In 1983, Apple launched Lisa, a revolutionary computer for its graphical interface and its innovative use of the mouse, both features ahead of their time. However, several factors worked against it and made it a commercial failure: its exorbitant price of 10,000 dollars (equivalent to about 30,000 euros today), its hardware failures and the tough competition with IBM… and with Apple’s own Macintosh model, much more affordable.
So only 30,000 units were sold before Apple canceled production in 1985, leaving the company with a surplus of 7,000 copies stored without a clear destination.
The visionary reseller who didn’t see Apple coming
That’s where Bob Cook, founder of Sun Remarketing, a company specialized in reselling technology products, especially those from Apple, comes into the picture. After having achieved success reselling the Apple III, Cook decided to bet even bigger and acquired the remaining 7,000 Lisa at a bargain price with the intention of updating and relaunching them to the market as ‘Lisa Professional’.
Thus, Cook and his team invested $200,000 in improvements to solve the Lisa’s problems. The floppy drive, RAM and hard drive were optimized, in addition to installing a more modern version of the Macintosh operating system. Everything was ready for a relaunch that promised to give new life to a computer condemned to oblivion.
Today, the Apple Lisa is considered a collector’s item and a milestone in the history of personal computing.
A drastic decision
However, what seemed like a great deal turned into a nightmare for Cook. Apple had a clause in the sales contract which allowed him to recover the computers at any time, and he decided to activate it in 1989, just before the renewed ‘Lisa Professional’ hit the market.
Cook couldn’t do anything to prevent it: preferred not to legally confront the powerful Cupertino company and saw his investment disappear in a few days.
It is speculated that the company did not want these computers to compete with its new products, in addition to the fact that the image of a failed model recycled by third parties did not fit with its strict brand control policy.
Apple did not limit itself only to recovering the Lisa, but also took an even more radical decision: he destroyed them and buried them at a landfill in Logan, Utah: the company even benefited financially from the destruction of the computers thanks to tax deductions for inventory depreciation.
A technological burial that has gone down in history
The case is reminiscent of the famous burial of cartridges of the Atari’s ‘ET the Extra-Terrestrial’ video gameanother famous failure of the technology industry. But, unlike this one, Apple’s decision generated criticism for the waste of technology which, with a better approach, could have been recycled instead of buried (and we complain today about the planned obsolescence…).
On the other hand, there are still doubts about the exact number of computers that were destroyed: while some sources speak of 7,000 units, others leave open the possibility that some updated Lisas “escaped” the fate that the company had prepared for them.
Image | Photomontage by Marcos Merino
In Xataka | You can now emulate an old Mac from the 80s in your browser
This article was originally published in Genbeta in February 2025 and is part of Genbeta’s “greatest hits” that we will discover here in the coming weeks.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings