Apple - The Forbidden Fruit?

More than 2 decades ago when Personal Computers (PC) was in its infancy and when Windows was well, just a window, the Apple Lisa was introduced to the world in January 1983 at a cost of US$9,995 (equiv to $20,893 in 2007).


The interface then looked like something out of science fiction. Computers we know then were just a green screen with text and a keyboard (even that was advanced compared to the teletype). The Apple Lisa was a powerful personal computer with a Graphical User Interface (GUI). The heart of the system was a Motorola CPU MC68000 running at 5 megahertz with a RAM of 1MB (those days anything above 64KB was a WOW! factor). Dual floppy 5.25 inch 860KB drives and a Hard Disk Drive with 5MB... Another WOW! cuz most were still running OS & programs from two 360KB floppy drives. There's more; Detachable keyboard with numeric keypad and a mouse... now why is there a rodent with the machine?

The Lisa project was started at Apple in 1978 and evolved into a project to design a powerful personal computer with business users in mind. Contrary to popular belief, the Macintosh is not a direct descendant of Lisa, although there are obvious similarities between the systems and a later version of the Lisa was sold as the Macintosh XL. Although the documentation with the original Lisa only ever referred to it as The Lisa, Apple officially stated that the name was an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture. Since Steve Jobs' first daughter (born in 1978) was named Lisa Jobs, it is normally inferred that the name also had a personal association, and perhaps that the acronym was invented later to fit the name.

Why does everyone seem so transfixed with the "new" Vista? The technology in Apple exists long before windows was a single line of code and is far more superior in aspects that count... except for the cost then. Now its almost comparable but for what superiority Apple offers, the difference in cost has become negligible.

So now, looking away from the "dark side of the force", behold what lies ahead:

Affordable



Desirable


Now waiting for moolah and the Mac OS X Leopard to make its appearance.