Rare Apple Lisa desktop computer (Model A6SB100P, Memory Option A6SB108), representing an innovative step in the transition between the Apple I and II and the Macintosh. It was one of the first personal computers to present a graphical user interface (GUI), and is remembered for its high price and lack of sales. This example, with Apple label reading "Serial No: B08B831950122, Applenet No: 00102755, Manufactured: 8315," features the rare original-configuration 'Twiggy' floppy drives.
The concept of a GUI-based system was initially developed by Xerox in 1973, but it was Apple that brought it to market with the release of the Lisa in January 1983. The Lisa introduced revolutionary features such as overlapping windows, pull-down menus, and drag-and-drop functionality. Despite its groundbreaking design, the Lisa was expensive, and its specially designed 'Twiggy' drives were notoriously unreliable. These 'Twiggy' drives were prone to frequent failures, which significantly hindered the commercial success of the Lisa. To address these issues, Apple quickly introduced the Lisa-2 with a modified front panel and standard floppy disk drive. Apple offered Lisa-1 owners a free upgrade to Lisa-2, requiring the return of the original front panel and Twiggy drives, which were then destroyed. As a result, a complete Lisa-1, like the one offered here, is extremely rare. It is estimated that only 30 to 100 Lisa-1 machines still exist today.
This Apple Lisa-1 is in exceptional condition, both visually and technically: it is fully functional except for one of the Twiggy drives. This Lisa-1 and its external Apple Profile hard disk run on EURO 220 volts, but can be changed with little effort to US 110 volts.
The system also includes original peripherals, software, and manuals required for operation: the Apple Lisa mouse, Apple Lisa keyboard, Apple ProFile 5MB hard drive (Model A9M1005, Serial No. 145361), Apple parallel interface, Apple Dot Matrix Printer, and Twiggy (or in Apple terminology, 'File Ware') diskettes with the following programs and German manuals: LisaDraw, LisaCalc, LisaList, LisaWrite, LisaGraph, and seven further diskettes. The mouse is particularly desirable as Apple's first mouse—representing a major transition to point-and-click personal computing with Lisa's revolutionary graphical user interface.
Development of the Lisa project began in 1978, aimed at individual business users. Officially, "Lisa" stood for 'Local Integrated Software Architecture,' but it was also the name of Steve Jobs' daughter. The Lisa was first introduced in January 1983 at a cost of $9,995, as one of the first commercial personal computers to have a GUI and a mouse. This initial, original model of Lisa computer features the dual, custom, 5 1/4" 'Twiggy' drives. These floppy drives, designed in-house at Apple, were innovative—featuring a high capacity, variable spindle speed, and were double-sided. The Lisa had initially been designed with the idea of running its operating system entirely from these disks. But due to the lack of speed, and the increasing needs of the operating system, the Lisa shipped with an external 5MB ProFile hard drive. The Twiggy drives, with their unique custom diskettes, high manufacture cost, and field unreliability, were soon replaced by Apple with a free upgrade to the later "Lisa 2" machine, which replaced disk drives with a single 3 1/2" Sony drive, and a new faceplate to accommodate it. As this was offered to customers at no charge, and Apple required the return of the original disk drives and faceplate, it is incredibly rare to find a surviving machine with the original Twiggy drives.
The Lisa did not do well in the marketplace. A large part of this was its hefty price tag, another the relative lack of available software. The machine was also perhaps too much of a radical change in computing environments, offering the graphical interface and the mouse to consumers for the first time. The Lisa was also fairly slow, and this was reflected in the user experience with the operating system. The Lisa did offer a vast array of advanced features, from multitasking to soft power, that took years to make it into other platforms. The Macintosh, released just a year later in 1984 inherited much of the graphical functionality, and the mouse from the Lisa—but did so at a far lower cost, and it was faster as well.
Apple attempted to market and sell the Lisa alongside the Macintosh—eventually releasing a modification kit to allow the Lisa hardware to run Macintosh software, and sold a so-modified machine as the Macintosh XL. This had the distinct advantage of having a larger screen and a lot more memory, but was somewhat slower than an actual Macintosh due to the lower processor clock speed.
Ultimately, Lisa didn't find commercial success, and sold only 10,000 units before being discontinued in 1985. On top of not selling well, many were subsequently traded in to Apple for a substantial discount on the Macintosh Plus—another factor in the rarity of the Lisa today. A rare, desirable, and complete example of a pioneering Apple product.
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