Kalinina's remarkable work, there was very little to choose from. We recommend her demos instead of VisiCorp's. ®
Get our [30]Tech Resources
[1] https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/vision-sdk/tree/main/item/note/index.md
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/05/microsoft_os2_flop_future/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/18/how_windows_got_to_v3/
[4] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visi_On
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc4wFeVvKTI
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/31/when_lotus_met_excel/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/30/mitch_kapor_mba/
[12] https://stonetools.ghost.io/visicalc-apple2/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2008/11/11/windows_past/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/27/watch_steve_jobs_launch_the_first_apple_mac/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/18/feature_apple_lisa_is_30/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] http://toastytech.com/guis/vision.html
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/25/straight_outta_1996_why_were/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/19/getting_handson_with_the_commodore/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/intel_286_test_suite/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/22/dec_reading_museum/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/mac_at_40_real_significance/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/24/lisagui_lisaos_apple/
[24] https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/vision-sdk/tree/main/item/note/index.md
[25] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115441288889029356
[26] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aTavxigTh0tCvRuoCOELZQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[27] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115600946276282395
[28] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115589709854085279
[29] https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115567570830987098
[30] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Don’t say things like “we all owe Apple”. I mean, I know it’s true and you know it’s true - but it’ll only end up starting a flame war with the peeps who hate Apple with a burning passion.
Mind you, I hope Apple can turn the ship around with macOS / iOS UI design - or I might be joining their number!