To celebrate the 40th birthday of the Apple Lisa computer the Computer History Museum has received permission from Apple to release the computer source code together with software applications and system code to the general public. Apple Lisa computer originally first launched back on January 19th 1983 and back then cost $9,995.
Offering a more affordable alternative to the Star GUI-based workstation launched by Xerox two years previously priced at $16,595. Unfortunately these high price points for both computers sealed their demise when you consider other machines such as the IBM PC a command-line based PC was priced at just $1,565.
Jump over to the official Computer History Museum website to learn more about the Apple Lisa and its operating system which is now available to download for free.
Apple Lisa source code
Lisa Office System 3.1 Twiggy dates back to April 1984, during the early Mac era, and it was the equivalent of operating systems like macOS and Windows today. The entire source package is about 26MB and consists of over 1,300 commented source files, divided nicely into subfolders that denote code for the main Lisa OS, various included apps, and the Lisa Toolkit development system.
“Apple’s Macintosh line of computers today, known for bringing mouse-driven graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to the masses and transforming the way we use our computers, owes its existence to its immediate predecessor at Apple, the Lisa. Without the Lisa, there would have been no Macintosh—at least in the form we have it today—and perhaps there would have been no Microsoft Windows either. Before the 1970s and even into the early 1990s, a majority of personal computer users interacted with their machines via command-line interfaces, text-based operating systems such as CP/M and MS/DOS in which users had to type arcane commands to control their computers.”
Source : AB : Computer History Museum
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