23
votes
Accepted
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
Update April 2019
It looks as though the Three River PERQ was the first commercial machine, as per @MrTelly's answer.
Original Answer
I hate to quote Wikipedia as a source of truth, but I had a ...
- 2,144
12
votes
Accepted
Was the Mac XL hardware different from the last versions of the Lisa?
In late 1984 the Lisa was repackaged as the Macintosh XL to try and clear out poor selling inventory.
Not only that, but more important as development systems for the Mac. The original Mac had only ...
- 213k
9
votes
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
No the LISA wasn't the first. I used a Three River PERQ in 1988 for an early AI project/disseration. I acquired it for zero cost as it was obsolete, and I reckon some of it was at least 5 years old as ...
- 191
8
votes
Accepted
What was the screen refresh rate of the Lisa and original Macintosh?
TL;DR:
No, not really, the Mac's refresh rate is 60.14 Hz.
I'm missing the exact data on the Lisa, but it's as well close to (or at) 60 Hz (*1).
How Come?
The Mac timing is a bit odd and built ...
- 213k
7
votes
What was the screen refresh rate of the Lisa and original Macintosh?
I wrote an emulator earlier the year, so I can answer on the Macintosh.
The processor's clock rate is 7,833,600 Hz; the video subsystem is completely synchronous and completes each line in 352 ...
- 36k
7
votes
Why were pipes removed from the Lisa?
As the manual explains:
Pipes (See Section 2 .. 9) The pipe facility has been removed.
MAKE_PIPE has:been deleted, and any attempt to OPEN an old pipe object
will return an error number 948. ...
- 19.5k
6
votes
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
The Star was indeed the first commercially available. However, it wasn't something average people could even aspire to buying. The Lisa, while insanely overpriced, was technically available for ...
- 958
6
votes
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
An early (1964) commercial graphical interface was IBM's 2250 Display Unit, based on its experience with SAGE. This CRT had a 1K x 1K display that could be used for drawings, tables, or text. ...
- 1,113
4
votes
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
Clearly, it depends a lot on how you define "graphical interface". I recall seeing a lunar landing game being played on the console of a Cyber-170 sometime in the 70s. They were vector graphics ...
- 191
4
votes
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
It depends on exactly what you mean. The Physics department I did my MSc at was using a graphics terminal years before the Lisa came out. The terminal was a Tektronix (might have been a 4010) ...
- 356
3
votes
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
Another graphical computer launched before the Lisa was the Lilith, originally developed for internal use at ETH Zürich after Niklaus Wirth (of Pascal fame) had done a sabbatical at Xerox PARC. It ...
- 520
3
votes
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
I'm going to contend that that PERQ 1 beat the Xerox Star to market. The PERQ 1 was very much inspired by the Xerox Alto and its successors. There is a detailed history of the PERQ 1 and its ...
- 191
3
votes
Were there any commercially available graphical interfaces before the apple Lisa?
The Macintosh and the Lisa were directly inspired by the Xerox Alto,
which was announced in early 1973. There were about 500 of them in
use outside Xerox, so I guess you could call that commercial. ...
- 356
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible