The Lisa was Apple’s first pc with a graphical desktop interface, predating the Macintosh by a yr. Now, 40 years later, you possibly can see precisely how the pc labored.
Apple launched the Lisa pc on January 19, 1983, as a high-end workstation pc with a mouse (a brand new idea on the time), a desktop interface, and bundled workplace productiveness software program. It finally wasn’t a profitable product, partially due to the sky-high worth of $9,995 (about $30,000 in 2022 {dollars}), however the Lisa laid the groundwork for the much more successful Macintosh computer that was launched a yr later.
The Pc Historical past Museum has partnered with Apple to launch the supply code for the Lisa’s software program, together with its working system and bundled functions. A lot of the code is written in Pascal, an early programming language courting again to 1970, which was additionally used for a number of the Mac’s early software program. There have already been a couple of fascinating discoveries within the supply code, together with references to a Lisa model called “Pepsi” (which could be the Lisa 2/10), about eleven occurrences of the F-word, and some different entertaining comments.
Lisa’s software program was superior for the time, and never simply because it had a desktop setting in 1983. The Lisa working system supported preemptive multitasking, so one utility crashing wouldn’t deliver down the entire pc — a function that didn’t make it to Mac till the introduction of Mac OS X 10.0 in 2001. It additionally had protected reminiscence and assist for as much as 2 MB RAM. These options slowed down the pc’s 5 MHz Motorola 68000 processor, inflicting the Lisa to really feel gradual even at its greatest.
It’s nice to see the supply code publicly out there, for the reason that Lisa was an necessary milestone within the historical past of computer systems. Perhaps somebody will strive porting Lisa OS to fashionable {hardware} — the yr of Linux Lisa on the desktop may very well be upon us.
Supply: Computer History Museum
