Buzz
Four decades ago, a personal computer was introduced, and in some respects, it completely revolutionized how people interacted with computers. Yet, just 2 years after its debut in January 1983, that very computer was almost entirely forgotten.The Apple Lisa project commenced in 1978, led by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The concept then was to harness the computing power of bit-slicing processors, integrating processing modules with smaller bit widths inside a single computer processor chip, a rudimentary solution for expanding computing capabilities.
The graphical user interface (GUI) was invented in the lab of Xerox's research center in Palo Alto (PARC) in the early 1970s. The workstation named Alto was never commercially released, but it featured a vertically-oriented bitmap screen interface, resembling a sheet of paper. Researchers at PARC relied on this interface to develop software displaying task windows and icons, allowing users to interact with the screen using a mouse.
Jef Raskin, one of Apple's early employees who wrote the user manual for the Apple II, visited the PARC center in 1973. He believed that GUI was the future of computing. Raskin successfully persuaded project leaders to shift the development of the Lisa computer to have a graphical interface. However, he failed to convince Jobs, who believed neither Raskin nor Xerox had the capability.Raskin changed his approach, and with interface programmer Bill Atkinson's help, invited Steve Jobs to visit the PARC center in November 1979. Jobs, impressed by Atkinson, accepted the invitation. Jobs' later visit to PARC became a legendary story in tech circles, where the visionary minds of Apple first glimpsed the future of computing.Meanwhile, Atkinson was also developing the LisaGraf code to operate the user interface on the Lisa computer, many months before Steve Jobs saw the demonstration at Xerox's research center.
As a result, the hardware of the Lisa also had to change. The engineering team abandoned the idea of equipping it with bit-slice processing chips, opting instead for Motorola's new 68000 CPU. The 68000 chip was a 16/32-bit central processing unit with a 24-bit address bus, allowing operation with up to 16MB of memory. This figure was satisfactory, considering the high prices in the 1980s computer market, where most computers were equipped with only 16 kB of RAM.
Tests of the Lisa computer interface were recorded in June 1979, August 1980, October 1980, December 1980, July 1981, and August 1982.In an article published in Interactions magazine, designers Roderick Perkins, Dan Smith, and Frank Ludolph described how the Lisa interface evolved from initial rough layouts to a familiar desktop interface with icons, and even later streamlined for a text-centric interface. Every change and experiment served a single purpose: to make Lisa an incredibly useful machine, but one that was still fun to use.The Birth of Lisa
On January 19, 1983, Apple introduced Lisa to the public. The company hailed this computer as a 'revolutionary' device.
According to Tesler, the decision to equip the mouse with a single button is the result of extensive user testing. And because there's only one button, the engineering team had to come up with a new control method: double-clicking.The computer came bundled with both the operating system and 7 office software programs: LisaWrite for word processing, LisaCalc for spreadsheets, LisaDraw for vector drawing, LisaList as a rudimentary database solution, LisaProject for project management, LisaTerminal for simulating workstation control connected to a modem, and LisaGraph, a charting tool.LisaOS itself was impressive with its multitasking capability, allowing multiple software programs to run simultaneously. It also supported virtual memory and memory protection. However, to achieve this, a Memory Management Unit (MMU) was required, which Motorola had not yet developed. So, Apple made one themselves.
Indeed, it was a true technological revolution. However, to own those features, users had to shell out $9,995 in 1983. Adjusted for inflation in 2023, that's nearly $30,000. This figure was exorbitant for individual users and families. While business owners, Lisa's primary target customers, could afford this price tag, their general mindset leaned towards workstation systems supporting multiple users concurrently, using simple text-based control terminals sufficient for running accounting software, rather than a visually appealing machine like Lisa.As a result, Lisa's sales were abysmally low. In its first year, Apple only sold a few thousand units, and thereafter, the numbers didn't fare much better.The reality was that Lisa's sales were also affected by Steve Jobs' own statements, continuously affirming that the true revolutionary personal computer from Apple was on the horizon.The Fate of Lisa
Remember the project Raskin had snatched away by Steve Jobs? That project was none other than Macintosh. Raskin had a fondness for user-friendly graphical interfaces, but he had different ideas for the personal computer, aiming to turn it into a practical and affordable 'appliance.' After being ousted from the Macintosh development team, Raskin resigned from Apple. As for Jobs, he too liked the notion of computers as 'appliances,' but always aimed to turn Macintosh into a cheaper version of Lisa.To achieve this, he gathered a small group of engineers working on the Macintosh project, relocated them to another building, hung a Jolly Roger flag on the wall, and began... plundering both the manpower and the hardware and software development achievements of the Lisa engineering team.
Even LisaGraf, the source code serving Lisa's user interface developed by Atkinson, was renamed QuickDraw and seamlessly transferred to Macintosh. This was relatively easy because both Lisa and Macintosh were equipped with the 68000 CPU. Even the menu bar, desktop interface, and icons were transferred to Macintosh. The reason is quite simple: cost.The Lisa computer priced at $9,995 seems excessive compared to the $2,495 price tag of the Mac. But consider what had to be trimmed to achieve that figure. The Macintosh had only one 5.25' floppy disk drive, no hard drive. Do you see the ProFile drive on the Lisa computer in the image above? It's a $3,499 item out of the total $9,995 Lisa price tag.Similarly, the Mac had only 128KB of RAM compared to 1MB on Lisa. How much did 1MB of RAM cost back then? $2,400! And the Mac's screen was smaller, with lower resolution: 9 inches, 512x342 pixels. It didn't come with any software other than MacWrite and MacPaint because software had to be rewritten in extremely complex and time-consuming assembly language to run on a machine with much less memory.
Lisa's software itself was incompatible with Macintosh. Software for Mac had to be written from scratch. A bit ironic because initially, the only way to write software for Mac was to own a Lisa computer.In 1984, alongside Macintosh, Lisa 2 was introduced. It had a slightly different exterior but kept nearly the same internals. Instead of the 5.25' floppy disk drive, it had a 3.5' floppy drive, with additional space inside to accommodate an MFM hard drive. With these changes, the price of Lisa 2 ranged from $3,495 to $5,495. At this point, sales started to stabilize.
Once again, Jobs intervened. After ousting the director who had once ousted him from the Lisa project, Jobs now held the power to decide the fate of both Lisa and Mac. Lisa 2 was renamed Macintosh XL, released to the market with emulation software mimicking the operation of the Macintosh operating system instead of Lisa's software, which was originally optimized to run on much stronger hardware.
In 1985, the Lisa brand ceased to exist. The remaining computers were sold to third parties, and even in 1989, to avoid taxes, 2,700 Lisa computers were dumped in a landfill.Could history have taken a different path?
Clearly, adhering to cost constraints was what led to Mac's success, and its sales far surpassed Lisa's. But limiting costs also limited the machine's performance. The first-generation Macintosh lacked multitasking capabilities, only able to run one software at a time. Autosave feature was also absent, as were virtual memory management and memory protection, along with Lisa's robust file management system.It took many years for those features to return to Apple computers, by which time both RAM and hard drive costs had plummeted.
In a parallel universe, a somewhat different reality, Lisa could still thrive for years to come, as the cost of a computer gradually decreases and its power increases, a consequence of Moore's Law. There was a time when the Lisa development team even planned to add an unlimited undo feature, rather than just one.Apart from the sky-high price, complaints about the Lisa at the time included its sluggish performance. Of course, if Lisa had the chance to live a few more years, with stronger CPU generations and improved compiler sets, that could have been entirely remedied.Those are mere speculative guesses. But one thing is certain, Lisa is a milestone in computer history. It set the standard for today's user-friendly graphical interfaces. And Lisa also serves as a clear lesson that the best ideas may not always win, and even past failures deserve to become experiences for decades to come.According to ArsTechnica
