THE MAC WAS never intended to be Apple’s star: that was the Lisa, Apple’s first computer with a graphical interface. While impressive, the Lisa was also unreliable and incredibly expensive: when it launched in 1983 it cost $9,995. An IBM PC was around $1,500.
While the Lisa was busy bombing, Jef Raskin’s skunkworks project was working on something much less expensive and, as it would turn out, much more important. Raskin, Burrell Smith and Apple co–founder Steve Wozniak were focusing on a more modest Apple computer without a hard disk, multitasking or as much memory. The team was joined by