I worked for Apple for six years (1980 to 1986). My opinion is that
Apple screwed up Apple, not just the Lisa. I won't go into technical
development as people enjoy so much misinformation about where the
technology was "stolen" for Lisa (it was not). What I do remember was
that the Apple // was successful because of how open it was and how
many companies and individuals developed products for it. Remember,
Microsoft's first major seller was the Gold Card for the Apple //. Of
course, the famous Minnesota school purchase didn't hurt.
Apple changed gears and thought that if they supplied everything: CPU,
peripherals, and software that it would lock up the market and not
leave a dime on the table. They would get all the money the developers
were getting on the Apple //. So the Apple /// and Lisa cut out the
developers that made the Apple // such a success (remember Visacalc?)
and only allowed only a select few work with prototypes. Those that
were cut out went to the IBM PC and we know how that turned out.
Unfortunately, I am an IT (MIS at the time) geek and when we found out
plans for the Lisa were to bypass the Fortune 500 IT departments, we
sent Phil Dixon to explain how capital purchases are made by these
companies and how nobody makes a major computer purchase without
support. We (Apple MIS) supported many Apple users as they used our
own product as dumb and not so dumb terminals. We pointed out how many
people were using dumb terminals in major corporations. These were
attached to mainframes and that is where the corporate data is kept.
LisaTerminal was not going to connect to an IBM 370/168 running HASP
and MVS (remember the time) without a lot of help. If doing a few
spreadsheets and putting it in a word processing document is all a user
wanted to do, then the Apple /// was a better answer.
After laughing at Phil, they announced internally a DEC Basic
interpreter for Lisa. This was done to keep Apple's MIS happy as we
were running the company on PDP 11/70's at the time. I am sure you
programmer types realize how stupid that was. Lisa was introduced with
512K or 1MB of memory and DEC Basic could only address 62K plus 2K for
system overhead for a total of 64K. John Couch, who authorized it, was
so surprised to find this out after it was done. No one I knew on the
Lisa team ever thought about selling Lisa to anyone other than
individuals. For God's sake, it was $10,000 and no one was making
peripherals or creating software at its launch. There were damn few
two years later as Apple had cut so many developers.
These people really thought it would work like the Apple //. People
would just buy this 50 pound machine for $10,000 and bring it to work
and Lisa would take over the business world by revolution (one person
at a time). This is my short cut at it. I really don't have the
energy to relive the past. Woz is a great human being. The other guy
is not.
Please don't get me started on the Apple ///
Jerry
On Aug 26, 2005, at 10:43 AM, Nord, Al wrote:
If Apple cared that much about the Lisa computers they and Sun Data
would not have hired bulldozers to drive over piles of Lisa computers
in
a landfill in Logan Utah many years ago. I have a picture that was in
the local paper there. I went to the Apple authorized Lisa repair
school
in Minneapolis Minnesota before the Lisa's introduction. Both the class
and I sat is awe watching the instructor operate the Lisa in the
classroom. During the class demo he had a software glitch and was able
to by pressing a sequence of keyswitches bring the Lisa program into
monitor and retype the software command. I told Larry Pina about that
experience before Larry wrote his book on the MacIntosh computer
series.
Apple dropped the ball on the Lisa and part of the problem was the high
cost of any of the Lisa software and having their serial number stored
in a prom on the logic board to prevent illegal copying of the
software.
I repaired one Lisa and forgot about swapping that prom and had to get
Apple to return the prom off of the board. The customers Lisa sat in my
repair area for 2 weeks while waiting for that prom. You think the
customer was happy about that ? Nope. When the Mac plus was introduced
that was the death of the Lisa I am sure. I attended an Apple dealers
school again in Minneapolis and was able to buy a brand new Mac Plus
for
$1000.00 and a Imagewriter 2 for $500.00 direct from Apple shipped to
my
door. I purchased a single 1 meg simm to upgrade my Mac's memory for
$85.00. My Mac Plus ran circles around the Lisa. When I upgraded to the
$2500.00 PowerMac 6100 I upgraded that memory with 2 16 meg ram chips
for $995.00 from the Chip Merchant. Now you can by the new Mac for
under $500.00 Progress...
Al
-----Original Message-----
From: LisaList [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 9:07 AM
To: LisaList
Subject: Lisa tech preservation, Alice
There really should be some sort of non-profit organization designed to
preserve the Lisa legacy. Lisa stuff is being scattered on Ebay and
ends
up in various collections or thrown out. Private collections are OK,
but
it really would be valuable for there to be a museum or some sort of
central repository for Lisa tech.
Apple should do more in this area. The company prides itself on
innovation, but seems to be content to leave much of its innovation to
obscurity, even loss. Maybe there's a secret cache of Apple history
somewhere? Is there a reason why Apple would be unwise to open the
source code for Lisa's software?
The Mac is pretty well-covered with sites like folklore.org. The Lisa
is
usually treated as an after-thought, something to mention while writing
about the Mac.
The original version of Alice was written for the Lisa. Where is it?
Apple's first game was actually a Lisa program. While it wasn't
produced
for sale, it's hardly unimportant. It would be really cool to see a
game
running on a Lisa, even if it's slow. I hazily recall that Steve Capps
was the person who made the game. I wrote to the guy (Bruce Horn?) who
runs folklore.org and he gave me Capps' e-mail, but I didn't get a
response when I asked about Alice.
Hi
Does anyone have Lisa Office System source listings?
I'm trying to find the source listing to such programs as the Lisa
Desktop Manager ("Lisa Finder" in Mac parlance) or any of the Lisa
applications such as LisaWrite.
Paper listings are fine. I just want to see how these programs were
built internally.
I think it would be a shame if such sources disappered since they were
very innovative.
FYI, I have the source for the Lisa boot ROM and the Lisa programmer's
ToolKit.
- David Craig
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