The other books on hardware from this timeframe such as Tracy Kidder's _The Soul of a New Machine_ or Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp_ or Andy Hertzfeld's _Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made_ (available as: https://folklore.org/0-index.html) are quite striking and forthright in their discussion of hardware limitations and the ingenuity needed to get things done.
Or, contrast the far more prosaic _Weaving the Web_ by Tim Berners-Lee and esp. take note of compromises such as URL changing from Universal Resource Locator to Uniform Resource Locator.
The book _CAD History_, available on-line at: https://www.shapr3d.com/history-of-cad/introduction has a bit on Xanadu from the Autodesk end of things.
Or, contrast the far more prosaic _Weaving the Web_ by Tim Berners-Lee and esp. take note of compromises such as URL changing from Universal Resource Locator to Uniform Resource Locator.