NOW ON VOD! My first real job was during my senior year of high school when I sold Apple computers at a local computer store in Southern California. One of the highlights of that job was Apple’s introduction of the Macintosh, which was something new and innovative to me. In the corner of the store stood a lone computer: the Apple Lisa. Computer expert and documentarian David Greelish gives us the backstory and history of that lone little computer in Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa.
Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa opens with news footage of a local landfill. The truck drivers were paid a lot of money to dump all of the world’s remaining Lisa computers onto the ground and run them over a few times so nothing could be salvaged.
What is the Lisa? We all know what an Apple Mac is. The Lisa was the previous home and office computing generation that Apple offered as the next evolution of the Apple IIe. The Lisa was the first computer to employ a graphical interface, a mouse, and window-based technology, as computers up to this point were all text-based.
Although the Lisa was much larger and more powerful than the Macintosh, all its cool features would ultimately be transferred to the Macintosh. So why was the Lisa so unpopular? Its price! Each Lisa costs around $10,000 without software, while the Macintosh sells for a much more affordable $2,500.
The allure of the Lisa was it was more powerful and, in a way, a status symbol for computer enthusiasts. As sales for the Lisa tanked, computer stores treated the Lisa like a collectible, which pissed Apple off, and soon ordered the confiscation and destruction of the big-little computer that could.
“…the Lisa was the first computer to employ a graphical interface, a mouse, and window-based technology…”
I’ll be upfront, but the greatest appeal for Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa will be computer historians, geeks, and nerds. Unless you’re like me and have been surrounded by computers your entire life, this documentary leans heavily into nostalgia, computer jargon, and lore. Quite frankly, I was riveted from start to finish.
As a documentary, Before Macintosh is very low-frills. It comprises mainly talking-head interviews with key figures such as John Sculley, the former Apple CEO; Bill Atkinson, a pivotal Apple engineer; and John Couch, the Lisa Development Manager. A large group of hardware and software engineers also worked on the Lisa and Mac. There is not a single hunk in the group—mainly mental hunks. The film moves to computer store owners, dealers, and collectors in the second and third chapters.
Accompanying the interviews are commercials, ads, and news footage. Makeshift title plates, then run us through the outline of the film. In other words, this is a low-budget documentary.
What’s important is that the information is interesting, the history is accurate, and there’s no more joy than a nerd reminiscing about how cool the world used to be. Though the third act gets a bit too deep for me, all of my nerd nerves were tickled.
Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa is an engaging deep dive into a forgotten piece of tech history that paved the way for the modern computing world. While the low-budget production may not win awards for style, its content is rich, nostalgic, and brimming with geeky charm. For computer enthusiasts and Apple devotees, this documentary is a treasure trove of lore and a poignant reminder of how innovation often begins with failure.
"…The big-little computer that could...until it couldn’t."
