Apple destroyed thousands of Lisa computers upon re-release years after introduction

A documentary has been released about the destruction of thousands of copies of the Apple Lisa, the manufacturer’s first computer with a graphical interface. Apple first sold them to someone who provided them with upgrades to sell them.

The Lisa, named after the daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs, was a flop and Apple sold far fewer than expected. The project had less internal priority than the Macintosh, which was also in development and released later.

The company Sun Remarketing, which specialized in the sale of old Apple computers in the 1980s, marketed the remaining Lisas as Lisa Professional. That happened more than five years after the original release. The Lisa was released in 1983. Apple changed its mind, collected the remaining Lisas and disposed of them in a landfill.

The upgrades included a new operating system that emulated the Macintosh Plus, the ability to install larger hard drives, a change to use 800k floppies, and screen tweaks to make the Lisa look more like a then-more popular Macintosh. The Verge has put the documentary online.