[Macworld]

Post your comments for 30 years of the Apple Lisa and the Apple IIe here

[technologist]

Quote

In the most dramatic example, the Lisa’s OS (the Lisa Office System) handled user-generated files in a completely document-centric manner. That is, one did not launch an application and then open a file from within that application, as is common in Mac OS X and Windows today. Instead, one “tore off” a blank document from a virtual stack of “paper,” which created a user-editable document in the file system that the user would then double-click to open in the appropriate application.

The lonely, dejected Stationery pad checkbox sobs quietly in the Get Info box to itself. Nobody is there to comfort it. Nobody remembers what it does or how it came to be.

Nobody even remembers it is there.

[stsk]

Forgotten in Lisa lore is the fact that it served as the pre-release software development platform for the Mac. (although, to be fair, only a handful (27 as I recall) of seeded Mac developers existed.)

[flowney]

I do miss my Apple IIe sometimes. It had a 1 MB battery-backed RAM card on which I stored the entire OS and AppleWorks with all of the Beagle Bros. extensions to AppleWorks. It booted the OS and launched AppleWorks faster than my present day iPad boots the OS!

[Dotkhan]

About 20 years ago I saw a Lisa in a Goodwill store. I wonder if it would have any worth to a collector today.

[wardoggie]

I fondly remember my Apple //e and ImageWriter printer. That workhorse duo got me through college!

[spim]

Okay.
I'm sold!
. . .
How do I order one?

[stevefrench88]

[gshake]

Up until about five years ago, my mom still had an Apple //e or two in her preschool classroom. They still worked like a dream. They are now all replaced with eMacs and the three- to five-year-old kids seem to find a way to mess them up despite parental controls being in place. I miss those dependable Apple //e's.

[Stempnakowski]

My IIe is sitting 7 feet away from me - still plugged in. I use it to play Galaxian every once and while when I need a break.

[eyoule]

The document-centric approach did make it to the Mac as Opendoc/Bento/Cyberdog. I used the latter extensively, found
it great. Still have it installed but wont run without Classic.

The Open Doc, was interesting, totally alien to the norm and
was not commercially successful.

[JDW]

I've been a Mac user and Apple enthusiast since my 128k back in early 1984. I've read a lot about the Lisa, and I even follow some of the amazingly overpriced auctions that are perpetually found on EBAY. As such I found this article a very interesting read. However, I am curious by what you wrote. Could you please tell us what exact "entombed pioneering interface concepts that have yet to be fully replicated" would benefit any modern Apple platform?

How would Lisa tech benefit iOS on the iPad or OS X on my iMac?

[JBaustian]

Quote

I fondly remember my Apple //e and ImageWriter printer. That workhorse duo got me through college!

Ah yes, the workhorse Imagewriter. Those were the days when it was cheaper to print out documents than to save them to a floppy drive. So I ended up with thousands of pages of stuff that were later tossed in the dumpster, but I still have document files that were copied from hard drive to hard drive.

I also remember my first LaserWriter, though I'm not sure that was the correct name. It cost something like $1500 and was pretty sweet, though not as capable as the $200 HP laser printer I use today.

[wardoggie]

JBaustian, on 19 January 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

Quote

I fondly remember my Apple //e and ImageWriter printer. That workhorse duo got me through college!

Ah yes, the workhorse Imagewriter. Those were the days when it was cheaper to print out documents than to save them to a floppy drive. So I ended up with thousands of pages of stuff that were later tossed in the dumpster, but I still have document files that were copied from hard drive to hard drive.

I also remember my first LaserWriter, though I'm not sure that was the correct name. It cost something like $1500 and was pretty sweet, though not as capable as the $200 HP laser printer I use today.

I couldn't possibly have saved all of my work on paper, but I don't think I'd care to read anything I wrote back then, either. Well, maybe my paper on legalizing marijuana would be worth a few laughs :-)

IIRC, the 300dpi LaserWriter was quite a bit more than $1500. Wikipedia says $6995, but I seem to remember it being closer to $5k. At the time, the only way to get resolution like that was from a typesetter. A LaserWriter, Mac II, Adobe Illustrator and Aldus Pagemaker were enough to start a desktop publishing business (remember that quaint term?) but you also needed an SBA loan to buy them! Ahh, memories...