The manufacturer has just returned the source code of the predecessor of the Macintosh. A great way to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of this mythical computer for all fans of the brand.
The Macintosh is the computer that brought Apple into the history of computing, in particular through its “1984” advertisement, produced by Ridley Scott and which made an impression when it was broadcast. But do you know its predecessor, the Lisa?
The Lisa was the draft of what would become the Macintosh
Named Lisa for Local Integrated Software Architectureand unofficially named in honor of the daughter of Steve Jobs, founder and president of Apple at the time, the computer is the first from Apple to offer the integration of a mouse and the use of a graphic interface.
The model can be considered today as a draft of the Macintosh, which will take up the philosophy, while improving the user experience.
Despite its innovations, the Lisa did not meet its audience. Sold at a prohibitive price of 9,995 dollars at the time (30,300 current dollars after conversion), the model was simply inaccessible to most consumers, especially since computer uses were still rare for the general public.
A source code available for researchers and students
The Lisa therefore celebrates its fortieth anniversary today and for the occasion the Computer History Museum, a museum located in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley and not far from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, has just publish the source code of the computer, under its version 3.1. Included in a 26 MB file are the codes of the various applications, in addition to that of the system, as well as the development kit.
This publication was particularly awaited, since promised by the museum teams since 2018. Finally, it will have been necessary to wait for this anniversary to see it appear.
Rare fact, this publication is made with the blessing of Apple under an Apple Academic License Agreement. The latter does not allow the sale of a device equipped with the operating system, but allows its use in schools and universities, as well as in research laboratories in order to study how Apple went about it at the time to develop and integrate its various technologies.
Source : Ars-Technica
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