Source Code for Apple's Lisa Operating System to be Released for Free in 2018

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.

lisacomputer
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.

Just wanted to let everyone know the sources to the OS and applications were recovered, I converted them to Unix end of line conventions and spaces for Pascal tabs after recovering the files using Disk Image Chef, and they are with Apple for review. After that's done, CHM will do an @CHM blog post about the historical significance of the software and the code that is cleared for release by Apple will be made available in 2018.

The only thing I saw that probably won't be able to be released is the American Heritage dictionary for the spell checker in LisaWrite.

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.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 13 New Features

Wednesday April 23, 2025 8:31 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
iphone 17 dummies sonny dickson

iPhone 17 Air Almost as Thin as Its Buttons, New Images Show

Thursday April 24, 2025 2:14 am PDT by
If you missed the video showing dummy models of Apple's all-new super thin iPhone 17 Air that's expected later this year, Sonny Dickson this morning shared some further images of the device in close alignment with the other dummy models in the iPhone 17 lineup, indicating just how thin it is likely to be in comparison. The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be around 5.5mm thick – with a thicker ...
iPhone 17 Air Pastel Feature

iPhone 17 Air Launching Later This Year With These 16 New Features

Thursday April 24, 2025 8:24 am PDT by
While the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" is not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the ultra-thin device. Overall, the iPhone 17 Air sounds like a mixed bag. While the device is expected to have an impressively thin and light design, rumors indicate it will have some compromises compared to iPhone 17 Pro models, including only a single rear camera, a...
Global Close Your Rings Day Pin

Apple Stores Giving Away a Limited-Edition Pin For Free Today

Thursday April 24, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Starting today, April 24, Apple Stores around the world are giving away a special pin for free to customers who request one, while supplies last. Photo Credit: Filip Chudzinski The enamel pin's design is inspired by the Global Close Your Rings Day award in the Activity app, which Apple Watch users can receive by closing all three Activity rings today. The limited-edition pin is the physical...
Apple Logo Spotlight Blue

White House Hits Back at Apple's Massive EU Fine

Thursday April 24, 2025 5:57 am PDT by
Apple's $570 million fine from the EU has triggered a sharp rebuke from the White House, which called the fine a form of economic extortion, Reuters reports. The fine was announced on Wednesday by the European Commission, following a formal investigation into Apple's compliance with the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a landmark piece of legislation aimed at curbing the market dominance of ...
AirPods Pro 3 Mock Feature

AirPods Pro 3 Just Months Away – Here's What We Know

Friday April 18, 2025 5:16 am PDT by
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
apple watch ultra yellow

What's Next for the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch SE 3

Friday April 25, 2025 2:44 pm PDT by
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch, which launched on April 24, 2015. Yesterday, we recapped features rumored for the Apple Watch Series 11, but since 2015, the Apple Watch has also branched out into the Apple Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch SE, so we thought we'd take a look at what's next for those product lines, too. 2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3 Apple didn't update the...
ipad air magic keyboard feature

iPadOS 19 Rumored to Show Mac-Like Menu Bar When Connected to Magic Keyboard

Thursday April 24, 2025 12:09 pm PDT by
When an iPad running iPadOS 19 is connected to a Magic Keyboard, a macOS-like menu bar will appear on the screen, according to the leaker Majin Bu. This change would further blur the lines between the iPad and the Mac. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously claimed that iPadOS 19 will be "more like macOS," with unspecified improvements to productivity, multitasking, and app window management,...

Top Rated Comments

chucker23n1 Avatar
96 months ago
I wonder why ? what a are the benefits to this ?
“What have museums and History class ever done for us?”

That’s why. Learning from history, being inspired by greatness, extrapolating what’s next.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
skeuomorphism Avatar
96 months ago
Absolutely cool! Guessing it'll be C with some Assembly thrown in there for critical areas. But this will just be cool to look at for all the programmers out there.
Almost certainly no C. Apple used Pascal as its primary higher-level language back then. The source to QuickDraw and MacPaint were released in 2010. QuickDraw is entirely assembly, and MacPaint is a combination of Pascal and Assembly.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DTphonehome Avatar
96 months ago
$9995 in 1985 is equivalent to over $25k in 2017. So a top-of-the-line iMac Pro ($13k) is still about half of what the Lisa cost back then. For an exponentially more powerful computer. As a business machine, the price is fair.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kdarling Avatar
96 months ago
Jobs was actually taken to PARC by Apple engineers who wanted to show him what the Macintosh could become so he (and Apple's Board) would not cancel the project ...
Close. His project at the time was the Lisa, not the later Mac.

the team had already developed a problematic GUI prior to the PARC visit
True. Apple's Lisa UI, before going to Xerox, was keyboard driven. Their switch to a GUI was hugely driven by what they saw at Xerox in late 1979.



Apple also invested (via $100,000 in stock) in Xerox / PARC after this second visit and agreed to purchase Xerox services.
No, that's really backwards :), as Apple invested nothing.

Apple was offering pre-IPO stock options to many investors, no strings attached. At the time, Apple needed angel investors, needed the money, and the best way to raise interest in a new stock is to offer pre-IPO options. Thus there was NO need for Xerox to offer anything in return for the investment Apple needed.

Xerox Development Corporation (XDC - an investment arm) took 1.6% of the pre-IP stock options (they didn't actually buy it for another year or so).

It was LATER ON AFTER this that Steve Jobs took advantage of contacts made via that PRE-EXISTING XDC investment connection, to wrangle (Xerox insiders say "bully") his way into a late 1979 visit to the totally different Xerox PARC section.

And while Mac OS did adopt some of the "big picture" elements of Alto / Star - including the use of a GUI and a mouse - the Mac implemented things in it's own unique way
True, except Lisa came before the Mac.

(which is why an infringement suit by Xerox against Apple in 1990 was subsequently thrown out).
Nope. Xerox waited too long to file a necessary legal document, so the case was decided on the slim evidence already given about copyrights.

You might be thinkng about the Apple-Microsoft suit going on at about the same period in time.

Note btw that Apple never claimed to have a GUI license from Xerox. That particular myth seems to have arisen later on.

Attachment Image
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Bart Kela Avatar
96 months ago
I wonder why ? what a are the benefits to this ?
Per Al Kossow, the Lisa operating system has some historical significance which will be detailed in an upcoming CHM blog post that will accompany the release of the operating system source code.

What we already know is that the Lisa operating system was one of the first graphical user interfaces to a commercial operating system, much of it cribbed by Apple from a quick visit to Xerox PARC. Microsoft Windows quickly followed the Lisa operating system and while Apple claimed that Microsoft had copied the Lisa operating system, in fact Microsoft had also seen the Xerox PARC work themselves.

The Lisa operating system was followed by the Macintosh and its game-changing operating system.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
john katos Avatar
96 months ago
Per Al Kossow, the Lisa operating system has some historical significance which will be detailed in an upcoming CHM blog post that will accompany the release of the operating system source code.

What we already know is that the Lisa operating system was one of the first graphical user interfaces to a commercial operating system, much of it cribbed by Apple from a quick visit to Xerox PARC. Microsoft Windows quickly followed the Lisa operating system and while Apple claimed that Microsoft had copied the Lisa operating system, in fact Microsoft had also seen the Xerox PARC work themselves.

The Lisa operating system was followed by the Macintosh and its game-changing operating system.
It was NOT cribbed, stolen, borrowed or anything other remotely suspect. It was paid for with a s-load of pre-IPO apple stock. Also when the Mac was first introduced the apps had to be written and compiled on the Lisa.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)