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Xerox Star was $25,000, and came with all the software they had: WP, spreadsheet, file manager. Coded in Pascal.

Apple Lisa was $10,000. Same, otherwise. ("Clascal", compiled to bytecodes interpreted by 5 MHz 68k.)

Mac was less, but a toy. A little later, Mac 512 (i.e. 1/2MB RAM) was kinda usable, with a pair of 140kB floppies. $2000? Had a monochrome 1bpp paint program, no WP, no spreadsheet. You bought MacWrite separately ($125?), and Multiplan (a proto-Excel) from MS.

The LaserWriter came out pretty quickly after, making it radically more useful. That had a computer inside much beefier than the Mac driving it; they could have put a keyboard, mouse, and monitor connector on the Laserwriter and had a much more useful product much sooner.




Small (and not important) correction: the original Mac floppies were 400KB and went to 800KB in the Mac Plus. The Apple II floppies were 140KB.


Correction is correct.




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