The Lisa: Apple’s Most Influential Failure

2023-01-19 08:41:17

Completely satisfied fortieth Birthday to Lisa! The Apple Lisa pc, that’s. In celebration of this milestone, CHM has acquired permission from Apple to launch the supply code to the Lisa software program, together with its system and purposes software program.

Access the code here.

What’s the Apple Lisa pc, and why was its launch on January 19, 1983, an essential date in pc historical past? Apple’s Macintosh line of computer systems at this time, recognized for bringing mouse-driven graphical consumer interfaces (GUIs) to the lots and reworking the way in which we use our computer systems, owes its existence to its instant predecessor at Apple, the Lisa. With out the Lisa, there would have been no Macintosh—a minimum of within the type we’ve got it at this time—and maybe there would have been no Microsoft Home windows both.

From DOS to GUI

Earlier than the Seventies and even into the early Nineteen Nineties, a majority of private pc customers interacted with their machines by way of command-line interfaces, text-based working methods equivalent to CP/M and MS/DOS through which customers needed to sort arcane instructions to manage their computer systems.

Apple II ProDOS Command-line interface. The catalog command proven lists the recordsdata on the present disk. Public area.

The invention of the GUI, particularly within the type of home windows, icons, menus, and pointer (WIMP), managed by a mouse, occurred at Xerox PARC within the Seventies, on the Alto, a pc with a bitmapped graphics show designed for use by a single particular person, i.e. a “private pc,” regardless of the analysis prototype’s excessive value. Key components of the WIMP GUI paradigm, particularly overlapping home windows and popup menus, have been invented by Alan Kay’s Studying Analysis Group for his or her kids’s software program growth setting, Smalltalk.

Screenshot of Smalltalk-78 emulation working at https://smalltalkzoo.thechm.org/HOPL-St78.html. Proven is a demo given by Dan Ingalls to Steve Jobs at PARC in 1979. Overlapping home windows have been a key new function of Smalltalk, which was a growth setting. Notice the dearth of icons, buttons, or an ever-present menu bar. Instructions, together with window resizing, have been executed by right-clicking the mouse and deciding on from a popup menu.

In 1979, a delegation from Apple Pc, led by Steve Jobs, visited PARC and acquired an indication of Smalltalk on the Alto. Upon seeing the GUI, Jobs instinctively grasped the potential of this new means of interacting with a pc and didn’t perceive why Xerox wasn’t advertising and marketing this expertise to the general public. Jobs may see that each one computer systems ought to work this manner, and he wished Apple to paved the way by bringing this expertise out from the analysis lab to the lots.

From Apple II to Lisa

Apple had already been engaged on a pc in its personal R&D labs to leapfrog the corporate’s best-selling, however command-line-based, Apple II private pc. It was code-named “Lisa” after Lisa Brennan (now Brennan-Jobs), Steve Jobs’ little one with a former highschool girlfriend, whom he initially refused to acknowledge as his personal. The code-name caught, and a backronym, Native Built-in Methods Structure, was invented to obfuscate the connection to Jobs’ daughter.⁽¹⁾ In contrast to the Apple II, which was aimed on the residence pc market, the Lisa could be focused on the enterprise market, would use the highly effective Motorola 68000 microprocessor, and could be paired with a tough drive.

After the PARC go to, Jobs and plenty of of Lisa’s engineers, together with Invoice Atkinson, labored to include the concepts of the GUI from PARC into the Lisa. Atkinson developed the QuickDraw graphics library for the Lisa, and collaborated with Larry Tesler, who left PARC to hitch Apple, on creating the Lisa’s consumer interface. Tesler created an object-oriented variant of Pascal, known as “Clascal,” that will be used for the Lisa Toolkit utility programming interfaces. Later, by working with Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth, Clascal would evolve into the official Object Pascal.

Apple Lisa 2 screenshot. Icons on the desktop and the menu bar with pulldown menus on the prime of the display screen have made their look. This interface is similar to that of the unique Macintosh. Picture Courtesy of David T. Craig. CHM Object ID 500004666.

A reorganization of the corporate in 1982, nevertheless, eliminated Jobs from having any direct affect on the Lisa mission, which was subsequently managed by John Sofa. Jobs then found the Macintosh mission began by Jef Raskin. Jobs took over that mission and moved it away from Raskin’s unique appliance-like imaginative and prescient to 1 extra like Lisa—a mouse-driven GUI-based pc however extra inexpensive than the Lisa.

Steve Jobs with John Sofa, VP and Basic Supervisor of the Lisa division, exhibiting off the unique Lisa, 1983. Picture courtesy of John Sofa.

Competitors and Collaboration

For just a few years, each the Lisa and Macintosh groups competed internally, though there was collaboration as properly. Invoice Atkinson’s QuickDraw graphics grew to become a part of the Macintosh, and Atkinson thus contributed to each tasks. Lisa software program supervisor Bruce Daniels really left the Lisa mission to work on the Macintosh for a time frame, drastically influencing the course of the Mac in the direction of the Lisa’s GUI. Larry Tesler’s work on the object-oriented Lisa Toolkit utility frameworks would later evolve into the MacApp frameworks, which used Object Pascal. Owen Densmore, who had been at Xerox, labored on Printing on each the Lisa and the Macintosh.

Invoice Atkinson’s Apple ID badge. Atkinson was an essential determine within the creation of the Lisa, creating key elements of the consumer interface. Credit score: Folklore.org

Managers within the Lisa growth group. From left to proper: Wayne Rosing ({hardware}, later all of Lisa engineering), Larry Tesler (purposes software program and libraries, consumer interface design and testing), Bruce Daniels (software program, methods structure). Picture by John Blaustein. Scan of web page 97 of Private Computing Journal, March 1983, CHM #102661078.

The Lisa’s consumer interface design underwent many alternative variations earlier than lastly arriving on the icon-based desktop metaphor acquainted to us from the Macintosh.⁽²⁾ Nonetheless, the ultimate Lisa Desktop Supervisor nonetheless has just a few key variations from the Mac. One was a document-centric quite than application-centric mannequin. Every program on the Lisa featured a “stationary pad” that resided on the desktop, separate from the applying icon. Customers tore off a sheet from the stationary pad to create a brand new doc. Customers not often interacted with the applying’s icon itself, however quite with these stationary pads.⁽³⁾ The concept of centering the consumer’s world round paperwork quite than purposes would reemerge within the Nineteen Nineties with applied sciences equivalent to Apple’s OpenDoc and Microsoft’s OLE.

The Price of Innovation

Lisa was launched to the general public on January 19, 1983, at a value of $9,995. This was two years after Xerox had launched its personal business GUI-based workstation, the Star, for $16,595, which was equally focused in the direction of workplace employees. The excessive value of each machines in comparison with the IBM PC, a command-line based mostly PC which retailed for $1,565, doomed them each to failure. However there have been different vital issues too. The Lisa’s subtle working system, which allowed a number of applications to run on the identical time (“multitasking”) was too highly effective even for its 68000 processor, and thus ran sluggishly. The Lisa shipped with a set of purposes, together with phrase processing and charts, bundled with the system, which discouraged third social gathering builders from writing their very own software program for it. The unique Lisa shipped with a floppy drive (“Twiggy”), designed in-house, that was unreliable.

Brochure exhibiting Lisa 1 display screen and Twiggy floppy drives. Brochure textual content lists the unique specs, a 32-bit Motorola 68000 processor (16-bit information bus), 1 MB RAM, and 364 x 720 decision bitmap show. Exterior ProFile laborious disk just isn’t proven. CHM #102634506

From Lisa to the Mac

Introduced within the well-known Superbowl advert, the Apple Macintosh shipped in January 1984 for $2,495. Eliminating a tough drive, multitasking, and different superior options, and a drastically lowered reminiscence made it way more inexpensive than the Lisa. An progressive advertising and marketing program created by Dan’l Lewin (at this time CHM’s CEO) that offered Macintoshes at lowered costs to school college students contributed considerably to the Mac’s put in base. The arrival of Postscript-driven laser printers just like the Apple LaserWriter in 1985, mixed with the web page format utility PageMaker from third social gathering software program firm Aldus, created a brand-new killer utility—desktop publishing—for the Macintosh.⁽⁴⁾ This new market would develop to a billion {dollars} by 1988, and the Macintosh grew to become the primary commercially profitable pc with a graphical consumer interface and a product-line that continues to at the present time.

The Lisa 2 sequence, consisting of two fashions, Lisa 2/5 and a couple of/10, priced at $3,495 and $5,495, respectively, was introduced alongside the Macintosh in January 1984. Lisa 2 changed the unique Lisa’s twin Twiggy floppy drives with a single Sony 3.5” floppy drive, the identical drive that was within the Mac. In January 1985, the Lisa 2/10 was rebranded because the Macintosh XL with MacWorks, an emulator that allowed it to run Mac software program, however regardless of improved gross sales this product was killed off in April 1985 to concentrate on the Mac.⁽⁵⁾

The Lisa 2 sequence was introduced in January 1984, with the Macintosh, as a part of the Apple 32 SuperMicro sequence. Notice that the dual Twiggy drives have been changed by the Mac’s Sony 3.5” floppy drive. Not solely did this enhance reliability, but additionally improved compatibility with the Mac, permitting them to make use of the identical floppy disks. CHM #102689034

The discharge of the GUI-based Lisa and its successor the Macintosh impressed a number of PC software program corporations to create software program “shells” that will set up GUI environments on prime of MS-DOS command-line based mostly IBM PCs. The primary of those was VisiOn, launched in late 1983 by VisiCorp, the writer of the primary spreadsheet program VisiCalc. This was adopted in 1985 by GEM from Digital Analysis, the corporate behind the command-line based mostly CP/M working system. Microsoft adopted with Home windows the identical yr.

The Affect of Innovation

Each GEM and Home windows have been launched after the Macintosh and have been influenced by consumer interface components from the Mac. Although Home windows was first launched in 1985 it was not extensively utilized by most PC customers till 1990’s Home windows 3.0. Between Home windows and the Macintosh, GUIs have turn into the first consumer interface paradigm on private computer systems.

Lisa in use by John Sofa’s son, with Sofa wanting on. The picture illustrates “What You See Is What You Get,” with Sofa holding a printout that mirrors the drawing on the display screen. Regardless of this advertising and marketing picture, the Lisa, at $9,995, was not aimed on the residence pc market, however quite at workplace professionals. However, used to promoting retail, Apple lacked expertise in direct gross sales, which was how computer systems have been offered to companies, a technique IBM had perfected. Companies additionally required IBM mainframe compatibility, which the Lisa didn’t have. Company prospects most popular the IBM PC, which value solely $1,565. Picture Courtesy of John Sofa.

Regardless of the Lisa’s failure within the market, it holds a key place within the historical past of the GUI and PCs extra typically as the primary GUI-based pc to be launched by a private pc firm. Although the Xerox Star 8010 beat the Lisa to market in 1981, the Star was competing with different workstations from Apollo and Solar. Maybe extra importantly, with out the Lisa and its incorporation of the PARC-inspired GUI, the Macintosh itself wouldn’t have been based mostly on the GUI. Each computer systems shared key applied sciences, such because the mouse and the QuickDraw graphics library. The Lisa was a key steppingstone to the Macintosh, and an essential milestone within the historical past of graphical consumer interfaces and private computer systems extra typically.

(5) Owen Linzmayer, Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive Historical past of the World’s Most Colourful Firm, Rev. 2nd ed. (San Francisco, CA: No Starch Press, 2004), 79–80.