Lisa: Steve Jobs’ sabotage and Apple’s secret burial | FULL DOCUMENTARY

[@TheVerge]

What other mysteries or forgotten stories in tech should we look into?

[@kishbaby7658]

I LOVE that The Verge is doing these kinds of documentary videos. Please, please, please do more retro tech/buried story videos. Some ideas: How Microsoft rose to prominency, Netscape vs Internet Explorer, etc. Keep up the great work!

[@Q8illusions]

The story of the Nintendo Playstation

[@Av-vd3wk]

Teh story of what my mommy and daddy did to make me

[@Djmatrix2310]

Cray-1 or Cray Inc. As a whole

[@ignaciocampos8435]

What about the sale of Rare from Nintendo to Sony (at the moment, the most successful third-party game studio for Nintendo), or the purchase of Bungie / makers of Halo, originally slated for the Mac, to Microsoft. I think both proved relevant to tech (and gaming) history and future, more so with the current purchase of Activision. Now that I think of it, you could do a "History of acquisitions in gaming" documentary.

[@DominicGo]

i want more tech documentaries!! the more obscure, the better

[@soulchorea]

"the more obscure, the better" - I don't know why, but this is spot on 😂

[@pranjaljagtap8398]

+1

[@tonylancer7367]

Yup, the Springboard one was *VERY* interesting, more of these please!

[@eliazanutto]

HELL YEAH

[@jamescarrico1233]

1

[@ReginaldVandeVelde]

Love such documentaries! Hats off for all the research, finding these people, and actually have them on camera to tell the story, amazing.

[@EmperorKonstantine01]

Steve was a grown up Toy Child with computers where as Wozniak was the Wizard of Apple Technology, both had their ups and downs. Running a expanding business is not easy when you’re not fully up to speed. I think Steve was going way above his head in most instances. Beyond his scope and experience. And the Guy that saved all those computers (majority of Apple Lisa’s) from going to land fill in my consideration and opinion is a saviour and legend beyond the scope of the name. He surely deserved the recognition he got.

[@zsewqthewolf1194]

The woz man was the master of computer tech and if you ask me if he come back I don’t think no one can stop him. Really the apple iigs was everything apple could have been

[@phyzix_phyzix]

What actually happened was the start of planned obsolescence. People were buying the used Lisas and cutting into the Macintosh market. They needed to get rid of the Lisa so they could regain those sales.

[@Funkteon]

Steve Jobs pretty much wrote the book on planned obsolescence... Every company that engages in this practice today has Apple to thank for the methodologies...

[@herrbonk3635]

@@Funkteon Noo, it's much older than that. It came with light bulbs and clothing in the early 1900s.

[@farishanafiah8461]

​@@FunkteonNot forgetting about creating solutions for problems that never exist in the first place. If Sony can put back the still-relevant headphone jack on their smartphone after two years of removing it, everyone including Apple have no excuse to do the same. But of course they don't do that because it'll hurt their wireless earbuds sales.

[@smartduck904]

​@@herrbonk3635 forgot about lightbulbs

[@oldestgamer]

No, not really. The answer is simple, it was taken away from Jobs, so when he got the chance/rehired, he destroyed it. Job was a vindictive a$$hole, the simple answer is the best.

[@DominicGo]

15:51 it’s crazy that they were able to run a different OS on the Lisa. They didn’t have access to the docs/hardware schematics, source code, and modern debugging/decompilation tools, and yet somehow it was able to run software that was made to run on a mac. if Apple didn’t destroy those Lisa’s, I’m sure tech hobbyists would have ported UNIX to it. i want to hear more about the software/hardware mods they made for the Lisa!

[@hydrolifetech7911]

It wasn't the norm to lockdown tech as they do nowadays. Apple then use to tout itself as the most personable tech company in contrast to The Big Blue and the like and you could experiment with their products as much as you like

[@jdo63]

The main mod was from Apple, as they shipped the « Macintosh XL » which was actually a Lisa hardware bundled with a Mac emulator

[@Mac84]

Apple shipped the Lisa 2, rebranded eventually as Macintosh XL, with the ability to run the Macintosh System software. And UNIX was actually also ported to the Lisa!

[@Curt_Sampson]

Computers were a lot simpler in those days, with a lot less code. With a lot of the logic being standard 7400-series and similar parts, you could trace through the motherboard to figure out how things work without an enormous amount of difficulty. You didn't need modern debugging and decompilation tools because for ROMs and programs that are often no more than a few dozen KB long you can aim a simple disassembler at them and work from there. As for running Mac software, the Mac was also that simple, the architectures were fairly similar, and very little Mac software accessed the machine hardware directly, almost invariably using ROM and OS calls instead. Reverse-engineering these machines and making Mac programs run on a Lisa isn't completely trivial, but it is the sort of thing that a single engineer can do in a few months of work without much in the way of special tools.

[@JeffreyPiatt]

​@@Mac84 Lisa II was just a standard lisa revised to use the Macintosh floppy drives and the Snow White design language that was also used on the Macintosh, the II GS and the late IIE units. The Mac XL version of the Lisa II replaced the Lisa Office System os disks with Macworks XL a port of the Mac toolkit that allowed it to. Boot on top of the Lisa bootloader

[@martyzielinski1442]

A more fundamental motive for doing this is that each rejuvenated Lisa represents one fewer sale of a new Mac. The Lisas had effectively become competitors against their newest models.

[@rayskinner4289]

I love mini tech docs like this. Please keep them coming, Verge. A+ stuff.

[@blushslice]

I appreciate people being honest about Steve’s horrible management skills

[@editingsecrets]

Before he found his true calling as Reality Distortion Field proprietor

[@bengagnon2894]

He was never the mind behind Apple in the first place. He was just this one lucky guy, that was at the right place, at the right moment in History, to make a lot of money out of other people's back. All big companies, to be able to be where they are now, have been committing schemes at a point or another. Most of them have gone under the radar. They made movies out of some of them... And yet, the Steve Jobs (he was not the only scam) of this world are still somehow prompted up as to be gods to worship. Capitalism needs its idols to navigate straight after all. But the boat has been sinking since the 80s. And it's sinking faster and faster now.

[@MadsterV]

@@bengagnon2894 no idols are needed by capitalism. That's a socialist thing. Look at their following.

[@TonyPombo]

@@bengagnon2894 Wozniak was the genius at Apple. *He* is the man who all the documentaries _should_ be about.

[@alangrund5031]

@@bengagnon2894 Jobs certainly was not a technical person. What he excelled at was what would make technology accessible to the consumer. Early computers were for nerds like me. That changed with the Apple II.

[@SaschaPallenberg]

Oh there it is. I was so looking forward to this one. Thanks to the whole team that was involved in this timeless piece

[@eefm99]

The production is amazing. The landfill takes look incredible, all the snow, the mountains behind, the cloudy atmosphere, if I didn't know it was a landfill I'd like to go there lol Loved the story, the research, the magazines and the aged ads, the old photos, I was hooked-up for the entirety of the video. This is how documentaries should be, informative, interesting, eye-catching and most importantly, not boring.

[@hexistenz]

I couldn’t have written my take on this documentary any better! Loved it, and your description 🙏

[@edwardjackson]

Tech pimps, robbing the parents in the end!

[@KOTYAR1]

Finally a work which doesn't make Verge look like a bad joke. Amazing journalism.

[@sjgrall]

Also, to quote this, "all the missteps, pettiness, politics, reverse decisions. It's hard to imagine modern Apple flailing like that."....... If Apple could keep the details of the Lisa disposal mostly secret for all those years, who is to say there aren't other secrets the masses do not know?

[@stephenwabaxter]

Just like any other electronics company Apple makes lots of prototypes and some of those will never leave the R&D lab. The Apple car is perhaps the most recent project that had a high initial investment but there has never been any commercial products so in that respect Apple loss several $millions of dollars on that project. But that is the nature of the business that some products succeed and others fail (often never seeing the light of day).

[@standroid2406]

of course there are other secrets. and given the power that big corporations (and wealthy individuals) are given by our legal and tax systems, it's unlikely we'll ever hear about them. we only know this story because Apple, I mean, Jobs was so brazenly arrogant and careless that instead of quietly carting off the Lisas to be disposed of discreetly, he created a spectacle by taking the computers to a public landfill for destruction. a landfill accessible by newspapers, photographers, and anyone else who knew and was motivated to document it.

[@brettbuck7362]

It's not secret, it has been well-known since it happened! It wasn't particularly notable at the time - or now. And I seem to recall someone digging some of them up and getting them running again.

[@stephenshoihet2590]

Well, the apple newton wasn't exactly a huge success 🙂

[@lindyhoppingfool]

Like how many children have died in their factories? Just wondering.

[@OliverHeady1234]

I'm a student at Utah State, and I've been to that dump several times. I had no idea that such a crazy piece of history is buried there! Thank you for this story and your incredible reporting 😄

[@editingsecrets]

That's not a nice way to talk about your college library 😁

[@OliverHeady1234]

@@editingsecrets 😂😂😂 don’t tell my fiancée, she works there!

[@nevhoffman]

This might just be the best thing to come out of the Verge

[@OsoDeAnteojos]

What a great documentary. Please make more like this!

[@brodriguez11000]

If it's all about burying one's failures then there's a NeXT graveyard out there.

[@pctrashtalk2069]

Where I used to work one of our employees had left and got a job selling apples. He stopped buy with the new Lisa and gave us a demo. Everyone liked it but were pretty shocked at the price. We had a Apple II but later bought a IBM PC. When the MAC came out I was surprised that it has no expansion slots like the Apple II and IBM PC. I did buy a Apple IIe myself later but after that never bought another Apple. They just seemed to be overpriced for what you got.

[@freeculture]

The //c should have given you the hint, and it was Jobs idea.

[@goofyleo3869]

And they still are....

[@blaynestaleypro]

Jobs wanted it to be cheaper. Everyone knows that.

[@leechjim8023]

​@@blaynestaleyproI assume this is a joke😂😂😂

[@blaynestaleypro]

@@leechjim8023 Jobs wanted the Mac to be cheaper. It's a known fact. He had no control over the mac by that time it was released.

[@MrCarzo]

Dope documentary. Crazy how a company that touts how "eco-friendly" they are is constantly proven to put roadblocks in front of used equipment, even decades ago.

[@durchschnittlich]

But it's also crazy how much more repairable those computers were. Nowadays, the M series even prevents you from changing the storage drive

[@97nelsn]

Their entire “Privacy” stance is the reason why so many of their devices end up being used for parts since most people forget to log out of iCloud and remove security features (Touch/FaceID). Perfectly great devices being sold for parts b/c of security features people tend to overlook.

[@stoomkracht]

@@97nelsn You can still reset them through recovery mode. All data gone abviously. That's not the issue. The issue is on purpose/designed non-maintainability/repairability/extendibility .

[@bubbledoubletrouble]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@stoomkracht One of the main points of Activation Lock was that it made stolen phones significantly less valuable because fenced phones wouldn’t work even if wiped. If you could do an endrun around it simply by using recovery mode, it wouldn’t be much of a deterrent.

[@stoomkracht]

@@bubbledoubletrouble well yes if you have find my iPhone active and didn't factory reset yourself. Thanks for the reminder ;) anyway doesn't stop one from selling the phone oneself. The main issue is these things are made to break with no economic way to get them up running again or increase simple things like memory, including their desktops and notebooks. Apple is je green washing and really obviously too for anyone who looks further than their silly marketing remarks.

[@KeithGroover]

I bet Steve Wozniak's soul died when he heard that his company was destroying computers because nerds were tinkering on it. What a tragedy.

[@TonyPombo]

I think he died when Jobs "killed" the IIgs. It was cheaper/faster than the Mac with industry leading color graphics/sound and 99.9% compatibility will existing Apple II software. It should have been the next computer (not the Lisa or Mac), but Jobs forced the team to artificially limit the CPU speed and threatened software firms that if they made software for IIgs then Apple wouldn't provide licenses to write Mac software.

[@SamSung-ww3rp]

I saw a YT video where because there was an issue with a piece of equipment for a show. He hurled the thing to the guy and told him to get it fixed.

[@SamSung-ww3rp]

@@YourChannel-r4v Odd that he was making money though, isn't it?🤨

[@KeithGroover]

@@YourChannel-r4v nerds and poor people and creative people. Screw them, right?

[@SixOThree]

@@YourChannel-r4v Normal people are boring and dull.

[@M3GRSD]

Best documentary of 2023. I'm calling it now.

[@somekidwithanm4]

As someone who lives in Utah, this was fantastic! It's a piece of both tech history and local history that I never knew about

[@burieddreamer]

As someone who doesn't live in Utah, I don't get why people write "as someone that " and proceed to make a regular comment.

[@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive]

8:15 According to Lisa Brennan-Jobs's autobiography _Small Fry,_ after a lifetime of denial Steve Jobs didn't admit that he named the computer after her until she was 27 years old and they were vacationing as guests at Bono's Mediterranean Villa. Bono asked Steve "So was the Lisa computer named after her?" and Steve _hesitated, looked down at his plate for a long moment, and then back at Bono. "Yeah it was," he said._ She thought _"It was as if famous people needed other famous people around to release their secrets."_ By her own words _"my father began on the team working for it, but then started working against it, competing against it on the Mac team. The Lisa computer was discontinued, the three thousand unsold computers later buried in a landfill in Logan, Utah."_ Despite that, Steve Jobs would get contradictorily defensive when others would bring up the Lisa computer and state or imply it was a failure. He would say things like _It was too ahead of its time. Too expensive and luxurious. People didn't appreciate her the way she deserved._ Which I read as a perfect metaphor for the Lisa human.

[@brodriguez11000]

Some could be said about the NeXT.

[@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive]

@@brodriguez11000 The original MacIntosh actually didn't sell well either. despite the mythological reverence we now have for it. The Apple II and variants were really the only profitable product they had for at least 15 years.

[@BestSpatula]

A little nugget of computer history I had no idea about! You masterfully interviewed exactly the right people too and got first hand accounts of all of it! It reminds me of GM crushing their electric cars.

[@mattcintosh2]

Those of us deeply into Apple in the 90s, knew about this, and I have an old photo saved somewhere of the bulldozer running over a computer. As for the filing suit about selling system software, it wasn't a one off thing. There was a place called "The Mac Store" in my area that sold used Apple products that had to close due to that exact reason sometime between 2000 and 2002.

[@zimfan101]

Apple's business model now is planned obsolescence and inability to do repairs or upgrades. Truly of reflection of Jobs' malevolence! Great documentary.

[@laulaja-7186]

Jobs’ sociopathy was never unique to him, though he is an extreme case. It’s common across modern business. Planned obsolescence for one thing is generally considered to be GM’s invention. Ayn Rand style selfishness is sacrosanct and being “cut-throat” is idolised. No wonder these wasteful and destructive strategies are the norm.

[@Simonsimon-fy3hq]

A very good point. A few months ago an Apple IOS upgrade made their own email system virtually unusable. The consensus on various fora - an attempt by Apple to force people into buying new machines. Top work Apple.

[@stevie-ray2020]

This approach to business of Jobs' opened the door for Microsoft to become the software giant it is today!

[@CT-vm4gf]

All electronics companies business model is planned obsolescence.

[@steveh1792]

That's odd. I'm running several different Macs from 2013 to this year, still can upgrade memory/storage, repair various parts, which I've done in the last few months. Some of my older MacBook pros have gone on to new owners, who are running versions of macos one or two versions previous to the current ones. You just have to know where to look.

[@WanderlustWonderscape]

This is some excellent production value. The editing was amazing, and the camera and color was of the highest standards. Well done.

[@andreyansimov5442]

This is exactly what I saw and what I felt today watching this vid.

[@amysbees6686]

Fascinating documentary! I worked on an Apple iie in the college "computer lab". Little did I know there was a "Lisa". But then came . . . MACINTOSH.🍎

[@aaronn12345678]

I worked for Apple back then and I remember there was a trade in program offered to Lisa owners but not for any other Apple computers. We recieved many working Lisa's and they were all dumped. Although it was never stated the understanding was that Apple was focussed on Macintosh OS and we wanted to move on from the Lisa machines. On a side note I heard a rumor that Google dumped a lot of brand new phones that were about to be released but then they saw the first iPhone.

[@MichaelTobba]

The quality of this documentary is top tier

[@TomM-ny1zp]

That's crazy! But as you said, the amounts of iPhones and other things being thrown out nowadays is so much bigger, and I think businesses like Bob's could help us with dealing that again. If Apple plays part that is, or if someone forces them to.

[@overnightparking]

I think you misunderstood the comment. It’s not Apple throwing away devices like the iPhone, its their customers or 2nd or 3rd order owners doing that. Apple is well known to recycle as much as it can if for no other reason than it saves them money.

[@stephenwabaxter]

There are businesses today that refurbish and then sell refurbished iPhones. The point here was that Apple owned those Lisa computers so they were free to do with them as they wished. The product was not a commercial success due to its high price tag ($10k) and even the original MacIntosh struggled at $2500.

[@spaceman7915]

Even a 20 year old cellphone has value to the right buyer, the system board contains around $2 of gold. Umicore in Belgium is one of these companies who recycle IT system boards from cell phones, computers, laptops etc.. Then the ABS plastic (casing) and the LiOn battery can also be recycled, and the hardest part to recycle is the LCD screen.

[@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy]

@@overnightparking Recycle what when self destruction chips are built into these devices that fry the entire board and or chips for more then a decade now as a result there is nothing to repair and recycle. The things you send in for recycling ends up being melted or tossed into a landfill since it's cheaper then paying transportation. Especially back to China where today all things come from anyway. They don't offer repairs they instead force you to buy a new device. Microsoft was the 1st that I noticed doing this with XBox360 and lines of PCs they sold. An update triggered a chip that fried a board and idiots kept buying new XB360 over and over again. Even the ones who complained I was like hey stop buying it because complaining doesn't resolve anything, they will keep doing it long as you keep buying their trash. It came to the point that you are forced to change your phone every 3-4 months if not even less. Same goes for most PCs and other garbage. The very same reason why billions of people don't buy this anymore and the same reason why Apple isn't even popular in the world just in parts of US where enough lobotomized idiots buy this garbage over and over again. I use a cheap China made no brand phone made in 2018 that costed 200 euros included shipping, the same tech was offered by Apple and similar big brands for 2K euros, that is one zero more then what I would ever pay for a phone or anything, on top of that this same phone works today, while an Apple phone would probably fry in 3 months upon purchase. F that, I am not an idiot to waste money and gamble at all with overpriced garbage ... The US economy continuous collapse into an endless pits and people being tossed out to streets on daily basis pretty much speaks for itself. You 'people' never were thinking nor learning and never will ...

[@stevie-ray2020]

​@@stephenwabaxter If Sun Remarketing had actually signed a contract to pay Apple a nominal amount of even a few cents for each Lisa computer, then Apple could not of then seized and dumped them!

[@L0vbn56y]

In 1982 I was a sales rep for a computer reseller in New Orleans. In December the owner/principal came to me and said I would be the lead on a new Apple product. In February of 1983 I attended the roll-out of the Lisa. At the time, it was mind-blowing.

[@leechjim8023]

And as expensive as a car!😮

[@compu85]

Fantastic story! And it's cool you were able to secure the TV footage from inside Sun!

[@philipershler420]

I still own a complete Apple Lisa including the original keyboard and mouse. The last time I booted it up in ran fine. This is one of the later machines that has a 5 mByte “Twiggy” hard drive. I also have a complete set of manuals for most if not all of the software that was written to run on the Lisa.

[@gregbell1170]

The Twiggy drive was a 5.25" floppy drive designed by Steve Wozniak. The hard drive was named ProFile.

[@Berniesf]

Since I watching the teaser preview of this documentary 2 weeks ago I had big expectations, and The Verge delivered! Amazing job(s) (pun intended), keep going guys!

[@K3NnY_G]

It's amazing going from normal "TV" productions uploads on YT to something like this, awesome audio, video; everything. So much more effort online now days than in production television..

[@NeoDaOne]

glad more docs are coming out highlighting how horrible Steve was to people. He is praised as a deity when it comes to tech. He had another side that shows these folks may be talented but can be inhumane in their actions. Apple is no dif from most of these companies with their shady dealings.

[@Sal3600]

H8rs gonna h8

[@hydrolifetech7911]

​@@Sal3600fangirling much?

[@Albovsky]

Yeah, that what I was thinking. He was a genius for masses, but pretty much an asshole for his own employees. That’s a pity.

[@AlexAragona-vt4ic]

It's widely acknowledged that Steve's character arc was largely dependent on him getting canned from Apple, eating a slice of humble pie, and going off to form NeXT. That coupled with putting more years under his belt as a human made him a more tolerable and enjoyable person to be around later on in life, and in the 90s and onward. (Not for all, but for many people, he was viewed as a much better person). But a lot of people take the quality they saw in Steve 2.0 and his return to Apple and project it back to the late 70s and early 80s. But that was a time when he was more of a short-fused, immature person.

[@dotapark]

so is this the point of this video?

[@SpaceDust_97]

This was a super interesting story. What a cool success story for Bob, turning around the sales of the Lisa systems.

[@PokhrajRoy.]

It’s nice to see a new Verge Documentary. Such fun 👏🏽

[@stevejenner6838]

What a great documentary. Thank you so much for putting this together. I still have my apple Lisa 2 in a cupboard under the stairs 😂 plus all of the original manuals that came with it. That was one that got away from the landfill.

[@markissboi3583]

enjoyed this history documentry about apple & bob refurnished lisa's good work bob

[@skullsparkjoker9942]

Great Documentary and professional production THANK YOU!!!

[@andi]

This was so well made and interesting! Please do more of these. Thank you!

[@ITIDude]

Thanks for your awesome documentary! As a lover of Apple and computing history it was wonderfully done!

[@Mallaien]

My friend and I repaired a Lisa, using spare parts from an Apple II, We even managed to find a full Schematic of the Apple II at an electronics shop.

[@ifthis_]

Videos like this is why The Verge crew has been my go-to for tech-content since the engadget days!

[@jdo63]

Fascinating documentary ! Have you tried to interview Jean-Louis Gassée, who was in charge at that time ? He just published his biography, he’s probably easier to contact than Apple PR

[@GudieveNing]

Jean-Louis Gassée (who I once met as part of a project) was on the case technically and is a visionary. His Be platform was on the game, a database driven OS and so on. Wish Be and NeXT had merged. I guess the current MacOS is based on the same concepts now (after all, Apple did acquire NeXT), with tags and such, but it's still a fairly dumb OS. Too much focus on woke emoticons and 'Sports' feeds on my desktop (No thanks, I'm working!)

[@christinawoelz3771]

I arrived in my cubicle one day in about 1984 and there was a Lisa on my desk. I was expected to “automate” the administrative tasks I was responsible for. No training, no help, just do it. 😂😂

[@oleharbo]

Love these little tech documentaries you guys do, especially the apple ones. I'd like to see you all tackle the creation of the original iPhone

[@lucasRem-ku6eb]

iPhone is well documented, not sure what part is still unclear .... We knew running OSX on multiple hardware was the solution, ARM the only way. How android got a license for that by apple, that is the real story, and how Google stole it from them.

[@surferdude4487]

Yes. I want to hear the story about how the decisions were made to make a phone with a battery you can't replace and memory you can't expand. Please do tell that story.

[@lucasRem-ku6eb]

@@surferdude4487 Who needs that, will be mega big and heavy, dimm slots on it. You are not smart !

[@surferdude4487]

@@lucasRem-ku6eb FYI, I'm talking about a micro SD card slot. Which you would have realized if you took one micro-second to think before shooting your mouth off.about

[@lucasRem-ku6eb]

@@surferdude4487 cards was 2002 max, all in the cloud now ! Why DIMM slots ? Just buy a phone you need, cheap good enough ? need large CPU cash ? working memory, or storage , get what you need !

[@Tech_NO_Tech]

History = to never forget and to learn. This is a perfect documentary. Thanks.

[@maroonone25]

This was absolutely incredible! I love these sorts of hidden gem type stories! Keep up the amazing work!

[@95blahblahhaha]

Verge has actually been putting out some bangers with these documentaries

[@dasgunar]

awesome job on this verge team- live in salt lake city and have spent a lot of time in logan, this was super interesting to hear/learn about!

[@sevexxan]

So much effort into this video. I felt like i didnt deserve a minute of this. Thanks Verge!

[@justtry2114]

Am I watching Netflix documentary? It's so awesome

[@stachowi]

The quality of this is next level

[@KNMK259]

My heart sank, at 21:00. This is like a lesson to think the evolution of a device, and the end. But thank you for making this.

[@TaskerTech]

That's a great doc, can't believe its from the verge!! congrats

[@ace942]

Thanks so much for the video. It was enjoyable to find out the stories behind the Lisa and I thought it was cool that there was still some life with the innovations that were made by that man's company. I wished that Apple had not forced the Lisa machines to be destroyed and put into a landfill.

[@bonelearn2980]

Wonderful documentary. We can learn a lot.

[@realbangau]

Awesome job!!!!! Proper journalism which is quite rare in this industry! More of this please!

[@seanys]

“We decline to participate.” Good advice to us all whenever it involves companies with an attitude towards consumers like Apple has.

[@TonyPombo]

I think if a company is publicly traded, they should be required to participate. Some of the viewers may be owners, and they deserve to know.

[@arthuralford]

@@TonyPombo Just because we want Apple to say something doesn't mean they will. For one thing, this happened decades ago. Few, if any, of the people who made the decisions involved are at Apple. It's Apple's past, and Apple rarely enjoys discussing it

[@TonyPombo]

@@arthuralford I understand, but I believe they have an obligation to the public/customers/stakeholders to be open with this kind of stuff. The fact it is ancient history, and irrelevant to modern Apple, should make it _more_ likely they would share.

[@harryeldinosaurio]

Congrats to the team on making such a great doc! Should go to film festivals!

[@adamriozzi]

This is why I love The Verge.

[@Tom-bb5kh]

Quality documentary!

[@radman999]

Not a fan of The Verge, but this was exceptionally good.

[@andycapsphotos]

I love this format and story telling! You should do an entire series about Apple and Steve Jobs :)

[@lucasRem-ku6eb]

that story is told before too many times !

[@divyanshharnal5169]

idk how to say this worthhh every min.... best want more tech documentaries.

[@MacintoshLibrarian]

This is an amazingly produced documentary! I had no idea there was so much intrigue around the Lisa!

[@clangerbasher]

I remember to this day the first time I used a Lisa. I was in awe. I didn't shut up talking about it for weeks.

[@clintgolub1751]

Man this made me nostalgic for my parent’s old Mac SE II which had a single floppy drive in our old spare bedroom. It was what I learned how to use a keyboard and mouse on a graphical user interface on. And some of the floppy’s had cool games or brief video/audio clips. It was all amazing!

[@leejungyoung]

Beautiful doc series. The side by side shot of Bob's crew and Apple executives were so good.

[@Barnsey87]

Bob keeping the contract pen is cool

[@GregiiFlieger]

Nice documentary. Well done.

[@Chris-p4u]

So nice to see tech documentaries of this kind. :) Please keep doing this!

[@honeytgb]

Thank you for that unique slice of tech history! Not something you would hear about in a movie about Apple!

[@editingsecrets]

Superb documentary! 12:34 the lobotomy: Lisa included a complete set of office software. With that, plus the bigger screen and keyboard and more expandabiliy in the box, a 50% higher price over the Mac seems justifiable. I'm very impressed to learn the inside story of Sun Marketing. Their ads were very informative for so many years. Such an ingenious business! It's amazing to think what good could have come to Apple back then, if they had let Sun help a few thousand people get into the Mac world at discount prices. How many of them would have become Mac devotees as soon as they could afford to trade up, or even successful developers launching some must-have killer app for the Mac? What is the credit for "Engagement"? What does that role mean? Will you make the original long interviews and documents available, for those who wish they could have joined you for the Utah trip?

[@ocbones_]

Thank you for the ultra-wide aspect ratio, more you tube content should be in this format!

[@urbannpa]

Back in the Day while working for a large PBX (Telecom) installation company I would approach offices about donating their old desktop computers to low income neighborhood schools. Three Philadelphia law offices did this...Imagine if Apple had done the same with the Lisa's.

[@AjArciga44B]

I love old stuffs. Thanks for this creative guy. Lesser junk and pollution and destruction of the environment.

[@joshuahowell9085]

Great piece!! The Lisa May seem obscure but without it, apple may never have come to be what it is today! 👏👏

[@diman585]

Fantastic documentary, Verge exceeded all of my expectations. Great job!

[@jonjohnson5429]

I saw a documentary on Netflix several years ago. It was part of a series it had on the origin of companies. This particular episode was "Microsoft Vs. Apple". If you can believe it, it had several points to make. 1. Apple bought the rights to the mouse from a small company that realized it could not bring it to market. Was a huge hit. 2. Jobs met with Gates to put together a deal for Microsoft to supply apple their operating system. When Jobs showed him their latest project, something called Windows from another small company, Gates bypassed Apple, bought the rights, and put together their latest system in-house called Windows. 3. Wozniak was the engineering side of apple until Jobs forced him out. Business is cut-throat and not for the faint hearted.

[@AbidAli-bo8sv]

So in reality both Apple and Microsoft copied others work?

[@scifisurfer8879]

The funny thing is, Apple had put out a multi-page booklet where they advertised the Macintosh (basically, the 128 and maybe the 512) and they ultimately touted the rebranded "Macintosh XL" as part of the Mac family. I don't know if I still have that brochure any more, but I remember it very well. It even had an exploded diagram of the Macintosh. And yeah, I do kind of wish I had one of them.

[@vitalinoficial]

I've been waiting for this release!

[@ghmasterjj]

This was an awesome watch, please keep doing these docs

[@fairmania]

In late 83 and 84 I worked for an early Apple dealer in the UK and saw my first Lisa and Macintosh, having started there with the Apple IIe on the books. I often wondered how things panned out, as the experience caused ne to avoid computing for over 15 years after that. The firm closed shortly after making me redundant in mid 84, as the products were so expensive, although their in-house programmer retained some customers and kept going, a fact I only discovered after bumping into him in the town. A sad story, but the foreshadowing of computing as we know it now.

this is why i keep coming back to theverge. Perfection. Congratulations.

[@thinerj1]

Keep making more tech documentary! Love this one!

[@ebrombaugh]

I worked at Motorola in the late 80's and we had a few of these Lisas from Sun Remarketing. They weren't bad machines - we did a lot of DTP with them.

[@willcartoons]

We need a full documentary on the Microsoft Zune! That has to be an interesting story.

[@mardus_ee]

The tech press wrote a story of a hobbyist who collects and fixes Microsoft Zune devices.

[@roverhaul]

You should put your logo somewhere on the thumbnail, I had seen this in my recs but didn't realize it was your new docu until the Daring Fireball link - looking forward to watching!

[@buildingbuddy1]

Good story, well told. And two diametrical opposite business models. Reuse, recycle, repair or flashy throwaway and extremely profitable monopoly.

[@andyc9902]

❤ always recycle if it does the job

[@kurotaka007]

Outstanding documentary! Well done. The Phoenix Story for sure.

[@peterbrameld696]

I was editor-in-chief of a UK publishing house in the 80s, I attended the Lisa launch and still have my Apple pin badge that I was presented without that event. I purchased lisas in the early 90s, and you seem to run my business for a number of years. I only disposed of them about seven years ago, they were both in working order, I dread to think what they would have been worth now on eBay! As a journalist, I was told the story that Xerox had an operating system called Smalltalk, and that Apple has approached some of the staff from Xerox and that there was an ongoing dispute between the two companies. It’s certainly a matter of fact that your number of staff from Xerox joined Apple shortly before Lisa was launched. it was a lovely machine to use, when I got new staff, they picked it up really quickly. It did not have colour of course, but the resolution of the graphics was superb. RIP Lisa!

[@rvh1999]

No one cares about you being from that uk island......

[@billsmith5109]

Plus the HUGE 1 mgb ram laser printer. If graphics after you clicked print it sat there for awhile before it started, then printed quite high quality for the time.

[@chroniciguana402]

We built a thriving little weekly newspaper on a bunch of Lisas. It had a whopping 20 MB hard drive, a reasonably large screen and was perfect (in 1979) for typesetting. It even ran Quark XPress. And Sun was a great company to work with.

[@MOBMJ]

this was so emotional to watch, I loved the Lisa. while I was born in 2001, as a BIG time Apple fanboy. I loved this computer, if I was born around that time I'd be so exited to play around this new technology.

[@TonyPombo]

If you were around during that time, you would not be an Apple fanboy. Jobs was a jerk.

[@gswaan]

Great doc, love seeing those older guys being interviewed and telling their stories. Fascinating stuff.

[@KamiruBTS]

Great documentary!

[@andyfim]

Amazing story! Thanks!! True journalism!

[@bassond87]

Big props to the talents at The Verge that brought this together. Very nice work!