LisaGUI recreates Apple's innovative computer OS, without emulating it

LisaGUI is a faithful reconstruction of the desktop and user interface of Apple's Lisa, the workstation that fed ideas into the early Macintosh, and it shows that there are still things to learn from that system. A project by developer and artist Andrew Yaros, LisaGUI is a reproduction of the LisaOS in JavaScript. As the …

[Doctor Syntax]

"the Macintosh – drew on a lot of Lisa technology ... but it dispensed with many of the high-concept ideas"

You can see why Apple sent unsold Liss to landfill rather than selling them off at an affordable price.

[Carnotaurus]

The sad part about that landfill episode is how Apple went about doing it -- https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/04/a-man-bought-7000-apple-computers-for-resale-only-for-apple-to-take-them-back-and-crush-them/

Shows how Apple hasn't really changed much in the years since.

[Dan 55]

The article ends with:

However, the destruction of perfectly functional computers in the 1980s seems to contradict this modern-day eco-conscious image.

What modern-day eco-conscious image?

Apple’s Recycling Program Forced Recyclers to Shred Over 530,000 Repairable iPhones

[Chris Gray 1]

Expandable?

Thanks for the article Liam! This old fart didn't know much about the Lisa, and had just assumed it was "conventional" in operation.

Question though: could someone other than Apple add a document kind and the code needed to handle it? If not, perhaps Apple invented the "lockin" concept before Microsoft. :/)

[Liam Proven]

Re: Expandable?

> Thanks for the article Liam! This old fart didn't know much about the Lisa, and had just assumed it was "conventional" in operation.

Glad you liked it.

No, but that was partly -- maybe largely -- because the conventions for GUI computing didn't exist yet.

There _were_ conventions for text-mode removable-storage based computing, as set by the "Trinity" of pioneering 1977 micros -- arguably, Apple II, Commodore PET, original TRS-80:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_early_microcomputers

Before that it was all D-I-Y, kits, and CP/M.

(

Aside: what everyone forgets by the 21st century is that while the operation models of those machines is still known and played with in emulators and so on, it wasn't new to them: it was copied, mostly from low-end DEC minicomputer OSes. CP/M and BASIC and so on were minicomputer tools. Q.v. https://www.os2museum.com/wp/why-does-windows-really-use-backslash-as-path-separator/

)

The thing is that the Lisa tried to escape those conventions using cutting-edge tech. The result was that it cost as much as a nice car or a modest home. So -- oversimplification alert! -- the Mac junked all that, kept just the CPU and the GUI and some of the code to drive it, and bolted the GUI onto a simple single-tasking apps-and-their-files model, based on tracking which floppy you had inserted because they knew damned well you'd be swapping disks *A LOT*.

The Mac was a backwards step, but arguably, the Lisa was attempting to go too far forwards.

Xerox Alto: tech demo, you couldn't buy one.

Xerox Star: $30K plus. More or less flopped.

Apple Lisa: kept 1 of the 3 things that were clever about the Alto. Tried to be clever and next-gen. $10K. Flopped.

Mac: binned the clever stuff. $2.5K. Did well but mainly in later less-constrained forms.

We'd all have been better off if the Lisa was the success and it had done well enough to survive 2-3 years until the tech it needed got cheap.

Instead Apple spent a decade+ trying to bolt that stuff back onto the very cut-down Mac, giving Microsoft the time to maker Windows usable. (Because IBM fcked up OS/2 and DR got fscked over by Intel.)

> Question though: could someone other than Apple add a document kind and the code needed to handle it?

Absolutely yes.

Here's a list:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1STG0Le_8dMHRLf026x6YfXzRQm2hD0igeZVb2Hx0Lxo/edit?gid=0#gid=0

And its origins:

https://lisalist2.com/index.php?topic=118.0

> If not, perhaps Apple invented the "lockin" concept before Microsoft. :/)

Somewhat unfair. Lots of companies had sealed-up locked-down computers. Others are worse offenders than either Microsoft or Apple

MS has made huge missteps, like the Surface RT, as I wrote an alarmingly long time ago:

https://www.theregister.com/2013/11/14/microsoft_surface_rt_stockpile/

[Jim Mitchell]

the Lisa cost $32,500 in today's money (slightly under £25,000)

A comparison with what its competitors at the time cost would be useful.

[Blackjack]

The Commodore 64's launch price was $595 and it launched two years before the Lisa. By the time the Lisa came out the Commodore 64 had a whole lot of software and if you weren't using it you were using an IBM or by then the quire obsolete but good enough Apple ][. Simply put the Lisa was launched with the mentality of a business computer in the early 70s, very few computers or single computer for the entire business, But by 1984 what people and businesses were buying, save for big companies, was personal computers.

In other words the Apple ][ helped to kill the Lisa by showing that smaller cheaper and less powerful computers was the way to go unless you were a big corporation.

[Liam Proven]

> A comparison with what its competitors at the time cost would be useful.

Because I've done that repeatedly before, and I try to limit how much and how often I repeat myself. If it seems directly relevant, I put in links to previous articles where I did that.

Original Mac pricing at launch, compared to later models and the Xerox Star:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/mac_at_40_real_significance/

Sinclair QL vs Mac vs other contemporaries and successors:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/16/ql_legacy_at_40/

Lisa, Mac, IBM PC, PC-XT, PC-AT, C64, etc.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/19/windows_nt_30_years_on/

[werdsmith]

LISA was something I read about in magazines, but never saw one in real life. It was in the far too expensive category, even for my employers at the time.

[billdehaan]

I actually used a Lisa, and I almost got one for free

We got one in our university lab, and everyone had the same reaction.

They said "cool", sat down and played with it for a bit. Then they got frustrated, said it was way too slow, and asked if they were doing something wrong. When people replied that "no, that's just how it is", they'd sigh, and go work on one of the two IBM PCs we had.

A few years later, I briefly worked at a Unix shop that a bunch of oddball machines. They had big iron (Siemens and Nixdorf) but they had dozens of one-offs of desktop machines few people today have heard of, like the Victor 9000 and Hyperion, to do testing. There were several PCs, a couple of Macs, some Acorns, BBC Micros, and one solitary Lisa. When the company lost its' major contract, and went belly up, people were basically told that the company was folding at the end of the week, they weren't getting paid, and there was no need to return any company assets that people had taken home to work with, they could just keep them.

The big iron was leased and would be seized, but what about the machines in the office that the company owned? The owner felt bad about not paying people, and knew that the receiver would be lucky to get 15 cents on the dollar, so he literally said "help yourself". And people did. I was the fourth person to eye the Lisa. Three others powered it up, made sure it worked, but after 15 minutes of playing with it thought the better of it. So did I. Apple had already discontinued it at that point, so there would be no new software, no improvements, and no repairs.

The guy who did eventually take it was a sailor. When we asked why he picked it, he just said "I have a boat". I'm at least hoping he was joking that was the reason.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: I actually used a Lisa, and I almost got one for free

> "I have a boat"

Hopefully he wasn't planning to use it as an anchor:

https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/boat-anchor.html

[billdehaan]

Re: I actually used a Lisa, and I almost got one for free

That was the inference everyone made, and hence my comment that I hoped he was joking.

[werdsmith]

Re: I actually used a Lisa, and I almost got one for free

I intercepted an Apple IIe, floppy drives and matching monitor on its way to the skip.

Took it home and stored it intending to get it working. Never did. Turns out I only delayed its fate.

[Zolko]

Newton

wasn't that blurring between apps and documents, where there weren't any "files" per-se, also the way the Apple Newton worked ?

[Liam Proven]

Re: Newton

> wasn't that blurring between apps and documents, where there weren't any "files" per-se, also the way the Apple Newton worked ?

No, not really.

The Lisa had documents and a hierarchical filing system on its hard disk. Files were front and centre. What it tried to do was make documents the central feature and the software that worked on them less conspicuous.

The Newton, OTOH, tried to be a sort of intelligent paper, where the whole concept of a filing system and documents was eliminated. Which is also what the iDevices do, but they just hide it from view. (Which is why I personally prefer Android.)

[NetMage]

One place Apple did send Lisa’s for cheap was VT. Incoming CS students purchased a Lisa and were to use it for the next four years. I was a year earlier, before computers for new students were required in CS, but had an opportunity to see Lisas being used a lot.

The next year the University required students buy fire sale PCjrs, chiclet keyboard and all - I’m not sure it was an improvement.

[Liam Proven]

> One place Apple did send Lisa’s for cheap was VT.

I went looking for more info. Not knowing what "VT" stood for, it took a little extra work...

After some Googling...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech

Apple Lisa at Virgina Tech -- what should I find but:

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/revisiting-apple%E2%80%99s-ill-fated-lisa-computer-40-years-on.1489352/#post-41560446

Also by "NetMage". :-D

If that's also https://x.com/netmage then...

http://scw.us/ ...?

Anyway, thank you for this nugget. I didn't know that. Shame that more were not rescued.

[TekGuruNull]

VT is the U.S. Postal Service abbreviation for Vermont.

[Liam Proven]

> VT is the U.S. Postal Service abbreviation for Vermont.

Yes, I know. Well, I didn't know, but I found that out very quickly.

But that can't be what @netmage meant, because if Apple for some reason offered a discount to everyone in a whole US state, we'd know about it. And anyway, he mentioned students, so it had to denote some educational institution of some kind, and Virginia Tech is <vt.edu>.

Q.E.D.

[TekGuruNull]

Wow.

Reminds me very much of our first Mac 512 at my high school. At first, it didn't seem revolutionary because we had plenty of Apple IIGS systems, which had color displays. Then we got PageMaker 1.0 and that all changed. I became the layout editor for our student newspaper by being the only student who knew how to use PageMaker. Vector-based fonts were new to me. I was blown away. Then I went to college, saw a Sun workstation for the first time. Couldn't believe it was even possible. Almost bought a NeXTcube. Changed colleges and had to deal with PCs for the first time. Halcyon days.

[jimst]

Excellent article, appreciate it and mentions of other emulations.

Great work to get this going as he did as well.

Jim

[RailwayGuy]

Oh Lisa, How I Miss Thee

I remember when I got my Lisa from eBay (for the bargain price of £140 - sold as 'not working' but actually just needed a decent clean), then had to source a keyboard from the US (for the not bargain price of £80), get a mouse, find the OS disks online, create them (via a PC, a Mac and various cables and doohickeys), re-install the hard disk (so that it ran Lisa OS rather than the Lisa-fied version of Mac OS that it had arrived with) and then not look at it again for many, many years.

Next time I dug it out, a capacitor blew on the PSU so now it just sits on the shelf looking big and beige. Even seven years later I can still remember the stink that came out of that capacitor