Apple’s Macintosh, released in 1984, is celebrated for ushering in a new era of user-friendly computing. But! The Mac owes a lot to its lesser-known, older sister Lisa. Here’s how the Lisa, while seen as a flop today, used clever interface design to welcome everyone into the personal computer era.
The design language of the Lisa is the design language of modern computers. It was one of the first machines to use the metaphor of a desktop, including things like folders, icons, and application windows that mimicked sheets of paper.