Mastodawn

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View has worked with Apple to secure the release of the source code for the OS and office applications of the #AppleLisa computer.

Arguably, this is the earliest comprehensive #GUI environment for a personal computer, and it was first for sale 40 years ago today. It was written in a whole lot of #Pascal .

You can download it here:

https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-lisa-apples-most-influential-failure/

Meanwhile, on LisaList2, folks are starting to dig in:

https://lisalist2.com/index.php/topic,351.0.html

The Lisa: Apple's Most Influential Failure

CHM publicly releases the source code to Apple's Lisa computer, including its system and applications software.

CHM

Michael Engard Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton I get an unaccountable thrill out of seeing these file modification timestamps!

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton I think @siracusa should have an Ask ATP question which is “what is the oldest datestamp on your desktop?”

My oldest self-made file is from 1994-08-12, from a FidoNet forum post I was particularly proud of (a sci-fi fan continuity theory … teenagers!) Here you see multiple copies because of a G4 Time Machine backup in 2011.

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa The oldest legitimate date from one of my own computers is 1991-04-02, the Classic MacOS system extensions “VT102 Tool” and “TTY Tool”, with “Text Tool” a few days later. After that it skips to 1992 with the Control Panel “Numbers”.

I then have a couple of 1985 and 1990 dates but they’re from downloaded retro software in emulation, “BASIC.SYSTEM” from ProDOS 8 and SHORTCIRCU.DSK, a rather good game Short Circuit where you’re the electron.

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa The emulated software timestamps continue to 1982-01-28 and while the times are real (they show me working on a Double Hi-Res graphics project in Dazzle Draw) the date isn’t … but it’s not entirely arbitrary?!

Then the fake dates begin … 1980-01-01 is a mix of retro software, Xcode NIBs, .lproj folders and a really early 4K camera data from JVC (where you had to stitch together 4 quadrants of 1080p60 into 4K60)

All of these except JVC had discrete timestamps

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa Finally we enter the 1970s

But first 1979-11-30! Google Earth had a “doc.kml” from this date

Then 1976, somehow — iTunes has 1976-04-21 for some library files, then iChat has a handful of plists and JPEGs turn up at 1976-04-13. Then MS Office 11 (2004) turns up a few times at 1976-04-11.

Apple’s birthday 1976-04-01 has a small collection of everything — MacOS Classic system folders and Desktop DB / DF, MS Office Font Cache, and some .plists from everyone

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa Before we crash into 1970, a quick stop at 1972-02-21 for “Home.xml” which appears to be zero-byte alias made by MS Internet Explorer for Mac, on a Mac briefly run by a student club in a dirty hack that used the member account home folders from a Linux server

July 1970 has a set of zero-byte files from MS “Office 11TD First Run”, logs from an iPad, an entry from Recent Servers menu, and a VLC DMG of version 0.8.6a.

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa And then we’re in January 1970, with dozens of .plists but mostly aliases from Adobe. I find the last of my personal documents at 1970-01-04 and an MP3 download (just a normal web download) at 1970-01-02, “kpmg.mp3” which was when someone wanted to expose the world to KPMG’s employee anthem.

Why these dates? Did I turn something on with a reset calendar and yet used it for days and days?

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa And then we hit 1970-01-01, with a ton of content. Some really large stuff like my first SD-card camcorder with 720p30 (and a shocking quality by Sanyo, but it was the future in 2007), and amongst other videos and DVD Studio Pro templates, I found a 7.9 MB keynote file I made for a 2011 best man’s speech with more than a hint of Steve Jobs

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa We hit bedrock at UTC midnight, which is reflected by a conversion from HFS to HFS+ as either my standard or daylight saving offset. There are 15 files that are a few hours after that, most of which are videos I filmed, probably on devices recently erased with no wifi password

There are at least 15,000 files in the final / first minute of midnight 1970, but the last one before you reach zero-minute is a “VGA Display….icc” ColorSync profile

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa Of the final 15,000, 10,000 are probably in the final second because Spotlight reverts to alphanumeric sorting …

Immediately prior to that is a 10-digit + 10-digit “.cache” file from Safari, running on PowerPC

We’re returning forward a little now, via nanosecond increments starting in HFS+

I see a QuickTime Channels reference file “….qtch”, 783 kB, with a long defunct MPG streaming link inside it

Christian Kent Jan 20, 2023

@michael @stepleton @siracusa Most of the rest of the nanosecond strata are 2000s-era web caches and various template libraries from video authoring software, probably installed via DVD-ROM

Something called “magicx LiveCam” has script files with null filenames

And that’s it! The anti-climax is because the bedrock is 10,000 files thick, all at zero nanoseconds (UTC Timezone at least).

Wikinaut Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton cc @heiseonline

Simon Kowalewski Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton Finally, we can make an open source fork and port Chromium to Lisa OS. \o/

Wikinaut Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton cc @chaosupdates

Kenneth Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton I had no idea Pascal was used in production!

@Kencf618033 @stepleton

Yep! Almost all Macintosh software was (AFAIK) manully-assembly-optimized Pascal for the first few years.

Robert Petersen

@stepleton @donmelton alright so let’s start updating this thing and modernize it.

2023 will be the year of the Lisa Desktop!

joy larkin 🌺✨Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton Shoutout to @bitsavers who has been working on this restoration project at CHM!

Morfydd Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton Oh wow! My dad, a proto-CS professor, went to a trade show when the Lisa came out, and came back saying it was the future of computing. He was only off by a dozen years… :)

⦺ irick 🐁🐈⚩Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton
... This is so incredibly cool!
Gods I love all these historical OSes getting rescued and archived :D

k cavaliere Jan 19, 2023

@stepleton If I remember correctly the Xerox Alto preceded the LIsa by a few years. So did the Three Rivers Computers PERC. Many GUI's and OS's later we're still futzing with how an icon should look.

Joe Pasqua Jan 20, 2023

@stepleton @ACM Several people have mentioned the Xerox Alto, but it was never really a product. The Xerox Star was a comprehensive product that shipped several yrs before Lisa and was far more sophisticated.

Disclaimer, I am biased having been one of the OS (Pilot) developers.

https://youtu.be/_OwG_rQ_Hqw

The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer

YouTube

Tom Stepleton Jan 20, 2023

@bitsplusatoms @ACM very cool to hear from a Star developer!

Those of us who dare to talk online about early GUIs like to choose words carefully and leave ourselves lots of "outs" 🙂 The "arguably" at the beginning is one, but for Star the usual escape hatch is "personal computer", which can be defined in all sorts of ways...

Deep down I don't really care all that much, but more importantly: I can be bribed! DM for an address where a working or repairable Star may be shipped. I'll put (a) the computer next to my PERQ 2T2 and (b) different words after "Arguably" forever after. D*-machines also gratefully accepted.

Joe Pasqua Jan 20, 2023

@stepleton @ACM

Daring to talk about anything on the internet can be a tricky business...

The closes thing I have to a D-machine is an emulator. I can send you the address of a working 8010, but you would need burglar's tools to get to it! 😂

Ian Darwin 🇨🇦 🇺🇦Jan 20, 2023

@stepleton I think it was pre-dated by the PARC Alto which also had a comprehensive gui for personal computers - just not for sale to the public.

mirabilos Jan 20, 2023

@stepleton sad it’s under a very unfriendly licence… it isn’t even transferrable, so this is bound to go down some day.

Hasufin Jan 21, 2023

@stepleton I am older than the GUI, and this fact makes me feel very, very old.