Apple Lisa 2/5
A graphical office computer with a mouse-driven interface.
The Lisa combined an integrated display with a graphical software environment. The collection record identifies this example as a Lisa 2/5.
All photographs of this object
Apple Lisa 2/5
| Maker | Apple Computer |
|---|---|
| Model | Lisa 2/5 |
| Year | circa 1984 |
| Price | around $5,000 |
| Storage | Single 3.5 inch floppy, with a bundled 5 MB or 10 MB hard drive |
| Significance | Mouse driven graphical interface brought to a commercial product |
The Lisa shipped a windowed, mouse-driven interface with overlapping windows, a menu bar and a clipboard in 1983, a year before the Macintosh, and unlike the Macintosh it had protected memory and cooperative multitasking through a proper operating system. It cost roughly ten thousand dollars and sold badly. Almost everything it established survived it, which is the usual fate of a machine that is right too early and priced for nobody.
Record & provenance
The Lisa combined an integrated display with a graphical software environment. The collection record identifies this example as a Lisa 2/5.
Reference: ATX-OBJ-APPLE-LISA-2-5
Source: collection inventory, photographs, and notes accompanying Serious Machines (Amir Husain, 2024).