Digital Research GEM — The Desktop Apple Didn't Want
From Xerox-inspired ideas to a GUI war
In the early 1980s, personal computers were still largely operated through command lines. If you wanted to copy a file, launch a program or find something on a disk, you generally needed to know the appropriate command.
Apple was changing that with the Lisa and, later, the Macintosh. Instead of typing commands, users could interact with a graphical desktop using a mouse, windows, menus and icons.
Digital Research — the company best known for creating CP/M — saw an opportunity.
Its answer was GEM: the Graphics Environment Manager.
And it was remarkably good.
The Birth of GEM
GEM was developed by Digital Research during the early 1980s, with development work involving programmers including Lee Jay Lorenzen, who had previously worked at Xerox PARC.
The underlying technology was divided into several components.
GEM VDI (Virtual Device Interface) provided the graphics system, while GEM AES (Application Environment Services) handled the graphical user-interface elements such as windows, menus and mouse interaction.
Sitting above these was the GEM Desktop, which provided the graphical desktop that the user actually interacted with.
Digital Research demonstrated an early 8086 version of GEM at COMDEX in 1984, and GEM/1 was released on 28 February 1985. This put Digital Research's graphical environment on IBM-compatible PCs months before Microsoft's first Windows release.
GEM provided exactly the sort of environment that PC users were beginning to want:
- Windows
- Pull-down menus
- Mouse support
- Icons
- Graphical file management
- A desktop metaphor
- Support for colour graphics
- A graphical environment capable of running on standard PC hardware
And there was one particularly interesting feature.
It looked remarkably like a Macintosh.
Not vaguely similar but remarkably similar.
GEM 1.x — A Proper Graphical Desktop
The original GEM Desktop presented the user with a graphical workspace containing icons representing things such as disk drives, applications and the trash.
Windows could overlap, be moved around and resized. Files could be manipulated using the mouse rather than by remembering DOS commands.
It was a remarkably capable environment for an IBM-compatible PC of 1985.
Contemporary coverage openly acknowledged the similarity. GEM was described as looking and behaving like a Macintosh while bringing that style of interface to IBM-compatible and Atari computers.
The similarities weren't limited to the general idea of using a mouse and windows.
The visual design included familiar elements such as:
- Desktop icons
- Disk icons
- A trash-can icon
- Overlapping windows
- Window controls
- Similar menu arrangements
- Animated window opening and closing
The problem was obvious and Apple noticed.
Apple Takes Exception
Apple had invested heavily in the Macintosh graphical interface and regarded the interface as intellectual property.
In 1985, Apple threatened Digital Research with legal action, arguing that GEM's graphical interface infringed Apple's copyrights.
This was one of the earliest major battles over what would later become known as the "look and feel" of software.
And there was a rather awkward problem for Digital Research.
GEM really did look very much like the Macintosh.
Contemporary legal analysis noted that GEM contained almost identical icons, windows and menu bars, with the overall screen presenting a striking resemblance to Apple's interface.
Digital Research therefore had a choice.
Fight Apple in court...
...or change GEM.
Digital Research chose the latter.
The Settlement
The dispute never became the enormous courtroom battle that Apple's later litigation against Microsoft would become.
Instead, in 1985, Apple and Digital Research reached an agreement.
Digital Research agreed to modify GEM and withdraw the existing versions of several GEM products. The agreement also involved an undisclosed payment to Apple, reduced-rate programming services and Apple being given the opportunity to review the revised versions.
Digital Research did not admit that it had infringed Apple's rights.
But the practical consequences were substantial.
Apple had effectively forced Digital Research to redesign some of the most recognisable parts of GEM.
And that produced one of the more unusual episodes in early GUI history.
Enter GEM 2.0
Digital Research released GEM Desktop 2.0 in March 1986.
It was, in effect, the Apple-friendly GEM.
The underlying GEM graphical environment remained useful, but the desktop itself had been stripped of many of the features that had made GEM/1 such an attractive Macintosh-like environment.
Among the changes were:
- The trash-can icon was removed or altered.
- Desktop disk icons were removed.
- Window-opening and closing animations disappeared.
- Window styling was changed.
- Several visual interface elements were redesigned.
- The desktop file manager was restricted to two fixed windows.
- Overlapping and freely arranged desktop file-management windows disappeared.
The result was considerably less elegant.
GEM's original desktop had been a genuinely graphical workspace.
GEM 2.0 increasingly resembled a graphical shell wrapped around a collection of restrictions imposed to keep Apple satisfied.
Contemporary documentation describes the resulting desktop as having two fixed, non-overlapping file-management windows, with many of the distinctive features of GEM/1 removed.
One contemporary Atari publication was particularly critical of the changes, describing the new desktop as two fixed windows covering the screen and noting the disappearance of disk and trash-can icons and resizable windows.
And This Is Where It Gets Interesting
There is an important distinction that often gets lost when the GEM story is retold.
Apple's agreement did not simply destroy GEM itself.
The restrictions primarily concerned the GEM Desktop and certain GEM applications, rather than every part of the GEM technology.
This distinction became extremely important for Atari.
Atari had been working closely with Digital Research on the Motorola 68000 version of GEM for its new computer.
That computer became the Atari ST.
Atari's operating system, TOS, incorporated GEM and GEMDOS and retained a much more capable graphical desktop.
The Atari implementation therefore continued to provide the sort of graphical experience that PC users had effectively lost with GEM 2.0.
So while the PC version of GEM was being changed to satisfy Apple, the Atari ST ended up with one of the most capable graphical environments of the 1980s.
And that is one reason the Atari ST became such an important part of GEM's history.
The Great Irony
There is a delicious irony in what happened.
Digital Research had created a graphical environment that made an IBM-compatible PC considerably easier to use.
It arrived before Windows, supported colour, provided overlapping windows and a proper desktop.
It was fast enough to be useful on the hardware of the time and it could run on hardware that wasn't made by Apple. Then Apple objected to how much it looked like the Macintosh. Digital Research changed it.
And in doing so, the version of GEM that most closely resembled the Macintosh was effectively removed from the PC market just as graphical computing was beginning to take off.
The surviving versions of GEM were still perfectly usable, but the original desktop experience had been significantly reduced.
What Might Have Been?
This is where retro-computing history becomes particularly interesting.
Microsoft Windows was still in its infancy. Windows 1.0 would not appear until November 1985, several months after GEM/1 had reached the market.
GEM therefore had an opportunity to become a major graphical environment for the enormous IBM-compatible PC market. Instead, Digital Research found itself having to deal with a legal dispute it apparently did not want to fight. The result was not the disappearance of GEM.
It was arguably something more subtle. GEM survived, but its most distinctive desktop experience had been restricted.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's Windows continued to develop.
GEM's Second Life
GEM nevertheless found a very successful home outside the IBM-compatible PC desktop.
The Atari ST.
Atari used GEM as the graphical interface for TOS, and the combination became one of the defining characteristics of the ST range.
Unlike the restricted PC desktop version, Atari's implementation retained many of the features that made GEM attractive. For millions of Atari users, GEM wasn't some forgotten graphical shell. It was the computer.
The Atari ST booted into GEM, and users interacted with applications, disks and files through its graphical desktop.
GEM subsequently appeared on other systems and hardware, including Amstrad machines and other Digital Research operating environments.
The Legacy of GEM
GEM eventually disappeared from mainstream computing as Windows became dominant. But its story didn't end there.
Digital Research's remaining GEM technology was eventually acquired along with other Digital Research assets, and the GEM source code was released under the GNU GPL in 1999.
That allowed projects such as FreeGEM, OpenGEM and later implementations used by open-source Atari-compatible systems to continue the technology.
So GEM went from being one of the most promising graphical environments of the early PC era, to being legally altered, to becoming one of the defining features of the Atari ST, and finally to becoming open-source software.
The GEM Story in Five Lines
1984 — Digital Research demonstrates GEM.
February 1985 — GEM/1 is released for IBM-compatible PCs.
1985 — Apple objects to GEM's Macintosh-like interface and reaches an agreement with Digital Research.
March 1986 — GEM 2.0 appears with major changes to the desktop.
1985 onward — Atari continues developing its own GEM-based TOS environment for the ST family.
A Footnote From Computing History
It is tempting to describe the Apple–Digital Research dispute simply as:
"Apple objected because GEM looked like the Macintosh."
That's not quite what happened.
The more accurate story is that Apple threatened legal action over the similarity between GEM and Apple's copyrighted Macintosh interface, and Digital Research settled by agreeing to modify the affected software rather than fight the matter through a full trial.
That distinction matters.
Because the interesting part of the story isn't merely that Apple objected.
It is what happened afterwards.
A graphical desktop that had arrived on the PC remarkably early was forced to become less capable and less visually similar to the Macintosh.
And somewhere along the way, one of the most interesting alternative histories of the PC desktop disappeared.
GEM wasn't beaten by Windows.
It was weakened before the race had properly begun.
And that's one of the most interesting "what if?" stories from the history of personal computing.