edmond@bbn-unix.arpa (01/25/83)
From: Winston Edmond <edmond@bbn-unix.arpa> The January 31, 1983 issue of InfoWorld (Vol. 5, #5) has an article on the Lisa. It apparently was announced at an Apple shareholders meeting on January 19. I've excerpted a few paragraphs from that article: "The Lisa user interface closely resembles that of the Xerox Star minicomputer, a system that is based on the metaphor of the electronic desktop. ... "The Lisa operating system, which is largely hidden from the user by a visual menu-oriented user interface, is implemented in Pascal and can run several processes concurrently. ... "As it is initially released, Lisa will run BASIC, Pascal and COBOL... "The system will also support both Microsoft's XENIX and Digital Research's CP/M operating system. "Apple is also experimenting internally with the Smalltalk language designed by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, but it has not announced support for that language. ... "Apple also stressed its commitment to making the Lisa an open system for independent software developers. ... "Lisa also has three internal expansion slots. One will be utilized by the AppleNet local-area network transceiver ... and the others are reserved for future products, with memory expansion as an option. ... "The Lisa will allow the selection of any of 15 different fonts and a variety of font sizes. "Lisa is Apple's answer to the needs of what the company believes is the largest untapped market for personal computers: the white-collar office worker. Barry Smith claims that 15 million office workers, including managers, professionals and administrative assistants, are potential candidates for the Lisa. "To go after this market, Apple plans to deploy some of its dealers (about 100 to begin with and eventually as many as 300 of the 1300 existing Apple dealers), complemented by the company's own National Account Program that was established nine months ago, to seek out Fortune 1000 corporate sales." The issue of InfoWorld also has articles on the Apple IIe, the Commodore 128, the Timex/Sinclair 2000 (48K, color graphics, $199.95), and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. (SNL fans: There's a game to help save Mr. Bill and Spot from Sluggo and Mr. Hands called Mr. Bill's Neighborhood.) -WBE
HKAUTZ@SRI-AI.ARPA@rochester.UUCP (HKAUTZ@SRI-AI.ARPA) (08/01/84)
From: HKAUTZ@SRI-AI.ARPA A friend of mine is considering buying a Lisa or MacIntosh. He's a business person, knows nothing about computing, and wants the usual word processing, spreadsheets, graphs, database stuff. I'd like to hear from people with first hand experience with the Lisa: Is it easy for naive users as the Mac? Is the Apple software all top quality? Is there any good software for Lisa other than the standard package? Major problems/regrets? Would you take it over the Mac if $ weren't a major factor? mail replies to -- henry@rochester Thanks. -------
HKAUTZ@SRI-AI.ARPA@rochester.UUCP (HKAUTZ@SRI-AI.ARPA) (08/07/84)
From: HKAUTZ@SRI-AI.ARPA -------