Lisa

My dad started working as a manufacturer’s representative in Decatur in 1975 or thereabouts.  We lived in Anniston at the time.  Most weeks (when he wasn’t traveling to customer or principal sites), what he did was drive up Tuesday morning and come home Thursday night.   He stayed with my uncle (just about four miles south of where I’m sitting right now, actually).  That gave him three days in the office in Decatur, and he worked from his home office on Monday and Friday.

Dad’s office was a heavy Apple /// zone—something I’ve indirectly mentioned before.  One Thursday night, he came home abuzz about Lisa.  Lisa wasn’t a who, but a what—the forthcoming Apple computer.  Though it wasn’t a direct architectural ancestor of the Macintosh, it was definitely in the same spiritual realm:  GUI, mouse, integrated monitor, and the like.

As cool as it was, Lisa had some drawbacks.  For one thing, it could be a bit slower at routine tasks than the IBM offerings of the day.  But what really doomed it was the price.  Lisa was $9,995 in January 1983.  (That’s about $21,000 today.)  Dad’s office never got one; they stayed with the ///s until the Macintosh arrived.

I happened upon a Lisa site several weeks ago here.  It’s entertaining and informative.  The thing I thought neatest about it, though, was that the site is hosted on Lisa 2 computers!

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2 thoughts on “Lisa”

  1. Wow. That’s crazy wild. And a really cool testament to MACs that’s for sure!! I found an only mac on the curb about 5 months ago – I literally slammed on the breaks and picked it up off the curb only to find the hard drive was missing….
    That was a bit of a bummer. I was all set to track down some cool old games. I’ve so been wanting to find the original Oregon Trail that I played in grade school off of huge floppies…on an apple

    Reply

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