Apple Reveals ‘Lisa’, Its $50M Gamble (1983) • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 6:58 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #110

The Lisa was a good machine, but there was one big problem. Motorola had come out with the M68000, but not the MMU for it. 680x0 MMUs were years late, and the first one was terrible. The Lisa had a real OS, and needed an MMU. That had to be built out of smaller parts, which increased the cost enormously. There was also a major bug in the M68000 - instruction backout didn't work. That was fixed in the 68010. But on th…

Apple wasn't visible at all in Europe during those days, Atari, Amiga and IBM PC ruled this side of the Atlantic.

Now had Compaq not been so lucky, then the PCs might have indeed gone nowhere.

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

#112

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

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.

Apple platforms were mostly developed in Object Pascal and Assembly, until they added support for C and C++, with MPW and Metrowerks compilers.

Then it was mostly in C++.

Apple platforms never were big C fans.

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

#113

Post by benj111 » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 7:34 AM UTC

cheerlessbog wrote: post #72

FigBug wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't unless they were well off. Only 8% of houses had a computer in 1984. 15% by the end of the decade. C64 was $595 new, if you had one I doubt your family was poor.

I'm surprised only 8%. My memory of growing up in the UK in the early 80's was that ZX81'S and ZX Spectrums were super common. I bought my ZX81 in 1982 for £50 new which looks like it was maybe $80.

The UK actually had the highest level of computer ownership in the world at around that point.

You're probably looking at it from a biased point of view though. When I was growing up everyone had a Snes. Of course it was just all teenage boys that had one.

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

#114

Post by cntlzw » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 7:51 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #111

Animats wrote: post #110

The Lisa was a good machine, but there was one big problem. Motorola had come out with the M68000, but not the MMU for it. 680x0 MMUs were years late, and the first one was terrible. The Lisa had a real OS, and needed an MMU. That had to be built out of smaller parts, which increased the cost enormously. There was also a major bug in the M68000 - instruction backout didn't work. That was fixed in the 68010. But on th…

Apple wasn't visible at all in Europe during those days, Atari, Amiga and IBM PC ruled this side of the Atlantic. Now had Compaq not been so lucky, then the PCs might have indeed gone nowhere.

I heard Apple was popular in Switzerland.

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

#115

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 8:03 AM UTC

cntlzw wrote: post #114

pjmlp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple wasn't visible at all in Europe during those days, Atari, Amiga and IBM PC ruled this side of the Atlantic. Now had Compaq not been so lucky, then the PCs might have indeed gone nowhere.

I heard Apple was popular in Switzerland.

Might be, but in the Iberian Penisula, UK and Germany, the countries I can speak about during those days, it was hardly seen around.

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

#116

Post by Angostura » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 8:16 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #111

Animats wrote: post #110

The Lisa was a good machine, but there was one big problem. Motorola had come out with the M68000, but not the MMU for it. 680x0 MMUs were years late, and the first one was terrible. The Lisa had a real OS, and needed an MMU. That had to be built out of smaller parts, which increased the cost enormously. There was also a major bug in the M68000 - instruction backout didn't work. That was fixed in the 68010. But on th…

Apple wasn't visible at all in Europe during those days, Atari, Amiga and IBM PC ruled this side of the Atlantic. Now had Compaq not been so lucky, then the PCs might have indeed gone nowhere.

Certainly in the UK (special case?), that's not the case . We certainly had Apple ][s at school and 6th form in the UK as the main machines - later replaced by BBC model Bs and back then there were summer camps doing computing for enthusiastic youngsters. Apple was again the computer of choice in the early days, to be replaced later by the ZX Spectrum.

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

#117

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 8:21 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #110

The Lisa was a good machine, but there was one big problem. Motorola had come out with the M68000, but not the MMU for it. 680x0 MMUs were years late, and the first one was terrible. The Lisa had a real OS, and needed an MMU. That had to be built out of smaller parts, which increased the cost enormously. There was also a major bug in the M68000 - instruction backout didn't work. That was fixed in the 68010. But on th…

Has anyone tried retrofitting a Lisa with a real MMU? Seems like it would be a fun project to build "the Lisa that could have been".

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

#118

Post by tecleandor » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 8:21 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #115

cntlzw wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard Apple was popular in Switzerland.

Might be, but in the Iberian Penisula, UK and Germany, the countries I can speak about during those days, it was hardly seen around.

Yep, I remember (Spain) Amstrads, Amigas, Spectrums, all sort of PCs and compatibles, and an Atari and MSX or two.

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

#119

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 8:26 AM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #20

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, particul…

In addition to inflation (which other commenters have already mentioned), don't forget to take into account the relative sizes of 1983 Apple vs today's Google.

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

#120

Post by oblio » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 8:34 AM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #58

ghaff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Machrone, long-time editor of PC Magazine, coined a "law" that the computer you wanted always cost $5,000. Which held reasonably true for a rather long time. It broke down maybe about 10 years ago although, as with the latest Mac, you can still get to $5K without too many gymnastics for pro video work or high end gaming.

Huh, pretty good. I'd say it's now $3,750 for the whole setup. $3,000 for the tower/laptop plus docking station [1] [2], $650 for dual monitors [3] [4], and $100 for peripherals [5] [6] [7]. And that's with Amazon + non-Mac. [1] https://www.amazon.com/ThinkPad-20ER002KUS-Windows-Professio... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Docking-40AJ0135US-Ge... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Dell-27-Inch-LED-Lit-Monitor-S27…

You can configure a desktop for way cheaper than that and it can run 90% of modern games. Just don't get the latest generation top of the line Nvidia/AMD card, either get the previous top of the line one or a decent mid-range one (check benchmarks when choosing).

Don't get the most expensive RAM or CPU, you lose 10% real performance but you halve your budget.