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Source Code for Apple's Lisa Operating System to be Released for Free in 2018
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Yes, today's computers have an immense amount of capability built into them, and built better than ever, yet people think that $1000 is expensive for a [good] computer. It's not. Today's computers are cheap for what you get with them.
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Ask and you shall receive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Pascal_and_C
I still fire up my 1984 mac every once in a while. It has been upgraded to a fat Mac with 512 kB of memory.
My head hurts. There are huge differences but mainly C is much closer to the hardware and allows for more efficient programming and worse errors.
[doublepost=1514444216][/doublepost]"Only" 100,000 sold at 10k each. That's $1 billion (in 1983 dollars.)
The Apple Lisa, released in 1983, was one of the first personal computers to come equipped with a graphical user interface, and soon the operating system that ran on the Lisa will available for free, courtesy of the Computer History Museum and Apple.
As noted by Gizmodo, Al Kossow, a software curator at the Computer History Museum, recently announced that both the source code for the Lisa operating system and the Lisa apps have been recovered. Apple is reviewing the source code, and once that's done, the museum will be releasing the code publicly.Back when the Lisa was first released, Apple charged $9,995, with the machine aimed at business users. It was equipped with a 5MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1MB of RAM, and a 5MB hard drive. Given its high price, Apple only managed to sell about 100,000 of the Lisa computers. Though Steve Jobs originally denied it, he later said the Lisa was named for his daughter, Lisa Brennan.
Apple's Lisa operating system featured the text-based Workshop for developing software and the Lisa Office System, which had seven apps that included LisaWrite, LisaCalc, LisaDraw, LisaGraph, LisaProject, LisaList, and LisaTerminal.
The Lisa computer was followed by the Macintosh in 1984, and the Macintosh was essentially a more affordable, improved version of the Lisa, which allowed it to outsell the Lisa. Though Apple did introduce additional versions of the Lisa computer at a lower price tag, it was ultimately discontinued only a few short years after its introduction.
Article Link: Source Code for Apple's Lisa Operating System to be Released for Free in 2018
excuse my ignorance, but surely not much of the source code would of much use to anyone, especially since most of the Lisa/Mac in the early days relied on the graphics toolbox built into the ROM, right? It want's until the Bondi Blue iMac & G3 tower came along that the expensive ROMs moved into the OS (aka ROM in RAM). I think these components would be more significant, no?
I remember working on the Lisa (I was an Apple techo a long time ago) and I could not believe how great these machines where, even better than the first Macs. These computers where WAY ahead of anything else in that time (within the PC market) and I wish that I could say the same now. Alas, the Mac looks more like an antique compared with some of the PC offerings now...
I remember working on the Lisa (I was an Apple techo a long time ago) and I could not believe how great these machines where, even better than the first Macs. These computers where WAY ahead of anything else in that time (within the PC market) and I wish that I could say the same now. Alas, the Mac looks more like an antique compared with some of the PC offerings now...
Well, If the software is released a a GNU project or some such developes, it is possible it will gain some small popularity to some really good and satisfying ends. Especially for those who harken back to the days where programming was programming instead of monstrous beasts that hardly anyone has a full grasp of.
We might see some artifacts from and earlier age when language syntax was much cleaner and simple.
The Lisa has its roots in Pascal and Object Pascal.
Also, it is an OS that ran well on a 5 megaHtz machine with a tiny footprint compared today's machines. How would such an OS do on a 2.5 gegaHtz machine? It would be VERY fast.
It actually might find some useful nitches.
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ouch! Pascal and C are in no way similar. Pascal has a very uniform systemic, simply structured syntax of maximum symplicity, C does not.
Interesting maybe, but not legal — the source will be available, but not under an open-source license.
That's neat. The earliest Mac I remember seeing was when I went to University with a friend and she was working on a little Mac around 1991-1992. I was blown away by the machine (and the little smiling computer icon.)
If I knew anything about programming, I'd look forward to this.
If I knew anything about programming, I'd look forward to this.
When C first hit the scene, I thought it was a step backward in terms of computer language development, primarily due to it being closer to the hardware and requiring the programmer to be (painfully) aware of and managing null termination on strings.
Having written my share of software in Assembler (360 and on personal computers), PL/I (and the rest of the language family: PL/S, PL/AS, etc.) I was excited for the ability to "step up" and develop in Pascal. Oh what we could do on a PC/AT with PC-DOS and Turbo Pascal 3.0. The compiler, editor, and linker all in a 40KB executable file.... hold on... hey you kids! get off my lawn!!!... I'm back.
I think releasing the source code for the Lisa OS is fantastic and hopefully will give people today a peek into what personal computer software and system development was like back-in-the-day.
Time and technology marches forward. We've gain a lot in the process.... but we've lost some stuff (some of that should've been kept) along the way.
I hope we'll be able to run this on our present macs, in an emulator or something. Be fascinating to see the first commercialised GUI (outside of Xerox) functioning.
Re: Pascal v C
Basically Pascal is a sequential language, each line of code is numbered and to call a repeated routine you have to specify the start line of code for that function, dropping out with if/then functions. C is modular code, whereby you write self-contained modules of code that are known as functions, which you then call from either other functions or the main program routine. This makes overall programming simpler to write and enables greater diversification and complexity.
Re: Pascal v C
Basically Pascal is a sequential language, each line of code is numbered and to call a repeated routine you have to specify the start line of code for that function, dropping out with if/then functions. C is modular code, whereby you write self-contained modules of code that are known as functions, which you then call from either other functions or the main program routine. This makes overall programming simpler to write and enables greater diversification and complexity.
No. Just no. None of it was taken from Xerox PARC. What Apple got from visiting PARC was the concept of a GUI. The implementation on the Lisa, and then the Mac, was entirely Apple's work. It differed greatly from what they saw at Xerox.
You must be thinking BASIC, not Pascal.
Kevin Costner? I have never seen this commercial before. The way he grips the mouse is painful.
LisaOS was way ahead of MacOS at the time. LisaOS could multitask and supported serialization of software to help prevent piracy. However, it used rectangle pixels (the Mac used square, the ST & Amiga round) and was half the speed of the Mac. The rectangle pixels made MacWorks (the software on Lisa to run Mac software) look distorted.
Burrell Smith (the guy was brilliant, I always felt bad for him later) was able to make the Mac twice as fast at half the cost which sent shockwaves through Apple at the time. This caused a huge division in Apple fueled mostly by Jobs.
You can download the Lisa here: http://lisa.sunder.net/downloads.html
You can learn more about the early days at Apple here: https://www.folklore.org
Burrell Smith (the guy was brilliant, I always felt bad for him later) was able to make the Mac twice as fast at half the cost which sent shockwaves through Apple at the time. This caused a huge division in Apple fueled mostly by Jobs.
You can download the Lisa here: http://lisa.sunder.net/downloads.html
You can learn more about the early days at Apple here: https://www.folklore.org
That is not Pascal you are describing. Maybe you are thinking of BASIC. Pascal is an imperative procedural language without line numbers.