January 19, 1983: Lisa Comes Out

The Apple II is the computer that made Apple highly profitable, but it was the Lisa that made Apple revolutionary. Unfortunately, while the Lisa represents all that is innovative about Apple it also serves as an illustration of all Apple's failures.

Priced just below 10 grand, the Lisa had an impressive set of features: graphical user interface (today most people call it Windows XP), bitmapped screen and a suite of Office programs. For all the innovations found on the Lisa, however, there were just as many problems. The Mac was already rumored to be on the way at a much lower price, the floppy drives were notoriously unreliable and third party development was virtually nonexistent. Predictably, sales were poor.

Attempts were made to redress the Lisa's shortcomings by lowering the price and renaming the Machine the Mac XL but the attempts were futile. The Lisa was a dog and everyone knew it. Apple finally buried every unsold Lisa in a landfill. The revolutionary yet doomed Lisa was introduced on January 19, 1983.