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The Birth of the Apple Lisa

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the helluva-contraction-you-got-here dept.

Ton writes "People think Apple stole the GUI from Xerox, but it's much more subtle than that. Braeburn has posted a story about the development and birth of the Apple Lisa, the first commercial computer with a graphical interface. More on this subject at Andy Hertzfeld's (one of the original developers of the Mac) site Folkore.org."

2 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. Lisa Cut Apple's Throat by Bullfish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While the machine and software were excellent for the time, it was Apple's boneheaded discontinuation and non-support of the Lisa that made Microsoft the company it is today and sent Apple into the corporate wasteland. I know more than one company that were sold on Lisa, bought is and deployed it. Then, they were told it was the end of the line - zip for you, nada. Had the knuckleheads at Apple even bothered to offer a discount on Macs to corporate Lisa buyers things might have been different. Instead, they got nothing so they shunned Apple. The instead bought MS and when Windows came out they never looked back. Thier employees cut their teeth on Windows machines, and then bought them for home where their kids got ahold of them. The rest is history. Yes, Apple sold a lot to schools, but home is where the fun is and most use came. It's been a Wintel world ever since. Since then, Apple has only gained among niche users in desktop publishing and more recently on media development. I don't count iPod as computer hardware. It is a straight consumer product. Had Apple behaved differently, the PC world could have been very different.

  2. Don't quote history you don't actually know by TheAncientHacker · · Score: 5, Informative
    Actually, 80386 support in Windows started with Windows/386 2.10 in 1988 but why mess up a mythology with something as messy as facts.

    Windows 3.0 users did NOT "need to upgrade" to intel 386 based machines (which were several years old by then - not NEW as you state) because Windows 3.0 in 1990 supported 3 modes.
    1. Real mode (which ran on just about anything x86 available)
    2. Standard mode (which required an 80286 or above processor)
    3. 386 Enhanced mode (which, obviously, needed a 386 to run) and took advantage of all those "Advanced CPU" features you claim weren't supported in Windows until five years and 3 versions later.
    Really, if you're going to make it up as you go along, let people know it's just fictional ranting.