Apple’s Bringing LISA OS Back Into Our Lives For Free Very Soon

The legendary operating system from Apple was one of the first to offer a graphical user interface on a machine.

The legendary operating system, which failed to live up to the hype, could make a comeback.

(Photo: Reuters) 

The Computer History Museum in California has plans to release Apple's legendary Lisa operating system (OS) for free as open source this year, the media reported.

The Mountain View-based museum announced that the source code for Lisa, Apple's computer that predated the Mac, has been recovered and was being reviewed by the tech giant itself, reports 9to5Mac.

Lisa, released in 1983, was one of the first personal computers to come equipped with a graphical user interface and a support for mouse, but ultimately only sold 10,000 units. Officially, “Lisa” stood for “Local Integrated Software Architecture” but those close to Jobs believed that the operating system was named after Lisa Brennan-Jobs, who Jobs accepted as his first daughter very late in his life.

Despite being a flop, the OS holds a major piece of Apple history.

It is reportedly the reason why Steve Jobs left Apple and also led to a huge rift between him and Microsoft's Bill Gates. After Lisa's rather public failure, Jobs founded NeXT Computer – which was ultimately acquired by Apple, bringing him back to the company.

The computer offered was one of the first personal computers which offered a graphical user interface (GUI) in a machine and was aimed at business users back then.

After Apple’s review is done and the recovered code is cleared for release by Apple, we will make Lisa available in 2018. The only thing I saw that probably won’t be able to be released is the American Heritage dictionary for the spell checker in LisaWrite.

Al Kossow, Software Curator, Computer History Museum in California

The source code for both the OS and applications has been recovered. This will be the first time when any Apple software product (even an obsolete one) will be made available to the public for free.

Once that code is finished being reviewed by Apple, the museum will make the code available sometime this year, Kossow added.