1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,680
Even if you're not an Apple fan or if you roll your eyes anytime you see someone excited over the

2
00:00:05,680 --> 00:00:11,280
next iPhone, there's no denying how influential the Mac was in shaving our modern conceptions

3
00:00:11,280 --> 00:00:16,080
of what a computer is supposed to be for the average user, particularly with its user-friendly

4
00:00:16,080 --> 00:00:22,080
GUI having a massive influence on layer systems. But the Mac really owes its legacy to an earlier

5
00:00:22,080 --> 00:00:27,440
Apple system, the Lisa, which is named after Steve Jobs' daughter and was the very first

6
00:00:27,520 --> 00:00:33,040
personal computer with a full-fledged graphical interface, complete with a mouse cursor and

7
00:00:33,040 --> 00:00:37,600
pretty icons. These are things we take for granted nowadays, but believe it or not,

8
00:00:37,600 --> 00:00:43,120
Jobs had to be convinced to take the Lisa in this direction. You see, although Lisa was the

9
00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:48,880
first home and office PC to have a GUI, the first computer period that had one that we know of

10
00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:56,320
was called the Xerox Alto, which debuted in 1973. Jobs, however, had a very low opinion of Xerox,

11
00:00:56,320 --> 00:01:01,440
and it wasn't until he actually visited the company and saw the Alto for himself that he green

12
00:01:01,440 --> 00:01:09,280
lit making the Lisa a GUI-based machine. The Alto cost $32,000 and was never produced in large

13
00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:14,960
quantities, so Apple saw an opportunity with Lisa to produce a cheaper, more accessible machine that

14
00:01:14,960 --> 00:01:20,960
still packed a punch and would be attractive to businesses. It had a 5 MHz Motorola CPU,

15
00:01:20,960 --> 00:01:28,480
one megabyte of RAM, a 5 MHz hard drive, a 12-inch black and white 720 x 364 screen,

16
00:01:28,480 --> 00:01:33,520
and a pair of 5 1⁄4 inch floppy drives to read those wacky old-school disks. They were

17
00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:39,840
actually floppy. At the time, these specs weren't bad, but the real attraction was Lisa's operating

18
00:01:39,840 --> 00:01:46,480
system, which actually introduced far more than just a GUI. Lisa's OS introduced multitasking to

19
00:01:46,480 --> 00:01:50,400
the typical user, where you could switch between programs without closing them first.

20
00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:57,600
That was massive! In addition to protected memory, which segmented off the memory space for each

21
00:01:57,600 --> 00:02:03,040
program, allowing the system to be both versatile and stable. Combined that with other novel features

22
00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:08,800
like a built-in screensaver, the ability to cut and paste, whatever that is, and virtual memory,

23
00:02:08,800 --> 00:02:13,680
which allowed the system to use a hard disk space as additional RAM, the Lisa's OS was much more

24
00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:18,640
powerful than what most users were used to. But all of these cool features put a lot of strain

25
00:02:18,640 --> 00:02:24,400
on the system's hardware. Consequently, Lisa unfortunately gained a reputation for sluggish

26
00:02:24,400 --> 00:02:30,400
performance due to its software being ahead of the actual components inside, which wasn't acceptable

27
00:02:30,400 --> 00:02:38,080
for a computer that cost merely $10,000. Yeah, although it was a lot cheaper than the Xerox

28
00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:44,720
This was obviously a massive amount of money still to charge. Apple hoped that the cost wouldn't

29
00:02:44,720 --> 00:02:49,520
be much of an issue for businesses, but it turned out that not a whole lot of companies

30
00:02:49,520 --> 00:02:55,440
were interested in expensive PC with underwhelming performance, especially as the included software

31
00:02:55,440 --> 00:03:01,040
seemed to be more focused towards designers. Indeed, as innovative as Lisa was, it just

32
00:03:01,040 --> 00:03:05,680
wasn't taken seriously enough in many quarters. There wasn't enough third-party software,

33
00:03:05,680 --> 00:03:10,000
the special high-capacity floppy drives turned out to be unreliable, and many users looked at the

34
00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:15,360
mouse as a gimmicky toy instead of something for serious computing, even though the Lisa also

35
00:03:15,360 --> 00:03:19,040
introduced the concept of double clicking, something that Apple came up with as a way to

36
00:03:19,040 --> 00:03:25,280
make their single button mouse more versatile instead of adding more buttons. Only about 10,000

37
00:03:25,280 --> 00:03:33,840
Lisa's were sold after Apple sunk over $150 million into the project, but if it flopped so hard,

38
00:03:33,840 --> 00:03:38,000
how did its innovative features live on? Well, it turns out that Steve Jobs was

39
00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:42,560
actually kicked off the Lisa team for being an annoying micromanager, and when that happened,

40
00:03:42,560 --> 00:03:47,440
he took the ideas and even some of his colleagues from the Lisa team over to the Macintosh team,

41
00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:55,200
whose goal was to make a scaled-back Lisa at a far lower cost. When the Mac did launch in 1984,

42
00:03:55,200 --> 00:04:00,640
it only cost one-fourth of what the Lisa did, causing the Lisa to kind of fade into computing

43
00:04:00,640 --> 00:04:05,040
history by the end of 1986. But that doesn't mean it's gone for good. There's actually a

44
00:04:05,040 --> 00:04:08,720
working Lisa emulator we'll link down in the description if you want to try it out for yourself.

45
00:04:08,720 --> 00:04:13,360
As for the real Lisa, she went on to become a magazine writer. Oh, I doubt she ever used

46
00:04:13,360 --> 00:04:17,200
her silicon counterpart to write articles. Thanks for watching guys, like, dislike,

47
00:04:17,200 --> 00:04:20,640
check out some of her other videos, comment with video suggestions, and don't forget to subscribe

48
00:04:20,640 --> 00:04:21,360
and follow.