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

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

#131

Post by coldtea »

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.

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

If you mean early eighties, yes. If you mean the whole of eighties, I'd say no. I remember lots of businesses with Macs in the late eighties/early nineties, especially for print businesses.

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

#132

Post by russfink »

FigBug wrote: post #45
newsoul2019 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am really curious about how anyone could afford computers at these prices in the 1980s. I guess my family was really poor then. We had a C64 and later an Amiga.

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 bought a TS1000 in 1981 or 82 for $99, and a C64 in probably spring 1983 for $299 at Circuit City. I was in 9th grade and used paper route money to get it (parents thought they were glorified Atari 2600's). Hehe, remember newspapers and paperboys?

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

#133

Post by cannam »

delibes wrote: post #121
Angostura wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure I agree. Just my anecdotal data of course, but I don't remember seeing an Apple II in UK schools in the 80s, but definitely BBC Micro/Master and a few Archimedes later. This was in 2-3 North West state schools, so there might have been regional differences. Edit - oh yes, and about the ZX Spectrum... I can't imagine anyone willingly changing from something else to that rubber keyboard! Yuck.

Of course this is always going to be anecdotal, but I never saw them in the north-east in the 80s either. The predecessor to the BBC Micro that I remember was the RML 380Z. I was messing with computers at school and elsewhere throughout the 80s, and to this day I've never actually seen a working Apple II.

I do remember reading about the Lisa and thinking it looked amazing.

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

#134

Post by pjmlp »

coldtea wrote: post #131
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.

> Apple wasn't visible at all in Europe during those days, Atari, Amiga and IBM PC ruled this side of the Atlantic. If you mean early eighties, yes. If you mean the whole of eighties, I'd say no. I remember lots of businesses with Macs in the late eighties/early nineties, especially for print businesses.

The first time I saw anyone using a Mac live, actually an LC, instead of having to drive down to Lisbon or Porto to the see the only importer in the contry was in 1994.

Around here print business were using Amigas and Ataris.

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

#135

Post by Someone »

Narishma wrote: post #55
Chazprime wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parent’s Mac II cost over $6000 at the time we got it. Compared to the IBM PCs at the time, the 640x480 hires display was stunningly gorgeous!

The Mac II was released in 1987. On the PC side, VGA cards were introduced a year earlier and could do those resolutions.

VGA 640x480 was 16 colors, wasn’t it? The Mac II did 256 colors at that resolution.

The software side also helped. Windows (¿mostly?) ran a fixed palette, while the Palette Manager on the Mac made it easy for applications to pick whatever color (out of 16M) they wanted.

On the hardware side, most PCs still had monochrome monitors, and even those with color monitors didn’t typically have ones as good as the Trinitrons that Macintosh IIs often had.

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

#136

Post by Shivetya »

Crinus wrote: post #127
outworlder wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spirit. The Lisa was a MUCH more powerful computer than the first Mac - which is why you needed a Lisa in the first place. The Mac wasn't able to run much of anything developed for the Lisa. Mac software was written in machine language, as I recall the Lisa made more use of higher level languages, so even the tool chain would be problematic. Check folklore.org for more stories of that time.

Specifically, Apple Pascal: http://pascal-central.com/images/pascalposter.jpg (i want to recreate this in SVG and print a real poster out of it at some point). Although AFAIK the original Mac was also programmable with Pascal (in folklore it mentions that the calculator, etc were initially written in Pascal as examples for the API).

the reason I went into Pascal was when I was younger I found out my favorite Apple II game; Wizardry; had been written in it. I think they used USCD Pascal.

awhile back I was able to find recreated source of the game

[1] ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/rpg/wizardry/wizardry_I/

Spreadsheet of game maps, etc.

[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Mo1EoWXSnR5gNn5kAt9f...

Wizardry III re engineered

[3] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.apple2/w...

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

#137

Post by laumars »

delibes wrote: post #121
Angostura wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure I agree. Just my anecdotal data of course, but I don't remember seeing an Apple II in UK schools in the 80s, but definitely BBC Micro/Master and a few Archimedes later. This was in 2-3 North West state schools, so there might have been regional differences. Edit - oh yes, and about the ZX Spectrum... I can't imagine anyone willingly changing from something else to that rubber keyboard! Yuck.

Likewise here too. In fact all through the 80s and 90s I only knew one place that owned an Apple computer. Everyone else was running BBC / Acorn, Sinclair, Amstrad, Commodore 64, Atari, Amiga, Dragon, and, much later, IBM-compatible PCs.

For reference: south east of England.

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

#138

Post by simonh »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #117
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".

You would also need to update the compiler to use the MMU and backout instructions properly, and re-compile all the software to use it. It would also probably require some modifications to the OS and application code as well to get much advantage.

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

#139

Post by simonh »

delibes wrote: post #121
Angostura wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure I agree. Just my anecdotal data of course, but I don't remember seeing an Apple II in UK schools in the 80s, but definitely BBC Micro/Master and a few Archimedes later. This was in 2-3 North West state schools, so there might have been regional differences. Edit - oh yes, and about the ZX Spectrum... I can't imagine anyone willingly changing from something else to that rubber keyboard! Yuck.

Our school had an Apple II in 1982 but they were quite expensive, so people mostly got Sinclair machines or Commodore 64s for home use. When I went to 6th form they had a few BBCs and an old Commodore PET. I don't the Apple IIs were common, but they were certainly around.

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

#140

Post by inflatableDodo »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #99
yellowapple wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: "transparent aluminum" is a reality, albeit insanely expensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride

Corundum is also transparent aluminum and it's insanely cheap.

Speaking of which, where's our sapphire phone screens already?
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