Apple To Release Lisa OS For Free As Open Source In 2018 (iphoneincanada.ca)
New submitter Jose Deras writes: Nearly 35 years ago, Apple released its first computer with a graphical user interface, called the Lisa. Starting next year, the Computer History Museum will release the Apple Lisa OS for free as an open-source project. According to a new report from Business Insider, the Computer History Museum will release the code behind the Apple Lisa operating system for free as open source, for anyone to try and tinker with. The news was announced via the LisaList mailing list for Lisa enthusiasts.
"While Steve Jobs didn't create the Lisa, he was instrumental in its development. It was Jobs who convinced the legendary Xerox PARC lab to let the Apple Lisa team visit and play with its prototypes for graphical user interfaces," reads the report. "And while Apple at the time said that Lisa stood for 'Local Integrated System Architecture,' Jobs would later claim to biographer Walter Isaacson that the machine was actually named for his oldest daughter, Lisa Nicole Brennan-Jobs." "Then-Apple CEO John Sculley had Jobs removed from the Lisa project, which kicked off years-long animosity between the two," continues the report. "Ultimately, a boardroom brawl would result in Jobs quitting in a huff to start his own company, NeXT Computer. Apple would go on to buy NeXT in 1996, bringing Jobs back into the fold. By 1997, Jobs had become CEO of Apple, leading the company to its present status as the most valuable in the world."
"While Steve Jobs didn't create the Lisa, he was instrumental in its development. It was Jobs who convinced the legendary Xerox PARC lab to let the Apple Lisa team visit and play with its prototypes for graphical user interfaces," reads the report. "And while Apple at the time said that Lisa stood for 'Local Integrated System Architecture,' Jobs would later claim to biographer Walter Isaacson that the machine was actually named for his oldest daughter, Lisa Nicole Brennan-Jobs." "Then-Apple CEO John Sculley had Jobs removed from the Lisa project, which kicked off years-long animosity between the two," continues the report. "Ultimately, a boardroom brawl would result in Jobs quitting in a huff to start his own company, NeXT Computer. Apple would go on to buy NeXT in 1996, bringing Jobs back into the fold. By 1997, Jobs had become CEO of Apple, leading the company to its present status as the most valuable in the world."
I doubt if anyone is going to use it on 68K hardware. So, what are we supposed to do with it? I have a Mac SE, but I don't think it would operate long enough any more to do a conversion to that hardware. Maybe someone will convert it to run on x86 hardware.
An alternative to Gnome3 on Ubuntu.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
given that most of this post talks about maketing man saint jobs, while saying he did not "create" it, and was removed from project, while giving zero info on people who were really developing it, i don't think anyone should care.
The very first computer I ever bought was Macintosh XL -- a Lisa that was loaded with a (lousy) emulation of the Macintosh.
Before buying it I had a long list of questions (more than a dozen) that I took to the Apple store and posited to the top tech guy there - since I had lots of concerns about whether this was functionally equivalent to the Macintosh.
I bought it after getting his answers, every one of which was wrong.
It was a flakey system that crashed constantly doing ordinary tasks. I might have kept it if they had released the Lisa software and I could run it as a Lisa -- at that time they had stopped selling the Lisa so denying the ability to run the OS on the Mac XL did not advantage Apple in any way.
Instead I sold it to a guy who had a start-up turning Mac XL/Lisas into engineering workstations so that I could buy a real Macintosh (512). I still have that and it boots, but is not valuable as a collector's item since I went through a couple of rounds of board and case mods to upgrade it.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Might work fine on Raspberry Pi 3
There's no particular reason both claims couldn't be true. Jobs could have made a "retronym" of his daughter's name and used that to sell the name to marketing. A lot of nominal acronyms appear to actually be retronyms.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
if it ran on x86
So much history (and transition of Apple as a company) involved in Lisa... /// SOS was designed and built by software professionals (Tom Root, Bob Etheredge, and many more), but not at all the scope of Lisa which went from the core OS out to the document model
/// worlds of that time, but which has come to define the current Apple.
/// team as well. At the time, the biggest knock both these projects took was not matching the (incredible for the time) sales volume of the Apple ][.
68k with custom memory map, two very funky disk interfaces (twiggy and pippin), big bitmapped display (rectangular, not square like the Macintosh)
As much as possible written in Pascal, designed and documented!
I'll call it the first large scale Apple project designed and built by engineers, particularly software engineers (the design part is important)
Yes, Apple
Such incredible effort went into Lisa -- the origins of Quickdraw graphics (Atkinson), modeless text editing (Tesler), software design on a large scale, a document model rather than an app-centric model
Of course some issues (problems), such as applications software tied to the serial number of the machine, not enough RAM, not enough disk space, not enough CPU horsepower
And even though many of the foundations for the Macintosh came from Lisa (mouse, bitmapped screen, Quickdraw, overall engineering rigor), with very few exceptions, if you worked on Lisa, Steve considered you to be second rate (a view not shared by most of engineering)
Lisa also lead the way in other ways -- the locked-down, invitation only secrecy and internal isolation that was anathema to the Apple ][ and Apple
Lisa was an amazing development, particularly at that time in Apple's history. I have so much respect for those people, and for the Apple
I saw this happen from across the street in Bandley 3... An incredible time at Apple, and in the computer racket.
(Apple Employee 1xxx)
While Steve Jobs didn't create the Lisa, he was instrumental in its development...
I don't think Jobs did *any* significant programming at Apple, if he did any at all. Jobs was the "visionary".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
There's no particular reason both claims couldn't be true. Jobs could have made a "retronym" of his daughter's name and used that to sell the name to marketing. A lot of nominal acronyms appear to actually be retronyms.
Everybody knew that Jobs had an alleged daughter named Lisa that he was denying paternity of. Nobody really thought it stood for "Local Integrated System Architecture", but that was the official story and there was no proof to contradict it. He only admitted it later to his biographer, of course it was named after this daughter. I don't think retronym is appropriate because nothing was done retroactively, it was named after his daughter from the start, he lied about that from the very beginning and most people understood he was lying.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Giving that code and an emulator as a gift is a classy move. Now let's get an iOS 1.0 hardware emulator and let us archive the original App Store games. That history is being lost by the day.
Early encryption keys please.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Be nice if NeXT OS was released as well especially since the company no longer exists.
I'd much rather they release the source to all the Apple ][ & // lines. Apple ][, ][+, //e, //e Platinum, //c , //c Plus, and //GS. And anything else I missed.
They can keep the source to the Apple ///. :)
Yeah its like Git is really just Linus's name for Andrew Tridgell.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Isn't Apple afraid that Microsoft will steal that QuickDraw code?
Oh, wait...
I heard that it was retroactively called "Let's Invent Some Acronym".
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Ah, come on. There are plenty of Linux distributions without systemd and there are roughly one zillion Linux windows managers for X11. I use Fluxbox myself because it does everything I need, but there are lots of alternatives that aren't Gnome (Yechh), KDE or Xfce.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
How did they become the owner? When?
Linus said he liked naming his software after himself, hence Linux and Git.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Jobs had become CEO of Apple, leading the company to its present status as the most valuable in the world."
Jobs had become CEO of Apple, leading the company to its present status as the most valuable in the world after begging Bill Gates for the money to make payroll.
There...I fixed that for you.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock