CertiGuide to A+ (Core Hardware)  9  Chapter 0000:  The Start of the PC       9  III  IBM and the Creation of the PC

The Combination 1 Mac

Back in California, there was more to computing than Apple. In fact, right around the corner from Apple, the copier company Xerox had a little think tank known as Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Since Xerox had invested $1 million in Apple, the firm didn't have major heart burn letting a few key Apple executives see what they were doing at PARC.

What Steve Jobs and a few others saw in action was science fiction stuff like: the computer mouse, graphical icons on the screen to represent programs and computer management, laser printing, and computer networking (what would become Ethernet), as well as other Buck Rogers sci-fi stuff.

Xerox management didn't really care about letting Apple see the cool work at the think tank, however, some of the managers at PARC did! After all, they were a copier company right? What came out of this was the Lisa. What was the Lisa? At $10,000.00 computer that was a marketing bomb. Almost no one could afford it.

The Combination 1 Mac