Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/01

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: [Leica] [off topic] Apple, Lisa, etc.
From: Jim Brick <jimbrick@photoaccess.com>
Date: Tue, 01 Dec 1998 14:43:37 -0800

At 11:15 PM 12/1/98 +0100, Pascal wrote:
>
>Or how well-advanced the Lisa already was in its days... The Lisa was 
>ahead of market in many respects, and that's one of the reasons it didn't 
>become the huge success it deserved.
>But it was the "Queen Mother" for the Mac...
>
>Pascal

I could speak on this subject for a year, but I won't. I knew Woz and Jobs
BEFORE Apple. We (and about 30 others) founded and belonged to the Silicon
Valley Home Brew Computer Club. We met once a month at SLAC (Stanford
Linear Accelerator) auditorium. We always did a "show & tell" and at one
meeting, Woz held up a 6502 SBC and told us about it. And said that he &
Jobs had named it "The Apple." We all laughed! That was then, this is now.

The Lisa was an absolute disaster. A complete EGO trip of Jobs. Of course,
this was nothing new. A closed system. No possibility of third party
enhancements. So expensive to manufacture that they would have had to sell
it for twice what they tried to sell it for, in order to make a profit.
Some of the concepts were good, but the execution was a complete and total
disaster. These were traits of Jobs long before Apple was born. And he
hasn't changed. Many of us have been on the inside of Next (Job's next ego
trip - no pun intended) and it, like the Lisa, had good concepts but were
ego-ized to death. Therefore, the death of the company.

The Lisa was named after Jobs' daughter, who was around 7 years old at that
time.

Jim

PS... if anyone wishes to carry on this thread, it would be better on
"list5". I, however, do not wish to continue.