# The Apple Lisa



## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

This is totally off topic... and basically just something for us to talk about till tonight.

If I would have called the release LISA .... Why?


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## Spongeweed (Sep 15, 2006)

No idea Earl. Breaking news for you though, The Saints are gonna beat the Bears this weekend. Sorry, but the Saints have 'it' and 'it' is a very powerful thing this time of year...


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## markrubi (Oct 12, 2006)

Lisa Marie Presley B-Day Feb 1st?


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## monkcee (Jan 17, 2006)

Earl Bonovich said:


> This is totally off topic... and basically just something for us to talk about till tonight.
> 
> If I would have called the release LISA .... Why?


Could it be the L.I.S.A project from Apple?


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## Sharkie_Fan (Sep 26, 2006)

Earl Bonovich said:


> This is totally off topic... and basically just something for us to talk about till tonight.
> 
> If I would have called the release LISA .... Why?


January 19, 1983

Apple announces Lisa. The first personal computer with GUI and a mouse.


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## Rasputin13 (Oct 24, 2006)

Earl Bonovich said:


> This is totally off topic... and basically just something for us to talk about till tonight.
> 
> If I would have called the release LISA .... Why?


1/19/83 Apple Lisa announced (if Wikipedia is to be trusted):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

...but then it would turn out to be an overpriced flop and no one would want it.


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

Yep... Apple Lisa...

$9,950 in 1983 ~ $21,000 today.
1MB Memory, with a 5MB External Hard Drive


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

I moved the thread over here now.... So we can continue the discussion of what could have been the end of Apple Computers, before it even started...


LISA is 24 today


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## macEarl (Jan 2, 2007)

No way I can resist this one. 

When the PC/AT came out, Lisas were on their way to close-out, and I considered buying one - strongly.

While it was overpriced - as proven by the market's lack of acceptance and Monday morning hindsight - it represented a lot technically.

In my case, it was the allure of the p-System AND its desktop paradigm. In fact, it wouldn't go too far to say it was the ultimate p-System engine, and that meant code transportability and openness - the way the non-Winodws world has always gone. For the neophytes of the time, the ramifications of this were obscure. For the technical aristocracy of the day, it proved too expensive to allow platform exploitation, thereby impeding feature add-ons that might have tipped the scales for the neophytes.

As for price - as that seems to make the Lisa hilarious to all who never sat in front of one long enough to understand, let's compare apples to apples (so to speak). To do so, I'll hereby extrapolate to infinity from a single data point - me - and the flames^H^H^H^H^H^Hchips fall where they may.

In the early 80s, I had $10k worth of audio equipment in my living room. Today, I have more than that in just my speakers, and well over $21k - today - in my home entertainment system. So Apple didn't miss the mark so completely on what sort of disposable income somebudy would bring to the table to buy *cool* - they did however, miss it for their market segment - so it wasn't as impossibly-priced-sounding as you seem to imply.

Further examples - I knew plenty of guys with Leicas, Rolleis and darkrooms with over $10k investment in those days; and before the Lisa's demise, I knew a *LOT* of new computer owners who had decided in favor of the Lisa and were biding their time with their new PCs - getting smart enough to appreciate a $10k computer - prior to purchase. When the Lisa was cancelled, these same people screamed the loudest about good riddance and over-priced. That my friend, is called pride - covering up that maybe they were about to be stupid enough to make a $10k "mistake" when all they did was create a ripple of something like, "So-and-so was in to the Lisa - I remember - now they're badmouthing it. Good thing I was right - anything I can't afford is just no good!"

Your generation is far from being free of this problem. 

Finally - killed Apple before it even started? You weren't there, so you don't know.(**) There was no Apple vs. IBM struggle like there is today. PCs took off as a matter of pride. Those of us that already owned copies of the market-dominant Apple II or II+ had nothing against PCs - if they stood a chance of being as good or better, we were ready to give them a go. But at that time, an Apple II+ motherboard had already been part of a space shuttle package for experiment command and control (front of some magazine at the time). You could remove a floppy without having to hit control-C (yes, PC's lost their directory if you didn't do that at the time of the Lisa, with no way to recover the disk). Apple II+'s were in full force in many small business, could play games, and most definitely was a darling of engineering - this I know from firsthand experience.

And the Apple boys were already very rich - so Lisa killing them before Apple computers succeeded isn't even wrong. And it couldn't have killed the IBM - for sociologoical reasons. Small business users and accountants and the like already had access to CP/M machines that would do more than the PC or Lisa - light years ahead. The Apple II+ could do some things more (data acquisition card, 68000 outboard processor added, for example) than the Lisa. But when it came to the office paradigm and the choice between a very expensive Apple and a very expensive IBM PC, the prideful thinking of the day went like this: Shall I buy this amazing Apple - the darling of all of the super-smart engineer types that intimidate me - or the first-ever IBM in my price range? Where's my lowest risk? Won't IBM take care of me? How can an IBM not be great? Why, they're the only maker of real computers! ....

It wasn't that Lisa was the overpriced technical failure. That was the PC. Lisa was the sociological failure - the PC wasn't.

And just so you know who's writing this - I had no use for the Mac, that pretender to Lisa! - just as I had no use for Windows, that pretender to the Mac.

The Lisa concept - and everything we all wanted the original PC to be, what we all wanted our TRS-80s to be, our CP/M machines to be, our Apple II+'s to be - finally arrived in the form of OS X - the most advanced platform, allowing easy operation of any desktop I choose - OS X, X (as in KDE, Motif, etc.), or Windows - with as open a software foundation as technically reasonable for its day - Darwin/BSD.

I'll go change into my asbestos underroos - fire away.

(** Footnote - this isn't intended to be read as, "I was there, no opposing comments are valid" - it's intended as, "I was there - you don't have to be a fanboi to question that statement - if you were there, you'd be with me on this one." I'm not a professional writer. I stand by my contentions but always regret my inabilities to be clear, such as they are.)


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## wakajawaka (Sep 27, 2006)

Here's a link to a web site supposedly hosted by a Lisa computer.


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## macEarl (Jan 2, 2007)

wakajawaka said:


> Here's a link to a web site supposedly hosted by a Lisa computer.


Two pages in from that link - made my day. Thanks!


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

macEarl said:


> ....
> 
> Your generation is far from being free of this problem.
> 
> ...


Sorry... not sure how young you think I am... but even though my parents where the one that made the purchases at the time.

I most certainly WAS there.

My Father (god bless his sole)... scalveged $3,500 to purchase the family an Apple IIe. That was after nearly three years of saving, to purchase an Apple II.... and timing had it that we got the Apple IIe.

Which is all he could afford at the time... He couldn't spend $10k 1983 dollars, on a computer.

Shortly after... I started to learn BASIC and Graphic Programming in basic.
Our School Districts where fairly progressive when it came to the computers, and made sure that we had access to them during the school year.

Turtle/Logo.... BASIC... and eventually I got a sound card, and started to play around with that. I learned to touch type at the age of 12... on a computer keyboard.

What I ment by "almost killed Apple before it got started", as that a lot of the documentries on the history of Apple refer to the LISA as one of the biggest gambles that never paid off... and it was for "plan-b" the MAC, and Plan C ... the Apple IIc.... Apple, may not be the company it is today.


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## macEarl (Jan 2, 2007)

Earl Bonovich said:


> Sorry... not sure how young you think I am... but even though my parents where the one that made the purchases at the time.
> 
> I most certainly WAS there.


I was sure I'd read somewhere hereabouts that you're in your early thirties. No disrepect intended - if that's true, you weren't there in the sense as an adult making your living at the keyboard, and therefore not accessing the news of the day in the same way as others such as I. I sincerely apologize if I'm wrong or if I'm insensitive to something that I should have been.



> My Father (god bless his sole)... scalveged $3,500 to purchase the family an Apple IIe. That was after nearly three years of saving, to purchase an Apple II.... and timing had it that we got the Apple IIe.


He sounds like a hell of a guy.



> Which is all he could afford at the time... He couldn't spend $10k 1983 dollars, on a computer.


But he did sacrifice for his family's sake and raised a community-conscious son. This shows in most of your posts to us dinosaurs, prolly more than you know. It's prolly part of the reason that you're so well-respected here --- anyone can geek out, but not everyone works for the common good. That isn't limited to economics, it's limited to be raised right. Be proud - insofar as it honors what your father gave you and what you've had the courage to build on, be very proud..



> Shortly after... I started to learn BASIC and Graphic Programming in basic.
> Our School Districts where fairly progressive when it came to the computers, and made sure that we had access to them during the school year.
> 
> Turtle/Logo.... BASIC... and eventually I got a sound card, and started to play around with that.


Turtle/Logo - whoa there's a blast from the past. IIRC, it was also an intro to Forth ....? I started to learn in BASIC, too - from a teletype, storing to paper tape.



> I learned to touch type at the age of 12... on a computer keyboard.


OK, not that proud.  By 12, I'd learned that hammering on an Underwood hurt 3 or 4 out of 10 fingers.



> What I ment by "almost killed Apple before it got started", as that a lot of the documentries on the history of Apple refer to the LISA as one of the biggest gambles that never paid off... and it was for "plan-b" the MAC, and Plan C ... the Apple IIc.... Apple, may not be the company it is today.


Where I'm coming from is that most of those documentaries are wrong. Lisa was Apple's first expression of PARC technology. Scully is what screwed up Apple in later terms. But to go from Apple II architecture (hardware expansible), PC (hardware expansible), Lisa (no need to type it again) to Mac - closed hardware unless you want to count the SCSI port - which I won't --- that was a dumb gamble from the guys who showed that it was the open hardware that made the market open up to owning a small computer. The Apple III was a travesty. The IIc was tres cool - except when it smacked up against the flexibility of the II+, ditto for the IIe/II+.

With all of these product variations, they required some major shifting on the part of the users - the line should have had continuity and where technically not feasible (read new PARC technology) there should have been two lines - coherent II-type and coherent PARC-type.

The incoherent babbling of models has only recently started to abate for Apple.

The gambles that didn't pay off, in my opinion, were:
* no concern for entrenched markets they'd created
* that an open architecture and a closed one could co-exist while simultaneously challenging the consumer/user to think differently about the experience
* that Microsoft as a partner with a vested interest in a competing architecture and a very strong vested interest in an operating system would behave the same as the Microsoft partner that only produced a BASIC language, no o/s
* that they could then think that some "external new management" could solve these woes​
The Lisa wasn't a gamble from my point of view - it was a miscalculation and marketing arrogance at its best. The ads didn't talk to us - we didn't know who the heck they were talking to, in fact - and we were their core. The Mac of the day was an extension of that miscalculation. Computer for the rest of us?!? A well-priced Lisa - allowing poorer developers a chance to get on board (necessity is the mother of invention) could have been the computer for all us. And subsequent Windows success proved that point in spades.

Enough of my babbling. So. How are you?


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

macEarl said:


> So. How are you?


I am good... I am 32 (33 in February)... and yes... He was one hell of a guy, and I miss him dearly... (and thank you for the comments on him and me).
Just sitting and trying to wait for the Football game on Saturday... to hopefully make my trip to Miami in two weeks even more special then it already is...

And thank your explanation of a different way to look at how it was from a different angle at the time.


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## macEarl (Jan 2, 2007)

Happy upcoming birthday - to us both!


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