
Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983) - rbanffy
https://www.newsweek.com/apple-reveals-lisa-its-50-million-gamble-207032
======
a1pulley
My favorite part:

Instead of typing a sequence of commands on the computer keyboard; the user
merely points to tiny "icons" or commands on the screen by sliding the "mouse"
(a plastic control box the size of a cigarette pack) on the desktop beside the
computer. As the mouse rolls, an arrow called a cursor moves across the
screen. To erase obsolete information, for example, the user moves the mouse
to point first at whatever is to be thrown away, and then at an icon in the
shape of a tiny trash can...

~~~
emptybits
And just a few years later in 1986, the "Scotty uses a Mac" scene from Star
Trek IV:
[https://youtu.be/LkqiDu1BQXY?t=64](https://youtu.be/LkqiDu1BQXY?t=64)

~~~
yellowapple
Fun fact: "transparent aluminum" is a reality, albeit insanely expensive:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Corundum is also transparent aluminum and it's insanely cheap.

~~~
inflatableDodo
Speaking of which, where's our sapphire phone screens already?

~~~
vinceguidry
Sapphire is too brittle to be of much use in a phone screen. It would increase
scratch resistance but be more prone to breaking than chemically strengthened
glass. It works for watches because they can make it thicker to compensate.

------
Animats
The Lisa was a good machine, but there was one big problem. Motorola had come
out with the M68000, but not the MMU for it. 680x0 MMUs were years late, and
the first one was terrible. The Lisa had a real OS, and needed an MMU. That
had to be built out of smaller parts, which increased the cost enormously.

There was also a major bug in the M68000 - instruction backout didn't work.
That was fixed in the 68010. But on the 68000, a page fault was not handled
properly if a register had incrementation set. So the Lisa compiler had to be
dumbed down to not use that feature, slowing down execution somewhat.

If Motorola had fixed those problems sooner, the history of personal computing
might have been very different. Intel's x86 machines, with their 16 bit
address spaces, might have gone nowhere on the desktop.

Hence the cost-reduced Macintosh - no MMU, no memory protection, no CPU
dispatcher. Also no hard drive. The original 128K Mac was a flop commercially.
Not until memory cost came down and Apple got a hard drive into the product
did it sell successfully. The IBM PC had a hard drive earlier, which got them
going in business use. The floppy-only Macs were incredibly slow.

~~~
pjmlp
Apple wasn't visible at all in Europe during those days, Atari, Amiga and IBM
PC ruled this side of the Atlantic.

Now had Compaq not been so lucky, then the PCs might have indeed gone nowhere.

~~~
Angostura
Certainly in the UK (special case?), that's not the case . We certainly had
Apple ][s at school and 6th form in the UK as the main machines - later
replaced by BBC model Bs and back then there were summer camps doing computing
for enthusiastic youngsters. Apple was again the computer of choice in the
early days, to be replaced later by the ZX Spectrum.

~~~
delibes
Not sure I agree. Just my anecdotal data of course, but I don't remember
seeing an Apple II in UK schools in the 80s, but definitely BBC Micro/Master
and a few Archimedes later. This was in 2-3 North West state schools, so there
might have been regional differences.

Edit - oh yes, and about the ZX Spectrum... I can't imagine anyone willingly
changing from something else to that rubber keyboard! Yuck.

~~~
sambeau
Again anecdotal, but my experience was that state schools had BBC Micros but
private schools and many technology-focused colleges had AppleIIs. Apples were
very expensive. I remember helping out at a technology college night class
where people were being taught Logo programming (and later Pascal). It was the
first time I'd seen more than one ApppleII in a room at a time (this class had
a doze or so, two people to machine).

~~~
zimpenfish
I went to a private school (1986-89) and we had nothing but BBC Micros. Don't
think I saw an Apple until well into my job career (~2000ish).

~~~
sambeau
I could have typed that better for sure. I had meant to say that Apples were
not common anywhere in the UK but the places I had seen some were in tech
colleges and private schools which it seems would fit with your experience
too.

------
icedchai
This makes the new Mac Pro look like a bargain... especially after you adjust
for inflation.

~~~
gilbetron
$25k after inflation. I had no idea it was that expensive!

~~~
newsoul2019
I am really curious about how anyone could afford computers at these prices in
the 1980s. I guess my family was really poor then. We had a C64 and later an
Amiga.

~~~
FigBug
They didn't unless they were well off. Only 8% of houses had a computer in
1984. 15% by the end of the decade. C64 was $595 new, if you had one I doubt
your family was poor.

~~~
cheerlessbog
I'm surprised only 8%. My memory of growing up in the UK in the early 80's was
that ZX81'S and ZX Spectrums were super common. I bought my ZX81 in 1982 for
£50 new which looks like it was maybe $80.

~~~
stevekemp
One of the reasons the Spectrum was so common was the low price. And of course
using taps for games meant that most weren't paid for, but copied and shared
around at school.

I grew up with the ZX Spectrum, like so many others, and it is what started me
programming/developing/being interested in computers.

------
russellbeattie
Trying to understand Steve Jobs is an effort in futility I know, but I've
never understood what he was thinking around this time. He refused to accept
responsibility for his daughter when she was born in 1978, and even 5 years
later, he was still questioning the accuracy of DNA paternity tests in Time
Magazine and despite being a multi-millionaire, only grudgingly paying $500 a
month for child support. But then he goes and names this computer after her,
yet claims for years it _wasn 't_ named for her. Sure, he was pretty young
(28) but that's hardly an excuse. Jobs wasn't just a pathological narcissist,
he was just plain weird.

~~~
adventured
It was out of his control, foisted upon him. He didn't want the responsibility
at the time, didn't want to focus his time on it. So for an immature 20
something, he took the route of deny deny deny to evade it. Lisa had noted
with emphasis previously his pattern for having something less than no
patience for things that took his time against his wishes (when he didn't want
them to).

Combined with his emotional issues, rage, temper - it resulted in a manic back
& forth. When he wanted to be magnanimous or kind, he could be, and it always
had to be strictly on his terms and only if he didn't feel forced into it in
any manner (to the far end of that spectrum, like he'd do it only when it was
least expected, as an amplification device). If anything attempted to force
his hand, or he perceived such, he very aggressively rebelled against it in
all cases (you see that pattern over and over again throughout his history
with people and business). It had to be on his terms, or there would be no
terms at all. When he could reorient the context of Lisa (his daughter) to his
terms, as and when he saw fit, then it became acceptable. You can see some of
that behavior in action, in Lisa's description of what it was like to live
with Steve when she was younger (my way or the highway atmosphere; he had to
feel in control). He seemingly struggled to control his emotions for most of
his life, which must have been wildly frustrating for someone like him. That
lack of personal emotional control might explain a control over-compensation
directed at other things in his life, the need to control everything else (and
perhaps a behavior where if he felt in control of everything else around him,
then he could keep the other things from setting off his emotions, which he
couldn't control properly).

That's my read on it anyway.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"It was out of his control, foisted upon him. He didn't want the
responsibility at the time, didn't want to focus his time on it. So for an
immature 20 something, he took the route of deny deny deny to evade it."

???

'20 something' is _well into adultland_.

You want a good job? You want to vote? You want to be treated as an adult?

Then there's no such thing as 'out of his control', really.

For someone who's ostensibly responsible enough to run an entire company,
being responsible for one's children is well within reason.

Everyone has challenges in their personal lives, it's 'never a cakewalk' \- ok
- but there are really no excuses for Jobs here. Point blank.

~~~
Crinus
You misunderstood what adventured wrote, it isn't that he (adventured)
believes that it was out of Jobs' control, but that Jobs himself saw something
happening (his daughter's birth) that he didn't control. Jobs wanted to be in
control.

This is stuff Lisa herself has written about.

(also 20somethings can act very immature, as can 30somethings, 40somethings,
etc and the opposite where teenagers act more mature than expected - it is
that "expected" part that sometimes fails with people, not everyone is the
same)

------
userbinator
Not mentioned in the article, but one of the major contributors to its failure
is that the Lisa was a _very_ restricted environment that made it difficult to
develop for:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa#Third-
party_softwar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa#Third-
party_software)

Contrast this to the IBM PC where people could easily get started programming
in BASIC (included in ROM!) or Asm (MS-DOS DEBUG), for which many magazines of
the time had listings. Of course not every user did, but certainly a lot of
them started and eventually helped greatly grow the amount of software
available.

The PC had a learning curve but the user was in full control, whereas the Lisa
didn't have much of one but had many impediments that prevented users from
becoming developers. This attitude persists in Apple today.

------
bluedino
Did much of Lisa even survive to become the Mac, or was it just in spirit?

Considering you needed a Lisa to develop for the Mac for the first few years,
it’s good that they made it.

~~~
outworlder
Spirit. The Lisa was a MUCH more powerful computer than the first Mac - which
is why you needed a Lisa in the first place. The Mac wasn't able to run much
of anything developed for the Lisa. Mac software was written in machine
language, as I recall the Lisa made more use of higher level languages, so
even the tool chain would be problematic.

Check folklore.org for more stories of that time.

~~~
Crinus
Specifically, Apple Pascal: [http://pascal-
central.com/images/pascalposter.jpg](http://pascal-
central.com/images/pascalposter.jpg) (i want to recreate this in SVG and print
a real poster out of it at some point).

Although AFAIK the original Mac was also programmable with Pascal (in folklore
it mentions that the calculator, etc were initially written in Pascal as
examples for the API).

~~~
Shivetya
the reason I went into Pascal was when I was younger I found out my favorite
Apple II game; Wizardry; had been written in it. I think they used USCD
Pascal.

awhile back I was able to find recreated source of the game

[1]
ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/rpg/wizardry/wizardry_I/

Spreadsheet of game maps, etc.

[2]
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Mo1EoWXSnR5gNn5kAt9f...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Mo1EoWXSnR5gNn5kAt9ftGV4DlVpK8gr_QOx0kKzeV4/edit#gid=0)

Wizardry III re engineered

[3]
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.apple2/w...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.apple2/wizardry/comp.sys.apple2/2oDJTbQaJWU/Vge7HkIcYYwJ)

------
kristianp
According to the wikipedia page for the Lisa, Jobs went to the team developing
the mac, and changed the focus from a command-line machine to be a cheaper
Lisa competitor, releasing the Mac 1 year after the first Lisa. How could Jobs
get away with trying to cannibalize the sales from their flagship machine? It
seems traitorous if true.

~~~
chasontherobot
Haha! They've made several movies and written books about this drama. Whether
or not it was traitorous depends on who you view as being a traitor first,
Steve Jobs or John Sculley.

I recommend reading Walter Issacson's book on Steve Jobs, or watch the movie
"Pirates of Silicon Valley" for a good take on it.

~~~
pickle-wizard
folklore.org is another good source. It is a collection of stories written by
the team that created the original Mac (Most stuff written by Andy Hertzfeld)

------
Quequau
I really, really, really wanted one of these when they first came out and my
stepdad laughed in my face when I asked to borrow that much money for a
computer "for college" when we had a perfectly functional Apple IIe at home.

------
webwielder2
It’s interesting to me how well-reported this seems, or maybe how it seems
informed by ensuing decades of literature rather than being reported in the
moment. Apple’s mythos, Jobs’s showmanship, and the importance of Xerox PARC
and Apple’s deal with Xerox were all established lore very early on. I guess
it’s just bias on my part that it seems like things would have been less clear
or known at the time.

~~~
macintux
I think it was a distribution problem. Now we’re accustomed to being able to
easily find any public information we want, but 35 years ago you had to work
at it.

------
charlesism

        > Jobs personally heads the MacIntosh development team
    

MacIntosh :)

~~~
msla
> MacIntosh :)

They'll probably program it in "C", and then in the 1990s move on to JAVA,
with some software in PERL.

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
I think the Lisa was programmed in Pascal

~~~
msla
I guess most people really can't distinguish between "C" and C.

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
Perhaps you should tell us the difference

------
martyvis
>. To erase obsolete information, for example, the user moves the mouse to
point first at whatever is to be thrown away, and then at an icon in the shape
of a tiny trash can; at the press of a button on the mouse, the information
vanishes

I'm trying to imagine most readers of a 1983 Newsweek magazine would read this
and be turned off from computers for life

------
ma2rten
I was surprised seeing Steve Jobs wearing a suit in that picture.

~~~
cschmidt
He had an Armani suit phase for a number of years.

------
webwielder2
Losing only 5% market share 2 years after early 1980s IBM enters said market
seems pretty good to me, actually.

------
mindgam3
Last line: "But win or lose, the age of "friendly" computing has begun."

Feels bittersweet to recall the age of "friendly" computing in these dark days
of "antisocial" computing.

------
sonnyblarney
Here is the release video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7YkTu5geuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7YkTu5geuc)

------
walrus01
If you convert the retail price of a usable configuration of Lisa into 2019
currency it is pretty nuts.

It debuted at $9995, which is about $26,500 in today's money.

------
usermac
I recall Macs being AppleTalked together to move anything anywhere—it was
magic.

------
netsec_burn
Watching early Apple presentations and modern presentations shows the company
prioritizing sales over innovation. Now we see a phone that is marginally
better than the previous year, with taglines like "the best iPhone ever". The
future is AR and gestures in my opinion, if keyboard input speed is ever an
issue then a glove Swype interface would work. Many smaller companies have
already set the stage nicely, such as the currently monocular Vuzix Blade
([https://www.vuzix.com/products/blade-smart-
glasses](https://www.vuzix.com/products/blade-smart-glasses)).

Edit: Guess HN thinks we're going to be carrying screens in our pockets
forever.

~~~
randomvectors
While we are definitely going to have more AR, I'm not convinced that it's the
future at all. But I guess that's the case with most people and most
technologies until they become ubiquitous.

AR still seems like a solution looking for a problem.

~~~
dclowd9901
Funny, I've felt the same thing about VR. With AR, I can think of a million
practical applications. With any kind of VR that is short of full sensory
immersion, I can't think of a single practical use.

~~~
derefr
> With any kind of VR that is short of full sensory immersion, I can't think
> of a single practical use.

If you've ever had to use a hardware "simulator" to train on Big Hardware like
a plane or submarine, using VR as a replacement is an "obvious win." Rather
than dedicated rooms with all sorts of custom fake hardware that only a few
people can use at a time, you can buy one classroom full of VR equipment, and
then every student can do their simulator runs in parallel, allowing each
student far more total simulator-time. As well, to switch to a simulation of
newer-model hardware, you just need a new piece of VR software, rather than
entire new rooms full of molded plastic and slapshod wiring.

~~~
stordoff
Wouldn't you still need the fake controls? It reduces the problem, but doesn't
get rid of it entirely.

