
From Xerox, with Love
78
“We’re really banking everything
on Lisa’s technology. If Lisa
fails, we’ll be just another half-
billion or billion-dollar computer
company.”
Steve Jobs, carefully specifying Lisa
technology, not the Lisa itself
(BusinessWeek, January 31, 1983)
Despite Lisa’s failure, Apple’s sales
peaked at $11 billion in fiscal 1995.
“The Lisa failed because it was
very under-powered, and so
while it did beautiful things, it
did them very slowly.”
Alan Kay
$9,995. As Rothmuller had warned three years earlier, feature creep boosted
the price of the computer to the point where only well-heeled businesses
could afford it. Instead of its traditional ...