🚀 go-pugleaf

Ron Shepard (shepard@tcg.anl.gov) wrote:

[snipt]
: Don't confuse Apple and Mac.  There was Lisa before the Mac, and the Lisa
: was sold (starting in '81 I think) at the same time as the XEROX STAR
: office system.  I first saw the Apollo system much later, in '83 or so,
: just months before the Mac and well after the Lisa.  Of course all of
: these earlier systems were quite expensive.  The Lisa was about $10K I

Here is the timeline that Jef Raskin has given, based on both public 
articles by Raskin, and e-mail from him:

In 1967, Raskin did his Master's thesis on "The QUick Draw Graphics 
System," which discussed issues along the lines of WYSIWYG printing (I 
think that 'twas his thesis that discussed this although he might have 
published an article along the same lines -I'll ask for clarification) 
and other human-centric issues.

In the early 1970's, XEROX PARC was founded. Raskin visited it in the 
early days and marveled at folks who actually had the funding to 
implement what he could only dream of doing.


In early 1979, Raskin proposed the Macintosh project at Apple, to be 
based on human-centric features which would have a bit-mapped interface 
AND (sorry to dissappoint mainstream Apple-history-book fans) some kind 
of pointing device to manipulate it. Shortly after this, a 
character-based high-end project was proposed and started, code-named "Lisa."


In September of 1979, Raskin was given the go-ahead to implement the 
bit-mapped Macintosh. Raskin had already managed to convince Jobs that 
"BASIC and assembler" really weren't "all we need" so Apple was starting 
to explore the use of Pascal. However, Jobs was convinced that the 
Macintosh was a total waste of time. Since the Macintosh was nowhere near 
the demonstration stage, Raskin suggested that Jobs visit PARC, where 
work on similar machines had begun about 5-6 years earlier.  Raskin 
worked with both Jobs and Atkinson (a former student of his), describing 
what "human-centric" computing meant, and telling them what to look for 
while at PARC, based on his own work, and what he had observed at PARC 
several years earlier.

In December of 1979, Jobs, Atkinson and others from Apple visited PARC. 
Their keen "intuitive" insight into what PARC was working on overwhelmed 
the personnel, many of whom later quit PARC to work for that incredible 
genius, Steve Jobs, the only person that they'd ever meant who 
instinctively understood everything that they were working on without 
need for detailed explanations. Jobs returned a "True Believer."

In 1980, Jobs took over control of the Mac project. Sometime around then, 
the Lisa project was revised, making it bit-mapped with a pointing 
device instead of character-based. (I believe that sometime around here, 
Raskin resigned over various issues -like having the project taken away 
from him by someone who hadn't a clue, I suspect...)

In 1983, the Lisa was released.

In 1984, the Macintosh was released.
 

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