In 1978, Apple began to develop and design a computer called Apple Lisa. Apple Lisa was a desktop computer. In 1983, it was released as a personal computers to help business users. The computer was sold for $10, 000 when released. Its hard drive was low performance with a defaulted floppy disk. Only 100, 000 units of Apple Lisa sold. Seeing this situation Steve Jobs released Macintosh to overcome the shortcomings of Apple Lisa. Various versions of the computer were released. The final version was Macintosh XL. To know more about Apple Lisa read below to learn facts about the Apple Lisa.

Meaning of Lisa    

Lisa is probably a common name. But Apple found interest in that name and why it named its product Lisa. Officially the word Lisa stands for “Logical Integrated Software Architecture”. The name of the co-founder of Apple is also Lisa – Steve Jobs daughter.

GUI Based

The Apple Lisa was the first commercial computer which had Graphical User Interface (GUI). It also had a mouse to navigate on the screen. Before Apple Lisa all the computers operate with commands means they were text based.

Did Apple introduce Lisa to use GUI?

Well, it is a misconception that Apple introduced Lisa to use GUI. The company had already used Graphical User Interface in their Xerox computer which was released in 1973.

Price of Apple Lisa Today

If Apple Lisa were introduced in today’s world then its price would be quite high. The product would cost $25, 000.

Why did Steve Jobs leave the Lisa Project?

Steve Jobs left the Apple Lisa project because he had another project to work upon. After seeing so much faults in Lisa Steve started working on Macintosh in 1980. Steve pushed Macintosh to improve the deficiencies of Apple Lisa.

Apple Lisa’s CPU  

It had a Motorola 68000 CPU. The PC had 5 MHz clock rate and RAM of 1 MB (means 8 GB).

Twiggy

The two disk drives of the computer were known as twiggy. The two floppy disk drives could accompany 5.25 inches disks.

Development cost

It took the company four years to develop Apple Lisa. The cost for creating that product was a whopping $50 million.

Release of Apple Lisa II

Apple Lisa II was released in 1984. The computer didn’t contain the twiggy disks, in fact, the double drives were replaced with SONY micro floppy disks. The computer cost $5, 495 US. It also had expansion slots so upgradation was possible.

Why did the product face commercial failure?

Commercially the product was such a failure that only 100, 000 copies were sold. Customers complained that the system was slow for such a high price. It also had limited applications.

In 1984, the company released Macintosh which was much better than Lisa. After the release of Macintosh, the company made an offer for Lisa XL owners to return their computers and take Macintosh in return by paying $1, 498 more. 

NASA also used the Apple Lisa

NASA also used the computer for its projects but the biggest consumer faced problems when the product discontinued.

Release in Different Countries

Apple Lisa was also introduced in countries other than the United States. Different languages such as German, Italian, Spanish, Scandinavian and French were also supported.

Why was it discontinued?

In 1986, the Apple Lisa was finally discontinued because of poor sale. At that time another product of company was in market which had good sale of 70, 000 unites in just three months.