Apple Lisa Handbook

[Sellam Ismail]

This cat Michael Posner compiled a book called, "The Apple Lisa Handbook".  
He's an attorney by day and a geek by night.

The introduction is amusing:

"In the beginning there was this: 'c:\', and it was hard. But there was an 
answer, and it came from.....Xerox, yes Xerox. And one day Steve Jobs came 
to Xerox and said, 'This is great'. So Steve went back to Apple and said, 
let there be Lisa (allegedly his young daughter out of wedlock). And Apple 
labored for three years and then (without Steve, who was now raising a 
pirate flag over at the Macintosh Group) there was Lisa. And Lisa was 
cool, like no other computer ever made, before or since. But Apple lost 
heart and Lisa was discontinued. This hurt many people (especially those 
with vision and a wallet $10,000 lighter). But Lisa lives for those 
dedicated users. This book is dedicated to them."

It's a compilation of articles and announcements from various sources 
including notes from Apple and magazine reviews.  It has a History of Lisa 
section in chapter one, and includes repair and maintenance tips (towards 
the middle).

It also has an interesting note about Lisa 1 upgrades to the Lisa 2, info 
I've never seen before:

"Upgrades from Lisa 1.0

*To Lisa 2/5, free until June 1, 1984, $595 thereafter

*To Lisa 2/10, $2495 until June 1, 1984, $2795 thereafter"

The Lisa was announced in January of 1983, so this gives us a small 
datapoint as to when the upgrades occured (or didn't).

Here's an interesting bit:

"Sun Remarketing specializes in selling discontinued Apple hardware. It is 
the only major provider of systems and support for the installed base of 
77,000 Lisas."

So there were 77,000 Lisas out in the wild according to this.  If correct 
then it was not a very rare machine by any stretch of the imagination (I 
literally got like 8 in one haul one time, which was distributed between 
several people) but they are certainly less common these days, now that 
all the collector's have bought them up.

I wonder how many Lisa 1's sold?  And then how many were upgraded to Lisa 
2's?  I wonder if that data still exists at Apple?

I like the sell Apple in the product discontinuation letter on page 3.

One section has some comments from a CompuServe forum.  This one is 
interesting:

"Sb: #121368-#Apple Drops Lisa?
  05-Nov-84 18:21:55

I got my INFOWORLD last week and indeed there was a random rumor (not 
Dvorak) indicating that they heard from a reliable source inside Apple 
that Apple will drop the Lisa line in '85. Since I got my Lisa in August 
this year I've been very happy, but now I'm worried. I bought an IMSAI a 
few months before they dropped their S-100 machine, and she's still 
working. But it is annoying! Any info would be greatly appreciated."

Ah, the good old days, when a juxtaposition between an Apple Lisa and an 
IMSAI 8080 was normal.

Here's a really interesting tidbit:

"Infocorp's Gilman estimates that the easy to use computer that inspired 
Lisa's development--the two year old Xerox 'Star'--has had total sales of 
only 2,400 units so far. But the Star has only some of Lisa's features and 
initially costs customers $50,000, or five times as much as Lisa, he 
points out. Nevertheless, 'because Apple is changing its product and its 
customer base with Lisa, I would expect it to get of to a slow start,' 
predicts E. David Crockett, a computer industry analyst at Dataquest, 
Inc."

Wow, I didn't know the Xerox 8010 cost $50K when new.  2,400 units sold by 
1983.  I would say there are not that many 8010's out there based on this.  
They are more scarce than I thought.

Read Larry Tesler's post-mortem on page 51.  Really net.

Anyway, an interesting read.  Worth spending a few minutes going through 
it.

BTW, check out the author's other interests:

http://www.mjposner.com/

He seems to be a pretty interesting guy.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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