Tom Reestman

Before the Macintosh.

In General on Wednesday, 21 September 2011 at 6:12

Xerox-star-8010-09

via Digibarn

And even before the Lisa, in 1981 there was the Xerox Star. The link above has a number of high-quality scans of the system. 

The Lisa, introduced in 1983 and featuring a young Kevin Costner in one of the ads, would sell for $10,000, yet that was peanuts compared to the Star: 

The Xerox Star was not originally meant to be a stand-alone computer, but to be part of an integrated Xerox “personal office system” that also connected to other workstations and network services via Ethernet. Although a single unit sold for $16,000, a typical office would have to purchase at least 2 or 3 machines along with a file server and a name server/print server. 

Interesting that in the above shot the printer didn’t get the bullet points you see on the screen. 

Seeing these two predecessors just three years before the Mac’s launch makes you appreciate the littlest Apple all that much more. At $2,500 it was truly remarkable. 

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