1983- Lisa II
1983- In 1979, Apple had seen a need to complete the Apple II series. After a visit to the Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) where he saw lots of new technologies (Ethernet network, GUI, OOP & Laser Printers), Steve Jobs (then chairman of Apple) decided to launch a graphical computer. After lots of work (and two rejected prototypes along the way), the Lisa was revealed in January 1983.
Lisa was the original code-name. Supposedly, the Lisa was named after Steve Jobs' eldest daughter, Lisa Nicole. The Lisa project cost over $50 million and was the result of more than 200 person-years of research and development. It was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. It was not however the first personal computer to use a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Several Xerox systems developped in Palo Alto, utilized the STAR operating system. STAR contained a very innovative icon-based interface as well as a built-in word processor and calculator. Contrary to the "legend", Lisa was not the ancestor of the Macintosh. Lisa and Macintosh were two distinct projects. The original Lisa couldn't use Macintosh programs and Macintosh couldn't run Lisa software. The LISA OS (Office System) was a true preemptive multitasking operating system.
But, because of its very high price ($9,999.99 USD in 1983!) and because of competition with the Macintosh, the Lisa was one of Apple's biggest flops (alongside the Apple 3 and the Newton!). A new version of the Lisa was presented in January 1984, the Lisa 2. It had virtually same features but used a 3.5" 800 KB floppy drive instead of the old 5.25" "twiggy" floppy drives.
Three versions of the Lisa 2 were successively released:
- Lisa 2 basic version which had rather less memory (512 KB instead of 1 MB) and storage capability than the first Lisa,
- Lisa 2/5, the nearest to the Lisa 1 at approx. half the original price, was sold with a 5 MB 'Profile' hard disk unit,
- Lisa 2/10, which offered up to 10 MB of storage on an internal hard-disk.