January 19, 1983: Apple, Inc. announces the creation of a personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI). Lisa began as LISA, an acronym for Logical Integrated Software Architecture. Steve Jobs, originally on the development team, has a daughter named Lisa and it may be a backronym in her honor instead. The project began in 1978 and was conceived as a way to improve business computing. The computer was finally introduced after Jobs had been removed to the Macintosh project, but the name stuck.
The Lisa computer was the first commercial personal computer to have a GUI and a mouse. The "brains" of the computer was a Motorola 68000 CPU with a 5 MHz clock speed and 1 MB RAM. There were two floppy disk Apple FireWare drives which read 5 ¼ inch double sided disks with a capacity of 871 kb (kilobytes or 0.85% of 1 MB) of data. The floppy disk drive was modified a year later. Optional external drives were available and cold hold 5 MB of data. Eventually 10 MB external drives were offered.
The cost of the original Lisa computer was $9,995 or about $22,200 in 2009 currency. The computer underwent hardware revisions and by January 1984 Lisa 2 was on the market for less than half the price. The software included an operating system capable of multitasking and with virtual memory. Files were organized in hierarchical directories and the computer came loaded with Lisa Office System, a suite of programs with text, image, spreadsheet, and database capabilities. Lisa was not commercially successful but did have historical significance.
Today, Steve Jobs is Chairman and CEO of Apple, Inc. running the company with more than $48 billion in revenues for 2008. Lisa gave way to Macintosh using the Mac OS. Today, Apple markets a host of products including the iPod and iPhone along with a range of desktop and laptop computers for personal and business use. They claim the highest brand and repurchase loyalty of any computer manufacturer. The company logo began with Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree and moved, in 1976, to the multicolored striped apple with a bite out of the side. Since 1998, the apple has been in silhouette.
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"He got me invested in some kinda fruit company." - Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump
"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." - Steve Jobs
"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." - Steve Jobs
"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." - Steve Jobs
Comments
You find the most interesting and lesser known "days".
Readers might be interested in Albuquerque Museum's wonderful interactive exhibit StartUp -- it's all about the beginnings of the technology revolution. Lots of stuff donated by Apple rival Microsoft - but early Apples there as well.
Those old computers were amazing. We still have an old Atari computer in the family.
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