“Early adopters of the iPhone weren’t the only ones receiving in-store credit from Steve Jobs. In an overlooked announcement, Jobs said that early adopters of the Apple Lisa would be receiving a $7000 in-store credit,” Brian Briggs reports for BBSpot.
“Apple released the Lisa in January of 1983 for $9,995, and the similar Macintosh was released a year later for $2,495,” Briggs reports.
“‘I’ve felt bad about people who bought the Lisa for a long time. Anybody who bought one of the first Apple Lisas really got screwed,’ said Jobs. ‘Now that we’ve got some cash, I think it’s about time we made it right,'” Briggs reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jim” for the heads up.]
LMAO!
I’m in line now!
. . . . and I just threw my receipt away
DAMMIT!!!
Unfortunately, early Lisa adopters are all dead.
http://www.g-zus.net
Fun spoof. Did you see the other related headlines?
Apple Stores Begin Charging Entrance Fee
College Professors to be Replaced by Apple iProf
iPhone Hacker Headed to Guantanamo
I hope no one actually shows up at an Apple Store with their receipt.
Call me an Apple fanboy, but I bought a Lisa in December 1983 for about $8500 AND I stood in line for an iPhone on June 29th this year.
I thought both products were fairly priced when I bought them — I never regretted spending the money. Something else they have in common: Both pointed to the future of personal computing.
The Lisa was a commercial disaster, but its elegant GUI was the bridge from the Xerox Star to the Macintosh, and it took many years for the Mac to have the same multitasking OS and integrated applications suite.
That said, if Steve wants to give me an Apple Store credit, I would be glad to provide my Lisa serial number. :->)
My IIci cost the same as my 15″MPB. I will say that printer costs have gone down nicely.
I still have my “Lisa Systems Software” manual… is that proof enough of my ownership?
The world is upside down:
I just heard a CNET podcast with Tom Merritt defending the 33% price drop and Molly Wood attacking it as unprecedented.
What woman has never heard of a high fashion good (e.g. shoes, coat, handbag) like an iPhone dropping from $600 to $400 within hours or days, let alone 2 months, from when you purchased it?
I could understand a Male not understanding a price drop like this, but a Female? I don’t mean it doesn’t hurt, like the shoes or coat, but it IS precedented and no one expects a refund – you would be laughed out of Prada, and laughed at by your friends.
This said, I am glad Apple gave them the $100 credit, but please consider it a GIFT and not a RIGHT.
Hilarious!!
The funny thing is, I’m a classic computer collector (I have an Apple II, an Apple II+, a Macintosh, a Macintosh Plus, a NextStation and an original IBM PC, among other curiosities, sorry, none for sale) I’ve been looking for a Lisa for a while. All I can say is, a Lisa nowadays costs about the same it costs when it was for sale, as a collector’s item (I coudn’t afford one)
So, if you have a Lisa, you have some interesting cash in your hands, perhaps in the order of $8,000
I know someone who has one with the Twiggy drives (that one would be WAY more than $8,000). He won’t sell it, unfortunately (anybody here knows what I’m talking about?)
Early Lisa adopters may be all dead, but there are plenty of us early adopters of other Apple products still around. I bought an Apple II just before the II+ came out in 1978. I got a free copy of Applesoft BASIC on cassette tape because I bought one with 16K RAM instead of the 4K model. I spent $6,749.19 on a Mac II and Apple 13″ color monitor on July 13, 1987. I saw one a few years back at a hamfest for $10 (non-working). Apple would go broke offering store credits for price drops to us old-timers. Even Bill Gates doesn’t have that kind of money.
My first 1GB hard drive cost nearly $1,500. Now they’re running about .33 cents/GB. Waiting now for that fat rebate credit….and waiting….and waiting….
Yes, I adopted her back in 1983.
We brought her home straight from the hospital.
I personally taught her all I know about accounting and
Lisa is still crunching numbers today.
In all honesty. The machine still gets fired up once in a while.
It’s military grade and a great machine. Yet, I don’t want the rebate since I know it’s value is greater then the rebate.
Take care – iMac… YEs I have the new iMac too.
@Dialtone:
Gotcha beat, 1985, SuperMac Dataframe 10 SCSI drive – $1299 for 10MB – 10MB!
I’m still alive you smartasses!
Hey! What about us PowerMac Cube owners? Apple cut the price in half before ultimately discontinuing it…
Where’s our store credit?! 😀
Can I get credit for my $4200.00 Mac IIsi – when the Mac LC “pizza box” came out a few months later, the IIsi lost it’s value faster than any previous Apple computer.
The fact is, the media didn’t care about the Lisa, or the Pizza Box or the Cube. But the iPhone had so much coverage, it was a golden chance to use the press.
I think… I might be mistaken
Rumors of my death are highly exagerated. I had a Lisa: the only way to develop for the first Mac (wish I had not donated either of them…) I do still have the original Inside Mac looseleaf documentation Apple provided for developers..
I bought the very first G4, PCI Mac (Yikes model), and two months later, they all went AGP (Sawtooth model).
I’m not bitter about it now, and I wasn’t then. I felt a little raw, but I didn’t blame anyone else for my unfortunate timing.
MW: Deal. How appropriate. The deal is in the eye of the beholder.
here’s the YouTube video…skip ahead a bit…
In line with the iPhone store credit, the amount should have been $3500.
Hey!
I am an eary adopter of the Very First Newton and the very first PowerBook 140.
I deserve something, didn’t I?
MW every as in Does every early adopter of an expensive technology deserves a credit?
I’ve called my iMac Lisa, does that count?
check out this link for a real howl:
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2000/7/new_macs.html
Let’s see $7,000 USD compounded over 24 (almost 25 years) at 7% per annum = $36,977.62…
Now that’s the ticket!
That pays for the dual 30″ monitor – dual quad core – 16 Gig RAM – quad 750 Gig drives single DVD sys I just bought and the 17″ MacBook Pro… with room for the drobo (look them up – great system – better then a RAID) (this is true – I did just buy all of this stuff plus aplications – I bit the intel bullet)!!
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Break even time!
All I now Apple sure has made some money off of me lately. And I want MORE –
you guessed it my MDN – more!
How do they know – those little mdn elves?
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Damn.
I had a Lisa 2 (3.5″ floppy, hard drive and could run Mac software as well) to do Mac development. I traded it in for a Mac-plus based system. If only I had kept it…
Though the comparison doesn’t quite fit because iphone is really a device not a platform… but Lisa and Newton owners know: the big early adopter risk isn’t price drops, it’s that your technology will get orphaned. Price cuts that bring more people into the tent are actually really good things.
What if John Sculley had been willing to live with 30% gross margins instead of 55%?? (Yeah I know he was still a bozo and how would we have gotten to a modern Mac OS?)