There was animosity between Steve Jobs and the Lisa team (who perhaps not coincidentally chose to name the system after his daughter). Once he decided that the Mac would compete against the Lisa, the Lisa platform was doomed. Jobs basically told customers, software developers, and the press that the Lisa was obsolete because the Mac was coming out soon and would be cheaper and better. He was correct about the cheaper part.
Unfortunately the Mac cut a lot of corners for affordability. The original Mac had only 128K of RAM, and Jobs didn't want to offer memory upgrades (he thought you should just buy a new computer - sound familiar?) It took Mac OS 16 years to get memory protection, which LisaOS had in 1983. Lisa didn't need to die - it could have merged with the Mac and made the latter a better and more reliable platform, years before Mac OS X.
Not sure what additional software the average consumer could have run to change that value proposition. There were a lot of failed platforms in that time. =3
The competitor to the Lisa didn't really exist yet. Closest would have been a Xerox Star Office system or like the other poster said, one of the various dedicated word processing / office systems like the Wang, etc. and they were even more money.
People were wedging Apple IIs into service in the office, but they weren't exactly cheap, actually, and they couldn't do much.
The IBM PC was just starting to take over here, but it clearly couldn't do what the Lisa or the Xerox Star were trying to do; WYSIWYG, etc. Visi Corp, Microsoft, and DRI were all trying to ship GUI office systems for the PC, but they hadn't made anything compelling yet.
It was another 3-4 years after this before Mac or PC systems were powerful enough to handle full GUI office automation, and another 10 before they really took over those kinds of function.
In the end though Apple (and Xerox) was grasping after a market which didn't really long term exist. The "paperless office" market and office automation didn't end up shaking out like this. MS-DOS PCs + Novell NetWare, etc. did have a niche for a bit though.
> Again, the average user was not going to buy Lisa when functional alternatives were a fraction of the price. =3
It's hard to find an Apple system where there were not cheap "functional" alternatives available for the "average user" at a fraction of the price. Perhaps the Apple I at $666.66? But the Apple II was twice the price (or more) of competing 8-bit systems from Commodore and Radio Shack.
The Lisa was marketed as an "office/professional" computer like the Apple III (vs. the Apple II "personal computer" – which was still much more expensive than the C64.) Compared to the Apple III ($4340-$7800 in 1980), the Lisa was not exactly overpriced - by Apple standards at least. ;-) It also included the 7 Lisa Office System apps (LisaWrite/Calc/Draw/Graph/Project/List/Terminal). At $3495 the Lisa 2 wasn't too far off from the $2495 Macintosh, which had a smaller 9" display (vs. 12" on the Lisa) and only included MacWrite and MacPaint.
As impressive a system as the MacBook Neo may be at $599 (or $499 with edu discount), it's still no $100 ChromeBook. (Though we are in a strange time when DRAM and flash storage costs are making some Apple systems surprisingly price-competitive. Sadly the $499 Mac mini is no longer available.)
Perhaps for a lucky few, but its relative value was unsustainable in that market condition.
We both know Jobs would have wanted more out of MacBook Neo for the users. I think the coin-sweating on modern budget-platforms like Chromebooks would have never made it past his desk. He understood brand goodwill value all too well. =3
> its relative value was unsustainable in that market condition
The Lisa 2 was "only" $1000 more than the ($2495) Macintosh, and included a full office software suite. Ironically though that may have been a reason why developers targeted the Mac, which only included MacWrite and MacPaint.
Having fully integrated office platforms with highly limited use-cases is a laggard consumer product.
Then selling people a "cheaper version" of a bad deal tainted the branding further. Even the "free" upgrades for original Lisa owners drives was essentially telegraphing customers people had ripped them off already.
Sometimes, offering a discount on a bad deal just makes the brand damage worse. =3
Yes like many companies in that era, Apple didn't really understand the value of third party developers until later and they tried to make the Lisa into a holistic closed system, a whole solution, packaging everything and leave little room for third parties.
And the copy protection & licensing was extremely strict on it, as well.
A Wang word processor - as used by Stephen King - was around $12,000.
In the CP/M market, small business Z80 systems with a hard drive could easily top $10k.
The Lisa was pitched at those markets, not people playing 8-bit games.
The Mac hit the midpoint between the two markets to create something new - desktop metaphor computing just barely at the absolute high end of the privileged consumer market.
With the original Mac 128 you got the world's most expensive toy computer. But with no significant games.
It was basically a proof-of-concept brand-building product for early adopters and developers. It wasn't until the Mac 512 that you could actually use it without worrying about RAM limitations.
Stephen King famously did a lot of his work on typewriters, and often claimed it was part of his creative process. Not a great example, as publishing had odd ecosystems up until Aldus PageMaker (1985) revolutionized later Mac markets.
The Lisa was simply a delusional mismatch from the kits and retail consumer products Apple had sold up to that point.
No different from NVIDIA inferring a $12k RTX 6000 GPU is for gamers, when a $500 PS5 or $800 steam deck is also popular with home users. =3
"The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." (Theodor Reik)
By 1986 the Mac Plus had 1MB of RAM (and the Mac had a faster CPU than the original Lisa), though with inferior multitasking and no MMU.
And high-end Macs really weren't (and aren't) cheap, though they could have provided good value over their lifetime. Mac II with a 40MB hard drive was $5369 in 1987, not including a keyboard ($229 for a 105 key model), video card ($499), or monitor ($1500+ for a nice Trinitron-based 13" AppleColor display.) Add more memory and an 80GB hard drive and you are back up in the $10000 range.
And that's not including Apple's best-selling LaserWriter printer (1988), priced at $6995.
But Apple does seem to have learned their lesson somewhat, introducing features on high-end "pro" systems and eventually migrating them downward, rather than splitting the product line into incompatible high-end (Apple III, Lisa) and low-end (Apple II, Mac) systems.
In 1985, Bill gates team released Windows 1.01, and they were heavily supported by IBM vested interests. The 286 PC were around $3k dollars at the time with a 20MB to 30MB HDD.
The LaserWriter (1985) was $6995 or $20940 in 2025 US dollars. However, with Aldus it allowed true desktop publishing, and for a high-volume press-operator with plate-exposure machines it made a great deal of economic sense with transparency film. Not really meant for home offices for a few years yet, but offered something competitive with Ventura Publisher (PC version) and xerox laser printers.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak initially set out on a journey to make computers accessible to anyone. Yet Apple was a business like any other, and prone to the same political problems. There is a subtle relationship between price and value often lost in boardrooms. =3
Unfortunately the Mac cut a lot of corners for affordability. The original Mac had only 128K of RAM, and Jobs didn't want to offer memory upgrades (he thought you should just buy a new computer - sound familiar?) It took Mac OS 16 years to get memory protection, which LisaOS had in 1983. Lisa didn't need to die - it could have merged with the Mac and made the latter a better and more reliable platform, years before Mac OS X.