If you've ever been curious to test out Apple's original Lisa operating system, you'll get the chance to do so next year using the original source code. Al Kossow, a software curator for the Computer History Museum, announced that the source code for Apple's first operating system with a graphical user interface has been recovered and is currently with Apple for review. After the tech giant reviews it, the Computer History Museum will make the source code available to all sometime in 2018.
The original Lisa computer, named after Jobs' eldest daughter, came out in 1983 and was generally considered to be a flop. It was a hard device for consumers to embrace because, at the time, it cost approximately $10,000. However, its operating system laid the foundation for the macOS we're familiar with today.
Jobs reportedly got the idea for the Lisa OS after seeing visual interfaces with mouse support during a visit to Xerox PARC. Jobs took what he saw and made his own version of it—the Lisa operating system featuring a GUI, mouse support, and a file system. While the Lisa computer wasn't as popular as Jobs hoped it would be, its operating system was a blueprint for the many graphic OSes available today.
Emulators that run the Lisa OS have been available for some time now, but enthusiasts will be excited to explore the operating system's original source code on their own. Kossow notes that the only thing that likely won't be released is the American Heritage Dictionary for the spell checker in LisaWrite. But spell-checking your own work is a small price to pay for free access to a major piece of computer history.
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