<Dead Media Working Note 43.1> on Landfilled Lisas

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Mon Aug 30 20:48:20 1999

This is an antique computer related note from the Dead Media mailing list.

- John

>Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 19:39:44 -0500
>To: Dead Media List <dead-media_at_fringeware.com>
>From: Richard Kadrey <kadrey_at_sirius.com>
>Reply-To: <kadrey_at_sirius.com>
>Subject: <Dead Media Working Note 43.1>
>
>Dead medium: the Apple Lisa
>
>From: Bruce Sterling (bruces_at_well.com)
>
>Source: American Heritage of Invention and Technology magazine, Summer
>1999, Vol 15 Number 1, page 64, article by Tim Hall
>
>"Poor Little Lisa" by Tim Hall
>
> "One September day in 1989 about 2,700 Apple Lisa computers were
>unceremoniously buried in a landfill in Logan, Utah. In an industry where
>rapid obsolescence is not only the norm but a goal, the mass burial elicited
>few tears from anyone except insiders. Yet this prosaic event put an end to
>perhaps the greatest and most revolutionary failure in the history of
>computing.
>
> "Apple Computer had been founded in Los Altos, California, in 1976. By
>1978 it was enjoying tremendous growth and vying for dominance in the
>nascent home-computer market. The company's newest project, code-named Lisa
>(supposedly after the daughter of Steve Jobs, one of Apple's cofounders),
>was meant to be the successor to the extremely popular Apple II. After Jobs
>visited the Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) twice in
>late 1979, however, those plans changed radically.
>
> "Many essentials of modern computing, including networking and laser
>printers, were developed at PARC. What caught Jobs's fancy was a prototype
>machine named Alto that had an array of features never before seen on a
>computer. Its heart was the Graphical User Interface (GUI). (...)
>
> "Jobs thought Alto was the future of computing, and he reportedly ran
>around the PARC research room saying so. Xerox's brass, however, did not
>share his enthusiasm. Since it would have sold for an estimated $400,000
>per unit, Alto was never meant to be mass-marketed. Xerox considered it an
>unmarketable, if fascinating, anomaly.
>
> "Undeterred, Jobs and his team set about incorporating the spirit of
>Alto's GUI == along with its rodent accessory == into Lisa. After nearly
>200 many-years of work and $50 million, Lisa made her debut on January 19,
>1983. She was a marvel. Directories were represented with line drawings of
>a manila folder, and there was even a little wastebasket for disposing of
>unwanted ones. (...)
>
> "Apple had high hopes for Lisa, but there were problems. First of all,
>there was the price: nearly $10,000. Also, because of the technological
>sophistication and memory requirements of the GUI and the other features
>Apple stuffed into her, the 48-pound Lisa was not only chubby but awkward
>and slow. Faced with mounting competition from cheaper, zippier machines,
>she quickly fell behind. Even the machine's friendly moniker worked against
>it; corporate managers balked at purchasing a computer with a little girl's
>name when they could have a much more impressive-sounding PDP11/45. Jobs
>had estimated that Apple would sell 50,000 Lisas in the first year, but it
>took nearly two years to reach that goal.
>
> "After re-engineering and improvements, a Lisa II was introduced. The
>name was later changed to XL, which insiders joked stood for 'Xtra Lisas' in
>the inventory. Jobs, meanwhile, was working on a secret new machine, one
>that was rumored to be smaller, faster and less than half as expensive as
>Lisa. The rumors only hastened Lisa's demise. Unwanted and unappreciated,
>Lisa was abandoned in the spring of 1985 in favor of Jobs's new computer,
>which was called Macintosh.
>
> "Apple consigned its remaining inventory to Sun Remarketing of Utah,
>which had some success refurbishing and modernizing the Lisas with
>up-to-date technology. But eventually this, too, came to a halt when Apple
>decided to take a tax write-off on its unsold inventory. In September 1989,
>almost a decade after Jobs had first witnessed the Alto in action, the last
>2,700 Lisas were ignominously buried in an unmarked grave, closing the book
>on the first mass-marketed computer to use the standard on which virtually
>all computers would run."
>
>
>
Received on Mon Aug 30 1999 - 20:48:20 BST