Triumphant return for Apple’s floppy Lisa
Before there was an iPhone, iMac or Macintosh, Apple had the Lisa computer.
The Lisa computer – which stands for Local Integrated Software Architecture, but which was also named after Steve Jobs’ eldest daughter – was a flop when it released in 1983 because of its astronomical price of US$10,000 (NZ$14,080), or US$24,700 when adjusted for inflation.
But in the grand scheme of Apple’s history, the Lisa computer’s software laid the groundwork for what was to be the macOS operating system.
Some time this year, Apple fans will be able to relive the early days of Apple – back when it was still a startup in Cupertino, California led by Jobs and Steve Wozniak, thanks to Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum.
The museum’s software curator, Al Kossow, announced that the source code for the Lisa computer had been recovered and was with Apple for review.
Once Apple clears the code, the museum plans to release it to the public with a blog post explaining the code’s historic significance.
‘‘The only thing I saw that probably won’t be able to be released is the American Heritage dictionary for the spell checker in LisaWrite (a word processing application),’’ Kossow said.
The Lisa was the first computer with a ‘‘graphical user interface’’ aimed at businesses – hence its high cost.
With a 5 megahertz processor and a megabyte of random access memory (RAM), the Lisa computer gave users the breakthrough technology of allowing files to be organised using a mouse.
Apple spent US$150 million on the development of Lisa and advertised it as a game-changer, with actor Kevin Costner in the commercials.
But Apple only sold 10,000 units in 1983 before it pivoted to creating the smaller and much cheaper successor, the Macintosh, which was released the following year.
‘‘The Lisa was doomed because it was basically a prototype – an overpriced, underpowered cobbled-together ramshackle Mac,’’ author and tech journalist Leander Kahney told Wired magazine in 2010.
‘‘Lisa taught the Mac team they’d need to articulate a clear purpose for the Mac.’’
The Lisa computer also set off another chain of events which helped define Apple’s history, according to Wired.
Jobs was promptly kicked off the Lisa development team by chief executive John Sculley and joined the Macintosh team.
Sculley’s move against Jobs helped create the legendary fissure between the two that led to Jobs’ ousting from Apple in 1985. Jobs returned to the company in 1997.