Byte Interviews the Apple Lisa Dev Team (1983)(computeradsfromthepast.substack.com)
computeradsfromthepast.substack.com
Byte Interviews the Apple Lisa Dev Team (1983)
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/byte-interviews-the-apple-lisa-dev
45 comments
You might find the example in section 4.2 of this interesting: https://www.applefritter.com/content/enlisting-user-help-sof...
Interesting, thank you! I believe they are describing the invention of the clipboard: two-step cut-and-paste instead of defining a selection and a destination and then executing a move command.
"Tesler: Each engineer set his or her own schedule. Some engineers work something like Monday through Friday from nine to five. Others work all day at the office, then go home and work all night there. And what an individual engineer does may vary from time to time.
Daniels: These people have pride. They set their own milestones and they want to meet them, so they'll put in extra work to do that.
Tesler: We decided a long time ago that since the project would obviously go on for more than a few months — a couple of years — we couldn't have this constant pressure on everybody, because people would just crack. "
This is great managerial wisdom right here.
From everything I've read, Larry Tesler really was someone great. RIP
Daniels: These people have pride. They set their own milestones and they want to meet them, so they'll put in extra work to do that.
Tesler: We decided a long time ago that since the project would obviously go on for more than a few months — a couple of years — we couldn't have this constant pressure on everybody, because people would just crack. "
This is great managerial wisdom right here.
From everything I've read, Larry Tesler really was someone great. RIP
An interesting interview with Dan Smith, who was the User Interface Coordinator for the Lisa, and then switched to the Mac project, is at https://archive.org/details/Semaphore_Signal_26
> In software, we drew mostly experienced people from other companies and very few people straight out of school. Even the ones we took out of school generally had lots of job experience. In fact, one time I surveyed the applications group and found an average of nine years' work experience in software. When we looked at resumes, we tried to find people with several years of experience in development. We made exceptions if someone had specialized in something we were interested in or was a top student who also had good summer experience. We wanted an experienced team because what we've been doing is a very major software effort. It's very complex, and there's such a large body of software to crank out and make reliable that it takes experienced people.
The remarks about team-building were very interesting too.
The remarks about team-building were very interesting too.
Good interview. It includes insightful commentary on how Xerox did and didn't influence the project, starting with this:
> BYTE: Do you have a Xerox Star here that you work with?
> BYTE: Do you have a Xerox Star here that you work with?
This type of interview, with such detailed technical questions and answers, with actual engineers (not product spokespeople), would be impossible these days.
Not impossible, but it would likely be relegated to a video on some obscure YouTube channel with no transcript and a few hundred views. Though for the biggest orgs (Microsoft and Apple of today), there are too many layers of red tape and lawyers, so in that case I'd fully agree.
One of my favorite interviews in recent years was the Chris Lattner interview by the three guys on the Accidental Tech Podcast
https://atp.fm/371
All of the hosts are very technical.
https://atp.fm/371
All of the hosts are very technical.
yeah, but at the time of the interview Lattner had already left Google; it's very unlikely he would have been able give that interview while still working on TF at Google (which was my point about the Byte/Apple interview)
Wayne Rosing is still working on technical problems at Las Cumbres Observatory in Santa Barbara. Absolute legend of an engineer. There is a LISA in the conference room there :)
"Rosing: ... We felt it was worth risking a theft to gain the increased productivity of people working at home."
This is so ironic because Wayne was the one who shut down WFH at Google when he took over from Urs Holzle back in 2001. That was one the things that caused me to leave.
This is so ironic because Wayne was the one who shut down WFH at Google when he took over from Urs Holzle back in 2001. That was one the things that caused me to leave.
Man, I really miss Byte. Subscribed to it for years. Loved that it covered a wide variety of topics.
Byte was great. I've the discussion of the NEC 7220 here.
It was widely available here in the UK and in a pre-world wide web age it was one of the most important ways of knowing what was going in the US market. Well for a young me anyway.
I loved it. I remember the issue detail the NeXT Cube particularly.
It was widely available here in the UK and in a pre-world wide web age it was one of the most important ways of knowing what was going in the US market. Well for a young me anyway.
I loved it. I remember the issue detail the NeXT Cube particularly.
and loved the covers!
"The 'mouse' pointing device is about the size of a package of cigarettes and has one button on top". God bless the 80s!
And you'd have to pop the ball out every now and then to clean the crud that had built up on the x & y rollers that otherwise made the on-screen pointer stick and skip. Good times.
And even though we're well into the future of optical mice, when my Bluetooth mouse disconnects for a few seconds, the habit of thunking it on the desk a couple times persists... (to unstick the ball)
Then there were the first-gen optical mice which required special mousepads with a grid on them for the mouse to know how it was being moved.
> When did you do the hiring?
It’s crazy to think Apple Lisa devs were hired without needing to solve several Leetcode problems.
It’s crazy to think Apple Lisa devs were hired without needing to solve several Leetcode problems.
For more of this sort of thing see:
https://folklore.org/0-index.html
though I still think about what might have been when I read:
https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html
and wish there was something readily available and well-supported along those lines now.
https://folklore.org/0-index.html
though I still think about what might have been when I read:
https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html
and wish there was something readily available and well-supported along those lines now.
Shame that Bill Gates was able to force Apple to kill MacBasic.
I wonder if Apple would have included it in the box, or if it would have been popular, and if the Mac would have attracted more hobbyist programmers like the Apple II did?
On the other hand, a couple of years later Apple introduced HyperCard, which really was a kind of end-user programming revolution, even if it largely became an evolutionary dead end (though HyperTalk influenced AppleScript and probably other languages as well.) Perhaps if HyperCard had been networked then it might have survived longer into the web/JavaScript era.
I wonder if Apple would have included it in the box, or if it would have been popular, and if the Mac would have attracted more hobbyist programmers like the Apple II did?
On the other hand, a couple of years later Apple introduced HyperCard, which really was a kind of end-user programming revolution, even if it largely became an evolutionary dead end (though HyperTalk influenced AppleScript and probably other languages as well.) Perhaps if HyperCard had been networked then it might have survived longer into the web/JavaScript era.
HyperCard was late to the show, and confused by not being released as a programming/development tool (usually you had to make a special change to enable that), and it was weird, and it made "Stacks", not programs/applications.
Originally, there was no separate "player" version of Hypercard, so the stack editing/development tools were universally available. The Hypercard player appeared as a separate thing after Clarus took over as Apple's software distribution arm.
Typing "magic" in the message box of the Hypercard player converted it into a full version of Hypercard.
Typing "magic" in the message box of the Hypercard player converted it into a full version of Hypercard.
Myst was created in HyperCard (I think?), one of the most popular computer games of all time (and recreated like 5 times now!).
Yes, and before that there was _The Manhole_ which was described as "Where Alice would have gone if Alice had had Hypercard".
If they had built networking into Hypercard I doubt the web would have come to being - there would have been no need. I remember seeing somewhere Bill Atkinson talking about what a miss it was. Especially since AppleTalk was built into the Mac from day one :/
The Mac was priced too far out of the hobbyist snack bracket. And Steve Jobs deliberately sealed it off to be un-expandable and mostly unfriendly to tinkerers.
And yet...
It got there in the end.
But in the early days, that opened up the niche for the Atari ST, the "Jackintosh", sold with the tagline "the power without the price". Dismissed these days but hugely important and influential in its time.
And that also paved the way for the Amiga.
But in the end, they tied their systems too closely to the low-end entry-level spec, which Apple did not do with the "sealed off" Mac. Which led to the Mac Plus, and the Mac II, and hundreds of models, still on sale today.
While the ST and Amiga struggled into the 68030 era then mostly died out.
So in fact, it's not really true, is it?
It's not about the price, because...
... in the end, they got reasonably priced...
... and still sell today, 40 years later...
... there's always the 2nd hand market...
... they had cheaper rivals but those companies died, showing that keeping your prices high enough for healthy profits is in fact the long-term winning strategy.
So: no. The MacBook Air is even more "sealed down."
It has been on sale, that locked down, for 16 years, and yet it still sells ten million a year.
https://gitnux.org/macbook-air-statistics/
So... no. Argument rejected on all counts.
It got there in the end.
But in the early days, that opened up the niche for the Atari ST, the "Jackintosh", sold with the tagline "the power without the price". Dismissed these days but hugely important and influential in its time.
And that also paved the way for the Amiga.
But in the end, they tied their systems too closely to the low-end entry-level spec, which Apple did not do with the "sealed off" Mac. Which led to the Mac Plus, and the Mac II, and hundreds of models, still on sale today.
While the ST and Amiga struggled into the 68030 era then mostly died out.
So in fact, it's not really true, is it?
It's not about the price, because...
... in the end, they got reasonably priced...
... and still sell today, 40 years later...
... there's always the 2nd hand market...
... they had cheaper rivals but those companies died, showing that keeping your prices high enough for healthy profits is in fact the long-term winning strategy.
So: no. The MacBook Air is even more "sealed down."
It has been on sale, that locked down, for 16 years, and yet it still sells ten million a year.
https://gitnux.org/macbook-air-statistics/
So... no. Argument rejected on all counts.
So, well, I was an Atari ST user back in the day. So.
And yes the Mac dropped in price for a period in the late 80s, 90s, in the 030 era as you say. But this had a lot to do with dropping component prices and Apple's mass market strategy at that point. At that point in time my mother got a IIlc on educational discount and it was a far better deal than a PC of the same era, at least for what she was doing.
And in that era they made it a relatively open platform at that point, too, with an expansion bus, and ADB and all that.
But that was well beyond when Jobs was there. His original vision was a locked down appliance box. Though he changed his tune when he went over to NeXT.
The original Mac was too expensive for regular middle class people, and it had no expansion ports. I don't think you can deny those two facts.
And yes the Mac dropped in price for a period in the late 80s, 90s, in the 030 era as you say. But this had a lot to do with dropping component prices and Apple's mass market strategy at that point. At that point in time my mother got a IIlc on educational discount and it was a far better deal than a PC of the same era, at least for what she was doing.
And in that era they made it a relatively open platform at that point, too, with an expansion bus, and ADB and all that.
But that was well beyond when Jobs was there. His original vision was a locked down appliance box. Though he changed his tune when he went over to NeXT.
The original Mac was too expensive for regular middle class people, and it had no expansion ports. I don't think you can deny those two facts.
The Apple II (4KB of RAM) was introduced at $1298 in 1977, equivalent to around $2225 in 1984 dollars. But it didn't include a display (though you could just use a TV) or a floppy drive - the Disk II was introduced in 1978 for $495, about $790 in 1984 dollars.
The Mac (128KB) was introduced in 1984 at $2495 - and it included a floppy drive, mouse, and integrated display.
The Mac (128KB) was introduced in 1984 at $2495 - and it included a floppy drive, mouse, and integrated display.
I had a Lisa on my desk in late 1983, along with an Apple II and Apple III and later a PC/XT (not sure if that appeared before they took the Lisa away). The Lisa was for evaluation, so I wrote some reports with it but didn't get to write any code. It was ridiculously expensive, but I could tell that it represented the future of personal computing. Explaining to my friends how it worked was difficult; even the concept of a mouse, much less fonts and a bit-mapped display, was foreign to them. None of my friends even owned any kind PC so they had little to compare my description to.
It's a shame they abandoned it so quickly for the Mac, and let that project suck away all the air in the room, or allowed a competing project like that at all instead of concentrating efforts. The Mac stole from the Lisa but just aesthetic / UX aspects, and produced something that didn't grow well over the years... no memory protection, single tasking, etc. Things that impacted them very badly in the late 80s and into the 90s when customers wanted/expected these things and System 7 did not cut it.
Lisa really was the superior platform in many ways and it really would have come down to finding a way to get prices lower through economies of scale. Another couple years and the 68k and supporting chips and RAM were way cheaper and you could make a fairly beefy machine in that class for pretty cheap (as Tramiel showed with the Atari ST.)
Lisa really was the superior platform in many ways and it really would have come down to finding a way to get prices lower through economies of scale. Another couple years and the 68k and supporting chips and RAM were way cheaper and you could make a fairly beefy machine in that class for pretty cheap (as Tramiel showed with the Atari ST.)
I remember reading the accounts of the Lisa in (I think) Softtalk when I was in high school and thinking that this sounded like an absolutely amazing system. Of course, even a $666.66 Apple ][+ was not in the cards for my family¹ so a $10,000 Lisa was never going to happen, but I still dreamt of it.
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1. Until my cousin got me a Spectravideo 318 when I was a senior in high school to write some demo programs for the local dealer, I never had a computer of my own and to get computing time I had to either show up before school or stay after and use the school computer lab, assuming it was even an option.
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1. Until my cousin got me a Spectravideo 318 when I was a senior in high school to write some demo programs for the local dealer, I never had a computer of my own and to get computing time I had to either show up before school or stay after and use the school computer lab, assuming it was even an option.
One can read the entirety of Byte's US magazine output, without the blogspam:
https://vintageapple.org/byte/
(I have no idea if the foreign language editions and so on made it online)
https://vintageapple.org/byte/
(I have no idea if the foreign language editions and so on made it online)
Nice. Found the article on pages 90-114 of this 536 page PDF. Fewer typos/errors, and tons of nostalgic ads... but takes a while to load:
https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/198302_Byte_Magazine_Vol_0...
https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/198302_Byte_Magazine_Vol_0...
If you're into the ads, Jason Scott has a project going to scan all the old Computer Shopper magazines. I haven't looked to see exactly where things stand with that.
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543
I recently started looking at ads in the old Byte magazines and among the things I was reminded of was how long the Z80 held on among the Byte crowd. And how much money (more apparent if you adjust for inflation) hobbyists and aspiring professionals were willing to spend on their hardware and software toys in the eighties. Having grown up in that time makes things like (a timely example) some people whinging about the cost of a Raspberry Pi 5 feel so irritating and inexplicable.
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543
I recently started looking at ads in the old Byte magazines and among the things I was reminded of was how long the Z80 held on among the Byte crowd. And how much money (more apparent if you adjust for inflation) hobbyists and aspiring professionals were willing to spend on their hardware and software toys in the eighties. Having grown up in that time makes things like (a timely example) some people whinging about the cost of a Raspberry Pi 5 feel so irritating and inexplicable.
There was a much smaller difference between high and median incomes in the early 80s, so the original Mac would have been around 1 month's salary - not trivial, but not an impossible reach for many people.
Lisa was far out of that bracket. But business S-100 systems had been selling for $2k to $20k and up since the 70s, so $10k for Lisa's advanced features would have seemed realistic.
Today most people are paying far more in student debt, health insurance, and housing costs. So although nominal income is three times higher, free disposable income hasn't kept pace.
It's true that hardware today is commoditised and much, much cheaper. But at the low end, those old II/Mac systems were still more affordable to middle class families than a straight inflation conversion suggests.
Lisa was far out of that bracket. But business S-100 systems had been selling for $2k to $20k and up since the 70s, so $10k for Lisa's advanced features would have seemed realistic.
Today most people are paying far more in student debt, health insurance, and housing costs. So although nominal income is three times higher, free disposable income hasn't kept pace.
It's true that hardware today is commoditised and much, much cheaper. But at the low end, those old II/Mac systems were still more affordable to middle class families than a straight inflation conversion suggests.
There was a recent post about restoring a different Motorola 68k machine, an early 80's $25,000 HP Series 200 9836C.
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/repairing-a-25000-hp-worksta...
People forget how ruinously expensive RAM was in the early 80's, and that HP machine had a very large amount for the time.
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/20/repairing-a-25000-hp-worksta...
People forget how ruinously expensive RAM was in the early 80's, and that HP machine had a very large amount for the time.
One months salary is still an awful lot for something that no middle class family ever needed. If the goal is educational and/or recreational (games), then a 6502 machine could be had at a fraction of the cost and with a community. In the UK, the Macintosh basically didn't exist as far as I remember, my first 68000 machine was an Atari ST in 1986/7, still a fraction of the price of a Mac. I didn't see a Mac until the early nineties and it was by then nothing new or interesting (the OS was already considered technically obsolete).
Yep, same here in Canada. My mother was a teacher and my father a sometimes-unemployed machinist, so on the upper side of working class, really, and big exciting family expenditures in the early & mid 80s were things like a microwave or a dishwasher which we could afford maybe once a year at tax return time. It was a big expenditure for them to get me the VIC-20, which I ran off an older B&W 9" TV. Saved my own allowance money & money from bottle recycle returns to get a used Atari 520ST in 1987.
They had a single Macintosh at the school, which I sometimes got to play with. Even the Apple II was priced out of the "home" market possibilities. Family friends had one, but it was like a luxury product like their hi-fi system or boats.
Maybe the US was a different story. But here a Mac was way out of the reach out of people on a typical income.
Also people didn't typically take on debt like they do now. Interest rates were double-digits.
They had a single Macintosh at the school, which I sometimes got to play with. Even the Apple II was priced out of the "home" market possibilities. Family friends had one, but it was like a luxury product like their hi-fi system or boats.
Maybe the US was a different story. But here a Mac was way out of the reach out of people on a typical income.
Also people didn't typically take on debt like they do now. Interest rates were double-digits.
I’d love to hear some specific examples of this. Things that we probably take totally for granted now but weren’t at all obvious during the initial design and implementation phases.
This isn’t the kind of shit you get from A/B testing.