How did the Lisa do, BTW? Did it do as well as the NeXT?
The Lisa served admirably as the conceptual prototype for the Macintosh. At $10K, it was crazy expensive, but it demonstrated the usefulness of its concepts and introduced them into many a workplace, including the aerospace engineering outfit I was working for at the time.
I worked and played with that Lisa a fair amount, though not as much as the guys whose department paid for it :-) ,P> Ultimately it yielded to the Mac, after selling around 100,000 units. But it had set the stage very well.
> Did it do as well as the NeXT?
Better -- the NeXT computer sold about 50,000 units.
the Macintosh SE/30, introduced in January 1989 for $6,500, came with a 16 MHz Motorola 68030 and 1MB of RAM built inMore info here.
•the Macintosh IIcx, March 1989, $5,369, 16 MHz Motorola 68030, 1MB RAM
•the closest to the NeXT Cube is the Macintosh IIci, launched in September 1989 (one year after the NeXT Computer) for $6,269 with the same processor, the Motorola 68030 running at 25 MHz, and 1MB RAM in the default config
The Lisa was targeted to office work. . . and then priced out of that market by Apple management. It did not do well. Steve Jobs took over the Macintosh development and had management overprice that as well. His target price was $1695 but Management decided it had to sell for $2499. That made the sales numbers not meet projections.
NeXT sold more units than the Lisa. . . and then changed focus to software.
What the people who yell about the over priced Mac don't tell you is that IBM-PCs of the period were selling with one floppy and a green screen monitor for $2795. Adding a 10MB hard drive to either cost about $1295. So it was pretty much of a wash when looking at pricing.