Apple's Lisa Makes A Debut

By Andrew Pollack
The New York Times

January 19, 1983

Steven P. Jobs, the co-founder and chairman of Apple Computer Inc., thinks the personal computer industry his company helped establish has been lagging. ''The industry's not had a real technical innovation in five years,'' Mr. Jobs said in a recent interview.

Today, Apple computer will announce Lisa, the product that could support Mr. Jobs's words - or make him eat them. Lisa, the long-awaited new office computer, could indeed revolutionize the personal computer industry and guarantee Apple's place in it -if the product succeeds. If it fails, Apple could recede to being only a moderately successful company that hit it big on one product, the Apple II.

The introduction will take place at Apple's annual meeting in Cupertino, Calif. Apple will also display the Apple IIe, an upgraded replacement for its Apple II Plus.

Earnings Up 73%

And to set the stage for what looks to be a gala meeting, Apple yesterday reported a 73 percent year-to-year gain in net income for its first fiscal quarter, ended Dec. 31.

Those in the industry who have seen Lisa say it surpasses anything available on the market in terms of ease of use. Lisa makes liberal use of pictures and symbols on the computer screen instead of typing complex commands on a keyboard. One can even draw pictures.

''You get into the screen so quickly you forget it's a computer,'' said Dana R. Richardson, national director of microcomputer technology for Arthur Young, the accounting firm, which will test Lisa.

Rumors and leaks about Lisa have been circulating widely. But the details are only now being announced. At least one such detail -the price - is a potential drawback: Lisa, which will be available this spring, will sell for $10,000, toward the high end of the industry's expectations.

The key to Lisa is the software. Instead of typing instructions, one points to pictures on the screen by sliding a handheld device called a mouse along the top of the desk next to the computer. As the mouse moves, the cursor - the arrow that points to particular places on the screen - moves accordingly.

The software is also integrated. A user can, for example, call up data from a file, manipulate it with a ''spreadsheet'' program and draw a chart, and then insert the chart into a report written on the word-processing system. All the programs use common commands: Copying or deleting data in word processing, for instance, involves the same actions as in graphics.

The computer comes with an internal memory of about a million characters, 16 times the number contained in many personal computers. It also comes with two floppy data-storage disks capable of holding 870,000 characters each, as well as a hard disk capable of storing 5 million.

Lisa will come with six programs. They include a word-processing program, a graphics program and a spreadsheet program, similar to Visicalc, which permits viewing more than one sheet of a report at a time. Also included are systems to maintain data files and schedule complex projects.

The sixth program is perhaps the most unusual: It permits a user to draw on the computer to create organizational charts or even freehand drawings. A seventh program, to let Lisa communicate with other computers, is optional.

Tapping Into Digital Computers

Lisa will also be able to imitate Digital Equipment Corporation terminals, which permits it to obtain data stored in Digital Equipment computers. The all-important ability to emulate the International Business Machine Corporation's 3270 terminals, and thus allow Lisa to obtain data stored in I.B.M. mainframe computers, will be available later, the company said.

Mr. Jobs said he hoped to have other companies write software for Lisa, just as many independent companies wrote programs for the Apple II. The availability of hundreds of programs continues to make the Apple II a popular computer - more than 750,000 have been sold since 1977 - even though its five-year-old hardware is becoming outdated.

Despite Lisa's attractiveness, initial sales are expected to be slow. ''I can't see them selling more than 10,000 in the first year,'' said Egil Juliussen, chairman of Future Computing, a market research firm in Richardson, Tex..

In addition, Lisa will undoubtedly face competition. Visicorp, a software company, has announced a product that will give the I.B.M. and Digital personal computers some of Lisa's capabilities. But that product will not reach the market until after Lisa.

Apple's immediate financial future is pegged more to the Apple IIe, which can use the programs already available for the Apple II Plus, which will be phased out.

The Apple IIe will have 64,000 characters of memory, compared with 48,000 for Apple II, and be able to handle both upper and lower case letters. It will also have an improved keyboard. The Apple IIe, available now, will have a suggested price of $1,395, compared with the current Apple II list price of $1,330.

In its earnings statement for the first quarter, Apple reported net income of $23.5 million, or 40 cents a share, compared with $13.6 million, or 24 cents, a year earlier. Sales rose 60 percent, to $214.3 million, from $133.6 million. Mr. Jobs said the company had a particularly strong December, shipping 45,000 Apple II computers and 5,000 of the more expensive Apple III's.