The Museum of Computing History, based in Majadas, Spain, has released version 3.1 of Lisa OS, the source code of the Manzana smoothavailable to whoever wants to download it and in a free.
According to the report published on the website of gizmodothis was the last version of this operating system to appear after the model died at the hands of the very first Apple Macintosh, which was released only a year later.
On January 19, 1983, the Bitten Apple Company put the Lisa up for sale, one of the first computers with a graphical interface and precursor of the current Mac. He wasn’t very successful, but his software is interesting for those who study code.
Smooth OS 3.1 Features
Lisa OS 3.1 is only 26MB and has more than 1,300 source code files arranged in folders of what is the operating system itself, its applications and the software development kit.
All files can be downloaded just by filling in a form on the Computer History Museum websitewhich is an academic license agreement with Apple not to sell or redistribute its software.
It is important to remember that Lisa was not the first operating system with a graphical interface, but the Xerox Star. However, Lisa OS brought some important foundations for the history of computing, such as the ability to drag icons, move windows or the taskbar.
The OS ended up failing because Apple didn’t support the programs, it had problems with floppy disks, and its price was crazy: $9,995, which with current global inflation would be about $30,000. It survived two years after it was released and died out with the arrival of the first Macintosh.