On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 12:53 PM Murray McCullough via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> The Apple Mac, 40 years old, came from Xerox PARC’s GUI and Apple’s LISA. > Not sure that it really changed computing though! Financially it didn't > help Apple until after 1997 and Gate's investment. > I struggle with the whole "birth of the Mac" story. It starts with the "Jobs visit to Parc" story which is often told as if he single handedly made off with Xerox's crown jewels, ignoring the fact that lots of people had been given prior demos of the Smalltalk 76 and 78 systems. Certainly he had the vision to appreciate what he saw and the ability to capitalize on it, but it was hardly the "making off with a secret" it's claimed to be. Then there is the whole "Lisa was a failure story. The Mac (developed at significant cost largely because Jobs felt slighted) launched for I believe $2,495 with a 9" screen, 128k RAM, minimal software and a single tasking OS). At the same time the Lisa 2/5 was released at $3495 with a 12" screen, 512k RAM and a true preemptive multitasking OS. The 128K of the Mac was so limiting that a few months later they had to shortly after launch the Fat Mac (512K) at $2,795 In the mid 90s Mac's were still crippled by the original Mac OS design. Badly behaving apps crashing the entire system was common. Multiple projects to design a replacement had failed. Sure he turned it all around with the Next acquisition and the $2.9 trillion rest is history but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they'd somehow been able to stop Jobs and instead focus on the Lisa.
