Apple's Never-Was Computer
Jeremy Reimer at Ars Technica has a detailed history of the Apple Lisa. Renowned for its staggering price tag, and sending Steve Jobs to set up his pirate crew designing the Mac, most of the history of the Lisa is about what it wasn't. It's a weird Galápagos offshoot of what computers would become over the following decades, but some things are instantly familiar, like the Menu Bar.
There's a more recent example of Apple cribbing old designs for modern systems, but this bit about the Lisa's never technically closing apps and a document-centric model that sounds familiar to anyone using iOS/iPadOS:
But you never really “close” windows on the Lisa. The File/Print menu has two options: “Set aside” and “Save and put away.” Setting windows or apps aside closes them visually, but they remain in memory in case you want to use them again. Also, the system remembers where the window was and automatically saves any files or data you were working with, even if you turn the computer off. “Save and put away” just means you set a new undo point—the system has only one level of undo, and this gives some level of control for reverting to a previous version.
Further:
A weird aspect of the system is that it is document-centric. So if you want to make a new document in LisaWrite, you don’t double-click the LisaWrite icon. If you do, the program launches, but it then admonishes you to go back and tear off a “LisaWrite Paper” instead. When you do that (by double-clicking), a new icon appears close to the LisaWrite Paper icon, and the current date is appended to the file name. You then double-click on that and the document is opened in LisaWrite.
It's not likely that anyone at Apple was thinking of the Lisa when creating iOS and further developing iPadOS, but I can see a clear path between the two philosophies. Sadly, the Lisa's ultimate fate was bootstrapping development for it's younger sibling before ending up as a footnote in its shadow.
It's a good read and if you want to mess around with the Lisa, there is an emulator.
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