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Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

newsweek.com

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Re: Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

#11

Post by netsec_burn »

tguedes wrote: post #8
netsec_burn wrote: post #2

Watching early Apple presentations and modern presentations shows the company prioritizing sales over innovation. Now we see a phone that is marginally better than the previous year, with taglines like "the best iPhone ever". The future is AR and gestures in my opinion, if keyboard input speed is ever an issue then a glove Swype interface would work. Many smaller companies have already set the stage nicely, such as t…

If the future is AR, it's a good thing Apple is one of the leading companies in this area.

I would not say even their software AR is leading AR in general (assuming you are referring to ARKit). They have no hardware AR devices, correct me if I'm wrong. What are they leading?

Re: Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

#13

Post by ttul »

gilbetron wrote: post #7
icedchai wrote: post #4

This makes the new Mac Pro look like a bargain... especially after you adjust for inflation.

$25k after inflation. I had no idea it was that expensive!

The IBM PC in 1981 cost $4,500 to $8,500 in today's money. The original Mac would cost $6,000 if released today. Computers have become a great deal cheaper in the ensuing decades.

Re: Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

#14

Post by bjelkeman-again »

netsec_burn wrote: post #11
tguedes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the future is AR, it's a good thing Apple is one of the leading companies in this area.

I would not say even their software AR is leading AR in general (assuming you are referring to ARKit). They have no hardware AR devices, correct me if I'm wrong. What are they leading?

Isnt every phone a potential AR device? The Minecraft demo at WWC comes to mind.

Re: Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

#15

Post by ajross »

charlesism wrote: post #5

> Jobs personally heads the MacIntosh development team MacIntosh :)

That (or McIntosh) is the correct spelling for the fruit breed (though not the clan name from which it descends).

I don't know at what point Apple settled on its non-standard spelling for the product, but it might well have been after this article was written.

Re: Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

#17

Post by smitty1110 »

netsec_burn wrote: post #11
tguedes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the future is AR, it's a good thing Apple is one of the leading companies in this area.

I would not say even their software AR is leading AR in general (assuming you are referring to ARKit). They have no hardware AR devices, correct me if I'm wrong. What are they leading?

Every recent iphone (6s and newer) is an AR device. You can load up an Ikea app, and check how the furniture you're interested in looks in your room, or if that end table will actually fit between the wall and your couch. There was an estimate 2 years ago that there were 700 million iphones in active use. Let's assume that the current number isn't any larger and that 6/7 are recent enough to use ARKit, so let's say 600 million AR devices. I'm willing to bet that is more than all other AR companies combined.

Re: Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

#18

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

msla wrote: post #16
charlesism wrote: post #5

> Jobs personally heads the MacIntosh development team MacIntosh :)

> MacIntosh :) They'll probably program it in "C", and then in the 1990s move on to JAVA, with some software in PERL.

I think the Lisa was programmed in Pascal

Re: Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

#19

Post by randomvectors »

netsec_burn wrote: post #2

Watching early Apple presentations and modern presentations shows the company prioritizing sales over innovation. Now we see a phone that is marginally better than the previous year, with taglines like "the best iPhone ever". The future is AR and gestures in my opinion, if keyboard input speed is ever an issue then a glove Swype interface would work. Many smaller companies have already set the stage nicely, such as t…

While we are definitely going to have more AR, I'm not convinced that it's the future at all. But I guess that's the case with most people and most technologies until they become ubiquitous.

AR still seems like a solution looking for a problem.

Re: Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983)

#20

Post by Theodores »

icedchai wrote: post #4

This makes the new Mac Pro look like a bargain... especially after you adjust for inflation.

Bargain for whom?

According to the article Lisa was a $50 million gamble.

I just read somewhere about the 2000 engineers Google took on for the Pixel phone from HTC. Keeping the lights on for the buildings they are in is a $50 million gamble, that's without paying them or allowing for inflation. But you get the idea, $50 million was cheap for the product compared to what hardware tech costs to develop today, particularly if it has an operating system to write from the ground up.

Incidentally, the threat from IBM mentioned in the article. Peanuts turned out to be the ill-fated PCjr that had good graphics and a bad price point for the home market. Popcorn turned out to be the first PC based lug-gable computer from IBM.

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