"Thirty years ago, Apple unveiled the Apple Lisa, a pioneering machine that introduced the mouse-driven graphical user interface to a wide audience and opened a new chapter in personal computer history. The Mac borrowed heavily from the Lisa, and the Mac went on to great things while the Lisa floundered. As a result, it's tempting to treat the Lisa as merely a footnote in the history of Apple. But as anyone who has used a real Lisa knows, Apple's first GUI-based computer played host to many distinctive quirks and traits that tend to get overlooked in the history books. The machine's 30th anniversary is as good a time as any to take a look at a handful of both odd and useful features that truly made the Lisa something unique." A bit lacking in the meat department, but still fun.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2011-05-12
Thanks for the interesting links!
I'm an Apple person and I think these old 80's Macs are cute, but I would never have bought one back then and if I had I'm pretty sure to have been disappointed. The Atari ST and Amiga were much more powerful and well, more fun. I guess even an Apple 2 or Commodore 64 was more fun. More software, both serious and games. Even the ZX Spectrum had better looking games.
It's odd the Mac was marketed as the computer for the rest of us, because even without accounting for inflation if would be darn expensive today.
Also it seems the Lisa tried to be more innovative than the Mac.
Member since:2009-11-30
Got to agree here.
I'm really attached my MacBook & iPhone these days.
But in all honesty, outside North America's wealthy, Apple of the 80's and early 90's was a complete irrelevance - I never saw an Apple II in the shops in the UK - ever. No-one owned one. No-one wanted one. I never saw one outside a magazine until I started work at BAe Space Systems in 1989 (they used one to run their environmental test ovens for satellite battery arrays). The Mac? Again, not in the flesh until university in 1990 - and even then, limited to one room - there were vastly more HP Apollo, Sun Sparc, or even ARM workstations than Mac's - the Mac was a toy that Atari and Commodore owners just laughed at (or emulated for DTP, at a quarter of the price with larger displays, faster CPUs and more memory).
And the Lisa - well, it didn't even make enough of an impression to get magazine coverage outside retrospectives on the Mac years later.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.The day has finally come: Google has started shipping Google Glass to the lucky few early adopters. Now that it's shipping, Google has also unveiled a lot more about the API and the specifications of the device itself. While the company had already given out substantial details at earlier occasions, there are still a few surprises here.
Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote about why OSNews was no longer OSNews: the alternative operating system scene had died, and OSNews, too, had to go with the times and move towards reporting on a new wave of operating systems - mobile, and all the repercussions that the explosion of smartphones and tablets have caused. Still, I was wondering something today: why aren't we seeing alternative operating systems on mobile?
Member since:
2006-03-03
That's why many people bought cheaper yet more powerful (ยง) Atari ST computer, and later added the Dave Small's Magic Sac, Spectre 128 then Spectre GCR expansion to them. With original Apple Macintosh ROMs, it litteraly transformed an Atari ST into a full featured Mac. Look for "Gadget by Small" on the Internet, this guy is a real genius, the old school kind of geek that just makes wonders.
http://www.atari-forum.com/wiki/index.php?title=Gadgets_by_Small
http://mrblog.org/2004/01/06/where-are-they-now-dave-small/
http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=19275
Kochise