Larry Tesler, former Xerox PARC researcher and Apple chief scientist, explains the impact of the Lisa, a computer ahead of its time.

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Although Lisa came and went almost in the blink of an eye, many of its features are still found in today's Windows PCs and Macintosh computers.

Lisa's Pioneering Features
  • A menu bar with pull-down menus and identified keyboard shortcuts
  • File menu commands named New, Open, Close, Save, Save as, and Print
  • Windows and icons moved by pointing, clicking, and dragging
  • Dialog boxes with radio buttons, check boxes, and OK/Cancel buttons
  • Alert boxes to provide warnings and explain errors


Lisa innovations incorporated into the 1984 Macintosh included those listed above, plus:

Hardware
  • The one-button mouse
  • The ImageWriter WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") printer


User interface
  • A menu bar spanning the top of the screen
  • Windows that visually zoom when they open and close
  • The appearance and layout of scroll bars and the window resize corner
  • Rounded-corner buttons in dialogs


Application software
  • LisaProject, the first such application that allowed the user to drag task boxes to change the schedule (became MacProject)
  • LisaDraw (became MacDraw)
  • LisaWrite (word-processing)
  • LisaCalc (a spreadsheet)
  • LisaGraph (a charting program)
  • LisaTerminal (a Telnet-like program)
  • LisaList (a simple data base program)
  • The Lisa Desktop Manager influenced the design of the Macintosh Finder.
  • Lisa's printing software heavily influenced the original Mac equivalent.

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