1980 – 1984retired
Apple III
“Tried to outgrow the Apple II; instead it taught Apple to love it again.”
“A Lisa in Mac clothing, gone before most of us learned to say MacWorks XL three times fast.”
The Macintosh XL was a modified Apple Lisa that ran MacWorks XL, a program emulating the 64 K Macintosh ROM, letting it behave like a Mac. It was essentially the same machine as the Lisa 2/10, which had previously shipped running only the Lisa OS. People loved it because it was the elegant Lisa hardware with a new heart.
By 1985, Apple discontinued it, a quiet retirement rather than an execution. It left behind a strange legacy: a computer that was literally two machines at once, proof that sometimes a beloved product just gets another costume before bowing out.
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“Tried to outgrow the Apple II; instead it taught Apple to love it again.”
“It dot-matrixed its heart out so your Mac could be heard.”
“Five million keys pressed, one rainbow, endless hours waiting for the tape to load.”