8 ms·

The flop that changed Apple forever [video]

34 points by jdkee 4y ago

joshmanders 4y ago
Nice little video but it's interesting that The Verge is covering a topic that has been talked about extensively just in the what, 2-3 biopics about Steve Jobs alone?
- vuln 4y ago
  Slow news day.
- miguelazo 4y ago
  And apparently this is just a small part of an entire documentary they’re making about the Lisa.
- mepian 4y ago
  Bill Atkinson, one of the key people in both the Lisa and the Macintosh, starred in this video so it's valuable despite covering such a well-trodden topic.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- retrocryptid 4y ago
  Hmm... we've all been pummeled with multiple Jobs biopics. Why not talk about the team that built the Lisa: Couch, Rosing, Tesler, Rothmuller, etc. Joanna Hoffman mentions Jef Raskin briefly in her CHM oral history [ See https://youtu.be/GfS44H4cO10 https://youtu.be/GfS44H4cO10 ], it would also be very cool to hear more about Jef, Trip, etc. as the Mac project is kicking off. I think what I'm saying is Jobs is such a popular figure we tend to forget there were other people involved. And they (especially Tesler) probably did more to shape either the Lisa or the Mac.
teddyh 4y ago
Clickbait rescue: The “flop” is the Apple Lisa.
- mugwumprk 4y ago
  Thank you. Clickbait titles like this are painful.
  - isk517 4y ago
    I can tolerate them on written articles cause I can just speed read to the point but videos are a different story.
    - DerekL 4y ago
      The video has a description that you could read.
- canucker2016 4y ago
  based on the title, I would've buzzed in with "What is the Apple III?" But, the video's preview image gives away the answer...
AlbertCory 4y ago
At least they did mention Engelbart and PARC. Briefly. Atkinson and Herzfeld are not exactly hiding under a rock. I've personally emailed with Herzfeld, recently. Nothing about the Star, which Jobs actually did come to Chicago and see at the intro, in May 1981.
- retrocryptid 4y ago
  Did I miss the reference to Larry Tesler? Seems you would want to mention him as he worked for Engelbart at SRI, with Kay at PARC and later at Apple as the head of UI/UX/HCI for the Lisa.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    And Bob Belleville. I don't actually know how much influence the Xerox guys had over Lisa/Mac. Not much, I'd bet. They were certainly aware of what Star was trying to do, but they probably thought it was a lot of bad ideas :). I guess you could consider that an influence /s
    - retrocryptid 4y ago
      Larry Tesler worked for Engelbart at SRI, Kay at PARC and then John Couch at Apple. He led the system software team and was instrumental in developing the Lisa UI/UX. Xerox guys MOST DEFINITELY had influence over the Lisa in that at least one of them (Tesler) moved from Xerox to Apple to work on it.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > I've personally emailed with Herzfeld, recently. Did you correspond with him, or merely make it into his spam folder? > Nothing about the Star, which Jobs actually did come to Chicago and see at the intro, in May 1981. False. See time index 5:51. Mac development began in the late 1970's, and development was well under way by the time Jobs demoed Xerox Star. The vast majority of inspiration for Mac came from Xerox Alto, not Xerox Star. In fact, little if anything was borrowed from Star for Macintosh.
zwieback 4y ago
I had an Apple ][ in my youth, I still feel that that was the last true Apple. I do admit they did an impressive thing or two in the meantime but nothing compares to the ][
- mepian 4y ago
  I think with HyperCard and the Macintosh II that spirit of early Apple was preserved, well until the later releases of Mac OS X when open standards like OpenGL were de-emphasized and Code Signing became enforced by default.
  - joezydeco 4y ago
    Totally agree. Part of the magic of the Apple ][ was that BASIC was burned into the ROM and ready to go without loading any other software. I always wondered what the Mac would have been like if HyperCard been shipped as an onboard piece of software.
    - retrocryptid 4y ago
      Yup. Built in BASIC was the norm for all those late 70s / early 80s machines. Didn't the first couple of IBM PC models have a cut down ROM BASIC? It's apparently popular to disrespect BASIC now that we have gigahertz 64-bit machines with gigabytes of RAM and terabyte solid state drives on our desktops. But when you think about what you could do on a 6502 machine with a frigging 256 byte stack... hella props for the folk that made that work. But yeah... I think by the mid 80s, most people really just wanted to run a few games, a word processor and maybe a spreadsheet. The idea computer buyers may want to write their own code was fading fast. HyperCard had one or two warts, but it was definitely functional and you could do a lot with a small amount of effort. Also... the way you learned it seemed very exploratory. You had to learn a few basics, but after that it was hard-core experimentation and remixing. I bought an old PowerBook 160 recently explicitly to run MPW and HyperCard. Mostly to remember what the old world was like.
      - joezydeco 4y ago
retrocryptid 4y ago
Also... here's the Kottke post about the video, in case anyone is interested: https://kottke.org/23/04/the-lisa-personal-computer-apples-influential-flop https://kottke.org/23/04/the-lisa-personal-computer-apples-i...
tabtab 4y ago
You can think of Lisa as R&D, for the Mac team borrowed and reworked Lisa ideas to fit them into affordable hardware.
- retrocryptid 4y ago
  I'm curious where you got that idea. The Lisa project started in '78 as an attempt to build an affordable Alto. What they released was similar to the Star in terms of capability, interface and target market (but at about one seventh of the price.) The Mac project started in '80 when Jef Raskin had the idea to build a more "appliance like" and keyboard focused machine based on the 6809. Jobs horned in on the Mac project in early '81 and turned it into a much more expensive device that used features demonstrated by the Star. The two teams were definitely separate and had little day to day communication with each other. If the Mac was a "cost reduced Lisa" there would have been significantly more communication between the teams. And they probably would have said something like "The Mac is a Cost Reduced Lisa" in the Mac Business Plan from '81. Instead the business plan says they're distinct machines with distinct teams, objectives and target markets. [ See https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/102712692.05.01acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/1027... ]
  - UIUC_06 4y ago
    indeed, the Mac building (on Bandley) famously had a "pirate flag" flying over it.
  - tabtab 3y ago
    > The two teams were definitely separate and had little day to day communication with each other. While not tightly intertwined, they studied each others' work, sometimes stealthily.
canucker2016 4y ago
the Apple Lisa wikipedia entry mentions a technical limitation I've never heard about - real time clock has a 4-bit integer for the year. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa#Hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa#Hardware: "The real-time clock uses a 4-bit integer and the base year is defined as 1980; the software won't accept any value below 1981, so the only valid range is 1981–1995.[18] The real-time clock depends on a 4 x AA-cell NiCd pack of batteries that only lasts for a few hours when main power is not present. Prone to failure over time, the battery packs could leak corrosive alkaline electrolyte and ruin the circuit boards"

34 points by jdkee 4y ago

Nice little video but it's interesting that The Verge is covering a topic that has been talked about extensively just in the what, 2-3 biopics about Steve Jobs alone?

vuln 4y ago
Slow news day.
miguelazo 4y ago
And apparently this is just a small part of an entire documentary they’re making about the Lisa.
mepian 4y ago
Bill Atkinson, one of the key people in both the Lisa and the Macintosh, starred in this video so it's valuable despite covering such a well-trodden topic.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
retrocryptid 4y ago
Hmm... we've all been pummeled with multiple Jobs biopics. Why not talk about the team that built the Lisa: Couch, Rosing, Tesler, Rothmuller, etc. Joanna Hoffman mentions Jef Raskin briefly in her CHM oral history [ See https://youtu.be/GfS44H4cO10 https://youtu.be/GfS44H4cO10 ], it would also be very cool to hear more about Jef, Trip, etc. as the Mac project is kicking off. I think what I'm saying is Jobs is such a popular figure we tend to forget there were other people involved. And they (especially Tesler) probably did more to shape either the Lisa or the Mac.

teddyh 4y ago

Clickbait rescue: The “flop” is the Apple Lisa.

mugwumprk 4y ago
Thank you. Clickbait titles like this are painful.
- isk517 4y ago
  I can tolerate them on written articles cause I can just speed read to the point but videos are a different story.
  - DerekL 4y ago
    The video has a description that you could read.
canucker2016 4y ago
based on the title, I would've buzzed in with "What is the Apple III?" But, the video's preview image gives away the answer...

AlbertCory 4y ago

At least they did mention Engelbart and PARC. Briefly. Atkinson and Herzfeld are not exactly hiding under a rock. I've personally emailed with Herzfeld, recently. Nothing about the Star, which Jobs actually did come to Chicago and see at the intro, in May 1981.

retrocryptid 4y ago
Did I miss the reference to Larry Tesler? Seems you would want to mention him as he worked for Engelbart at SRI, with Kay at PARC and later at Apple as the head of UI/UX/HCI for the Lisa.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  And Bob Belleville. I don't actually know how much influence the Xerox guys had over Lisa/Mac. Not much, I'd bet. They were certainly aware of what Star was trying to do, but they probably thought it was a lot of bad ideas :). I guess you could consider that an influence /s
  - retrocryptid 4y ago
    Larry Tesler worked for Engelbart at SRI, Kay at PARC and then John Couch at Apple. He led the system software team and was instrumental in developing the Lisa UI/UX. Xerox guys MOST DEFINITELY had influence over the Lisa in that at least one of them (Tesler) moved from Xerox to Apple to work on it.
Maursault 4y ago
> I've personally emailed with Herzfeld, recently. Did you correspond with him, or merely make it into his spam folder? > Nothing about the Star, which Jobs actually did come to Chicago and see at the intro, in May 1981. False. See time index 5:51. Mac development began in the late 1970's, and development was well under way by the time Jobs demoed Xerox Star. The vast majority of inspiration for Mac came from Xerox Alto, not Xerox Star. In fact, little if anything was borrowed from Star for Macintosh.

zwieback 4y ago

I had an Apple ][ in my youth, I still feel that that was the last true Apple. I do admit they did an impressive thing or two in the meantime but nothing compares to the ][

mepian 4y ago
I think with HyperCard and the Macintosh II that spirit of early Apple was preserved, well until the later releases of Mac OS X when open standards like OpenGL were de-emphasized and Code Signing became enforced by default.
- joezydeco 4y ago
  Totally agree. Part of the magic of the Apple ][ was that BASIC was burned into the ROM and ready to go without loading any other software. I always wondered what the Mac would have been like if HyperCard been shipped as an onboard piece of software.
  - retrocryptid 4y ago
    Yup. Built in BASIC was the norm for all those late 70s / early 80s machines. Didn't the first couple of IBM PC models have a cut down ROM BASIC? It's apparently popular to disrespect BASIC now that we have gigahertz 64-bit machines with gigabytes of RAM and terabyte solid state drives on our desktops. But when you think about what you could do on a 6502 machine with a frigging 256 byte stack... hella props for the folk that made that work. But yeah... I think by the mid 80s, most people really just wanted to run a few games, a word processor and maybe a spreadsheet. The idea computer buyers may want to write their own code was fading fast. HyperCard had one or two warts, but it was definitely functional and you could do a lot with a small amount of effort. Also... the way you learned it seemed very exploratory. You had to learn a few basics, but after that it was hard-core experimentation and remixing. I bought an old PowerBook 160 recently explicitly to run MPW and HyperCard. Mostly to remember what the old world was like.
    - joezydeco 4y ago

retrocryptid 4y ago

Also... here's the Kottke post about the video, in case anyone is interested: https://kottke.org/23/04/the-lisa-personal-computer-apples-influential-flop https://kottke.org/23/04/the-lisa-personal-computer-apples-i...

tabtab 4y ago

You can think of Lisa as R&D, for the Mac team borrowed and reworked Lisa ideas to fit them into affordable hardware.

retrocryptid 4y ago
I'm curious where you got that idea. The Lisa project started in '78 as an attempt to build an affordable Alto. What they released was similar to the Star in terms of capability, interface and target market (but at about one seventh of the price.) The Mac project started in '80 when Jef Raskin had the idea to build a more "appliance like" and keyboard focused machine based on the 6809. Jobs horned in on the Mac project in early '81 and turned it into a much more expensive device that used features demonstrated by the Star. The two teams were definitely separate and had little day to day communication with each other. If the Mac was a "cost reduced Lisa" there would have been significantly more communication between the teams. And they probably would have said something like "The Mac is a Cost Reduced Lisa" in the Mac Business Plan from '81. Instead the business plan says they're distinct machines with distinct teams, objectives and target markets. [ See https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/102712692.05.01acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/1027... ]
- UIUC_06 4y ago
  indeed, the Mac building (on Bandley) famously had a "pirate flag" flying over it.
- tabtab 3y ago
  > The two teams were definitely separate and had little day to day communication with each other. While not tightly intertwined, they studied each others' work, sometimes stealthily.

canucker2016 4y ago

the Apple Lisa wikipedia entry mentions a technical limitation I've never heard about - real time clock has a 4-bit integer for the year. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa#Hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa#Hardware: "The real-time clock uses a 4-bit integer and the base year is defined as 1980; the software won't accept any value below 1981, so the only valid range is 1981–1995.[18] The real-time clock depends on a 4 x AA-cell NiCd pack of batteries that only lasts for a few hours when main power is not present. Prone to failure over time, the battery packs could leak corrosive alkaline electrolyte and ruin the circuit boards"