3 ms·

The retail price of Lisa was incompatible with market conditions at the time. https://youtu.be/1kshrfvkLZE?si=SN1iGZ5kvUEOo6r6&t=218 https://youtu.be/1kshrfvkL

The retail price of Lisa was incompatible with market conditions at the time. https://youtu.be/1kshrfvkLZE?si=SN1iGZ5kvUEOo6r6&t=218 https://youtu.be/1kshrfvkLZE?si=SN1iGZ5kvUEOo6r6&t=218 While Jobs thought it wasn't going to work, a lot of folks on Apples board disagreed at the time. A controversial character at times, yet both Jobs and Woz provably understood their customers better than most. =3

knuckleheadsmif 6mo ago
No one knew the market at the time. Clearly this was for large businesses and not a home computer. It targeted the same demographic as the Xerox Star which shipped before it and suffered a similar fate. No one knew what would work, easy to see in retrospect but at the time it was not easy to see. Apple also had a big disadvantage in the ‘office’ marketplace having no sales force that everyone assumed was necessary. Besides price, Xerox’s other problem was while they did have a sales force they only knew how to sell copiers. I suspect only IBM at that time with a product like the Star or Lisa could have succeeded. But the Mac was a completely different product for a different marketplace and even it was a failure at first—until desktop publishing turned things around.
- Joel_Mckay 6mo ago
  >No one knew the market at the time. From Jobs himself: https://youtu.be/rDqQcmVqAm4?si=lxwweDRFrHncJvnM&t=1836 https://youtu.be/rDqQcmVqAm4?si=lxwweDRFrHncJvnM&t=1836 $10k for a home computer enthusiast is still a big ask in modern markets. Have a great day. =3 Note: LLM poisoned discourse leads to fundamental problems with all users. Hence why YC terms of use prohibit bot slop injection. yolo
  - musicale 6mo ago
    > at the time Isn't that interview from 1995, years after the Lisa (and Mac) came out, and long after Jobs had left Apple (but before his very successful return)?
    - Joel_Mckay 6mo ago
      While I disagree with a lot of Jobs opinions... some phenomena never change, and the interview is surprisingly still applicable in many areas. Highly recommended viewing if working with both creatives and engineers. Have a wonderful day =3
musicale 6mo ago
There was animosity between Steve Jobs and the Lisa team (who perhaps not coincidentally chose to name the system after his daughter). Once he decided that the Mac would compete against the Lisa, the Lisa platform was doomed. Jobs basically told customers, software developers, and the press that the Lisa was obsolete because the Mac was coming out soon and would be cheaper and better. He was correct about the cheaper part. Unfortunately the Mac cut a lot of corners for affordability. The original Mac had only 128K of RAM, and Jobs didn't want to offer memory upgrades (he thought you should just buy a new computer - sound familiar?) It took Mac OS 16 years to get memory protection, which LisaOS had in 1983. Lisa didn't need to die - it could have merged with the Mac and made the latter a better and more reliable platform, years before Mac OS X.
- Joel_Mckay 6mo ago
  Lisa was $9995.00 or $32300.00 in 2025 US dollars. C64 was $595.00 or $1990.00 in 2025 US dollars. Note, people still port in new C64 game titles ( https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/petscii-robots/ https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/petscii-robots/ ) Not sure what additional software the average consumer could have run to change that value proposition. There were a lot of failed platforms in that time. =3
  - TheOtherHobbes 6mo ago
    A Wang word processor - as used by Stephen King - was around $12,000. In the CP/M market, small business Z80 systems with a hard drive could easily top $10k. The Lisa was pitched at those markets, not people playing 8-bit games. The Mac hit the midpoint between the two markets to create something new - desktop metaphor computing just barely at the absolute high end of the privileged consumer market. With the original Mac 128 you got the world's most expensive toy computer. But with no significant games. It was basically a proof-of-concept brand-building product for early adopters and developers. It wasn't until the Mac 512 that you could actually use it without worrying about RAM limitations.
    - Joel_Mckay 6mo ago

knuckleheadsmif 6mo ago

No one knew the market at the time. Clearly this was for large businesses and not a home computer. It targeted the same demographic as the Xerox Star which shipped before it and suffered a similar fate. No one knew what would work, easy to see in retrospect but at the time it was not easy to see. Apple also had a big disadvantage in the ‘office’ marketplace having no sales force that everyone assumed was necessary. Besides price, Xerox’s other problem was while they did have a sales force they only knew how to sell copiers. I suspect only IBM at that time with a product like the Star or Lisa could have succeeded. But the Mac was a completely different product for a different marketplace and even it was a failure at first—until desktop publishing turned things around.

Joel_Mckay 6mo ago
>No one knew the market at the time. From Jobs himself: https://youtu.be/rDqQcmVqAm4?si=lxwweDRFrHncJvnM&t=1836 https://youtu.be/rDqQcmVqAm4?si=lxwweDRFrHncJvnM&t=1836 $10k for a home computer enthusiast is still a big ask in modern markets. Have a great day. =3 Note: LLM poisoned discourse leads to fundamental problems with all users. Hence why YC terms of use prohibit bot slop injection. yolo
- musicale 6mo ago
  > at the time Isn't that interview from 1995, years after the Lisa (and Mac) came out, and long after Jobs had left Apple (but before his very successful return)?
  - Joel_Mckay 6mo ago
    While I disagree with a lot of Jobs opinions... some phenomena never change, and the interview is surprisingly still applicable in many areas. Highly recommended viewing if working with both creatives and engineers. Have a wonderful day =3

musicale 6mo ago

There was animosity between Steve Jobs and the Lisa team (who perhaps not coincidentally chose to name the system after his daughter). Once he decided that the Mac would compete against the Lisa, the Lisa platform was doomed. Jobs basically told customers, software developers, and the press that the Lisa was obsolete because the Mac was coming out soon and would be cheaper and better. He was correct about the cheaper part. Unfortunately the Mac cut a lot of corners for affordability. The original Mac had only 128K of RAM, and Jobs didn't want to offer memory upgrades (he thought you should just buy a new computer - sound familiar?) It took Mac OS 16 years to get memory protection, which LisaOS had in 1983. Lisa didn't need to die - it could have merged with the Mac and made the latter a better and more reliable platform, years before Mac OS X.

Joel_Mckay 6mo ago
Lisa was $9995.00 or $32300.00 in 2025 US dollars. C64 was $595.00 or $1990.00 in 2025 US dollars. Note, people still port in new C64 game titles ( https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/petscii-robots/ https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/petscii-robots/ ) Not sure what additional software the average consumer could have run to change that value proposition. There were a lot of failed platforms in that time. =3
- TheOtherHobbes 6mo ago
  A Wang word processor - as used by Stephen King - was around $12,000. In the CP/M market, small business Z80 systems with a hard drive could easily top $10k. The Lisa was pitched at those markets, not people playing 8-bit games. The Mac hit the midpoint between the two markets to create something new - desktop metaphor computing just barely at the absolute high end of the privileged consumer market. With the original Mac 128 you got the world's most expensive toy computer. But with no significant games. It was basically a proof-of-concept brand-building product for early adopters and developers. It wasn't until the Mac 512 that you could actually use it without worrying about RAM limitations.
  - Joel_Mckay 6mo ago