Apple Lisa

Lisa is a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19, 1983. It is one of the first personal computers to present a graphical user interface (GUI) in a machine aimed at individual business users. Its development began in 1978. It underwent many changes before shipping at with a five-megabyte hard drive. It was affected by its high price, insufficient software, unreliable floppy disks, and the imminent release of the cheaper and faster Macintosh. Only 10,000 were sold in two years. Considered a commercial failure (albeit one with technical acclaim), Lisa introduced a number of advanced features that reappeared on the Macintosh and eventually IBM PC compatibles. Among them is an operating system with protected memory and a document-oriented workflow. The hardware was more advanced overall than the forthcoming Macintosh 128K; the Lisa included hard disk drive support, capacity for up to 2 megabytes (MB) of random-access memory (RAM), expansion slots, and a larger, higher-resolution display. The complexity of the Lisa operating system and its associated programs (most notably its office suite), as well as the ad hoc protected memory implementation (due to the lack of a Motorola MMU), placed a high demand on the CPU and, to some extent, the storage system. As a result of cost-cutting measures designed to bring it more into the consumer market, advanced software, and factors such as the delayed availability of the 68000 and its impact on the design process, many felt that the Lisa's user experience was sluggish overall. The workstation-tier price (albeit at the low end of the spectrum at the time) and lack of a technical software application library made it a difficult sell for much of the technical workstation market. Compounding matters, the runaway success of the IBM PC and Apple's decision to compete with itself, mainly via the lower-cost Macintosh, were further impediments to its acceptance.