Why Apple dumped 2,700 computers in a landfill in 1989 in 'secret burial' that invented its future
When Apple launched the Lisa in 1983, it wasn't just another computer.
While most people were still typing commands into black screens with green text, the Lisa had something that seems basic now but was mind-blowing at the time.
The Lisa, which reportedly stands for “Local Integrated Software Architecture,” had a graphical user interface with icons that could be clicked on using a mouse. Sound familiar?
It utilised a powerful Motorola 68000 processor (way faster than anything most people had seen), and offered a crisp monochrome monitor, twin floppy disk drives and 1MB of memory.
Why did the Apple Lisa fail?
The Lisa looked like nothing else on the market at the time and was priced at $9,995, which is equivalent to over $30,000 today.
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In fact, you could buy a decent car for less than what the iPhone developer was charging.
Understandably, some people pay top dollar for fancy gadgets. However, as impressive as the Lisa was, it was also slow and buggy.
To add to the problem, Steve Jobs had actually worked on the Lisa project, but Apple kicked him off the team in 1981.
Feeling rejected, Jobs jumped over to a different project called the Macintosh, which was initially intended to be a low-cost text-based computer retailing for under $1,000.
However, the former Apple CEO secretly transformed the Mac into a GUI-based computer, much like the Lisa, but at a much lower cost.
How did the Macintosh kill the Lisa?
In 1984, just as the Lisa was trying to find its footing, Apple launched the Macintosh with the famous '1984' Super Bowl commercial.
While the Mac only carried 128KB of memory compared to the Lisa's 1MB, customers were willing to accept that compromise. At $2,495, they could get the same mouse and GUI experience for a fraction of the cost.
Just a few months after the Super Bowl, Apple had already sold 70,000 Macs, while the Lisa took a full two years to sell just 50,000 units.
The tech giant tried everything to make the Lisa work. They released a Lisa 2 with improvements and rebranded it as the 'Macintosh XL', slashing the price to $3,995.
But they weren't successful. By 1986, Apple officially discontinued the Lisa line.
Why did Apple bury 2,700 computers in a landfill?
By 1989, Apple had a warehouse full of unsold Lisa computers that nobody wanted to buy.
A company called Sun Remarketing had bought about 5,000 units and tried to resell them, but there were still thousands left over.
Instead, Apple decided to load 2,700 brand-new computers onto trucks and drive them to a landfill in Logan, Utah, where they were buried like radioactive waste.
The story made headlines because it was so outrageous. The idea of deliberately destroying thousands of unaffordable machines seemed almost criminal.
“Right now, our fiscal year end is fast approaching and rather than carrying that product on the books, this is a better business decision,” Apple spokesperson Carleen Lavasseur told the press.
Apple was able to gain a tax write-off on the computers, and could reclaim up to $34 for every $100 of the machines' depreciated value.
One lesson from this is clear though, having the best technology means nothing if people can't afford it.