January 19,1983

Less than a mile down the road from Apple headquarters on Bandley Drive in Cupertino, California was Flint Center at De Anza College. A formal unveiling of Apple’s new product at the annual company meeting was scheduled to take place here and Apple hope they had things right. The unveiling was for a computer and it was called “Lisa”, which stood for either “local integrated software architecture,” or  for Apples founder Steve Jobs daughter. Or maybe both. The Lisa had been worked on since 1978, when Jobs wanted a computer to replace the Apple II. At the time Jobs saw a machine that would sell for under $2000 and be aimed at business markets. Jobs had high hopes for the machine, which  he hoped would raise Apples market share. Then a year later in 1979 fate came calling. Jobs was persuaded to visit Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The PARC labs have since achieved legendary status as a place of extreme innovation. Jobs was weary though, XEROX more or less invented photocopying and he didn’t feel they had much to contribute in the matter of computers. And its glory days seemed to be behind it. So from Xerox’s side of the table, there seemed to be good reason to cozy up to Apple. Maybe some of the innovations that had been shelfed could get out into teh world.  Xerox knew EXACTLY what they were doing. If Apple lived up to its growing buzz than it couldnt hurt to get a little private placement. A deal was struck: Xerox would buy 100,000 shares of Apple stock at $10 a share, and would agree to never buy more than %5 of Apple. In return Apple would get to make 2 reconnaissance trips to PARC. The trips took place in the last two months of 1979. And for Jobs these trips were a revolation. Xerox demonstrated a wonderful machine called the Alto. It had many of the characteristics that computers have today only more primitive.  It had a GUI, bitmapping (code writing that allowed the merging of text and images), an input device called a mouse, a networking capability, pop up menus, and moveable windows. Like sheets of paper on a desktop. Most of these things had been sitting around PARC for years. In fact, the Alto was already 6 years old, and the mouse was invented in the 1960’s. The PARC people who wore the white doctor coats had presented all this before to the cooperate big wigs and NONE seen anything of any use or value. But unlike all the other people, Jobs understood EXACTLY what he was seeing: the future of personal computing. Now the only thing is to put them in an attractive affordable package. Can you say Lisa?