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Seventeen posters highlighting Apple Lisa’s most notable pros and cons. With thanks to James Musheno, Tom Stepleton and Andrew Henning.

The posters are meant to be printed in 70×50 cm size, although still look good when scaled down to A3 format. They can be downloaded freely in ready-to-print PDF form, I would just appreciate a photo if they are printed and hung somewhere.


Download all 17 posters in a ZIP archive (22 MB).*


“Think new computers are user-friendly?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Think new computers are user-friendly?” poster
“Like mice more than keyboards?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Like mice more than keyboards?” poster
“Got used to copy and paste?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Got used to copy and paste?” poster

“Prefer your commands à la carte?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Prefer your commands à la carte?” poster
“Double clicks or nothing?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Double clicks or nothing?” poster
“Drag-and-drop is second nature to you?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Drag-and-drop is second nature to you?” poster

“Taking undo function for granted?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Taking undo function for granted?” poster
“Putting your trashcan on the desk?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Putting your trashcan on the desk?” poster
“Think your computer is slow?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Think your computer is slow?” poster

“This Mac OS X is reliable?” poster
This image can be zoomed“This Mac OS X is reliable?” poster
“Couldn’t live without WYSIWYG?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Couldn’t live without WYSIWYG?” poster
“Lost hours of work due to power failure?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Lost hours of work due to power failure?” poster

“Hate those file extensions?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Hate those file extensions?” poster
“Forgot which program you need now?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Forgot which program you need now?” poster
“Not a big fan of product activation?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Not a big fan of product activation?” poster

“Scratched your CD again?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Scratched your CD again?” poster
“Like the hibernation feature?” poster
This image can be zoomed“Like the hibernation feature?” poster

Transcription

Think new computers are user-friendly? Launched in the era of command-line-operated PCs, Apple Lisa had one of industry’s first mouse-driven graphical user interfaces. It was a breakthrough in human-computer interaction, popularized later even more by Macintosh.

Like mice more than keyboards? Users of Apple Lisa could say the same thing in 1983. This groundbreaking computer featured an attractive, intuitive, and easy to learn mouse-operated interface with icons, windows, pull-down menus and dialog boxes.

Got used to copy and paste? It was Apple Lisa that introduced it in 1983. For the first time, users could copy selected items from one document, and then effortlessly paste them in another document. Or, sometimes, even another application.

Prefer your commands à la carte? Apple Lisa from 1983 was the first computer to feature a menu bar at the top of the screen and pull-down menus with commands and shortcut keys – an idea that survived to this day in essentially the same form.

Double clicks or nothing? Double-clicking, an action making life easier for most of the people, was born with Apple Lisa in 1983. Back then it was called simply “clicking twice rapidly,” but already allowed for its most common use – expanding an icon to a window.

Drag-and-drop is second nature to you? Thank the designers of Apple Lisa, who developed this idea in 1983. Before that the usual way to move or copy was point-and-keypress-and-point, providing less feedback and forcing to use both the keyboard and the mouse.

Taking undo function for granted? It hasn’t always been here. Apple Lisa from 1983 was one of the first computers to have it. Granted, it was only one level deep and did not support all operations, but already provided the users with a “tremendous security blanket.”

Putting your trashcan on the desk? Don’t worry. Everybody’s been doing that since Apple Lisa introduced the concept of on-screen trashcan in 1983. The original Wastebasket could only hold one file or set of files – but, come to think of it, isn’t this how real-life trashcan work?

Think your computer is slow? Apple Lisa from 1983 was probably slower. Its GUI-based operating system was so complicated and ahead of its time that even Motorola MC68000, one of the then most powerful processors, could hardly keep up with it.

Think Mac OS X is reliable? Macintosh had to wait for a stable and secure operating system for 17 years. Its predecessor, Apple Lisa, already had cooperative multitasking and memory protection in its first incarnation in 1983.

Couldn’t live without WYSIWYG? Apple Lisa, introduced a year before Macintosh, already used “what you see is what you get” principle across the whole operating system. Its 720×364 monochrome display gave a fair representation of the actual print output.

Lost hours of work due to power failure? Apple Lisa from 1983 saved all the editing changes in the background, so crashes or power failures did not affect users’ work. The save command was usually invoked explicitly only to serve as a checkpoint to revert to later.

Hate those file extensions? Apple Lisa from 1983 did not have them. But already then it had long filenames. Not only were you allowed to use any characters you wanted, but – as in real life – you could have two or more documents sharing the same name.

Forgot which program you need now? Apple Lisa from 1983 did not have applications in today’s sense of that word. The so-called “tools” were loaded and unloaded automatically by the system. The only thing that mattered to the users was their documents.

Not a big fan of product activation? Apple Lisa from 1983 already had a software protection scheme, tying floppy disks to an internal serial number of the computer. It was confusing and troublesome for many users, especially those having more than one machine.

Scratched your CD again? If that’s any consolation, users of Apple Lisa sometimes had it even worse. Apple’s proprietary Twiggy floppy diskettes were spacious, but sometimes very unreliable, and were soon replaced by standard 3.5-inch disks.

Like the hibernation feature? Apple Lisa had it already in 1983. The power button communicated with the operating system, which saved the documents and its state before going into low-power mode. After powering on, the desktop was restored to its former order.

Copyright

* Some rights reserved. Posters licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. Link points to external site

Page added on 22nd January 2005.

Copyright © 2002-2006 Marcin Wichary, unless stated otherwise.