It was affected by its high price, insufficient software, unreliable FileWare (codename Twiggy) floppy disks, and the imminent release of the cheaper and faster Macintosh.

[4]: 77 Lisa was considered a commercial failure but with technical acclaim, introducing several advanced features that reappeared on the Macintosh and eventually IBM PC compatibles.

The hardware is more advanced overall than the following Macintosh, including hard disk drive support, up to 2 megabytes (MB) of random-access memory (RAM), expansion slots, and a larger, higher-resolution display.

Cost-cutting measures that target the consumer market, and the delayed availability of the 68000 processor and its impact on the design process, made the user experience sluggish.

Jobs began assimilating increasing numbers of Lisa staff, as he had done with the Apple II division upon taking Raskin's project.

Newer Lisa models addressed its shortcomings but, even with a major price reduction, the platform failed to achieve sales volumes comparable to the much less expensive Mac.

[4]: 79 Though the original documentation only refers to it as "The Lisa", Apple officially stated that the name was an acronym for "Local Integrated Software Architecture".

[11] Initial team leader Ken Rothmuller was soon replaced by John Couch, under whose direction the project evolved into the "window-and-mouse-driven" form of its eventual release.

By late 1979, Jobs successfully negotiated a sale of Apple stock to Xerox, in exchange for his Lisa team receiving two demonstrations of ongoing research projects at PARC.

The Lisa team put a great deal of work into making the graphical interface a mainstream commercial product.

BYTE magazine credited Wayne Rosing with being the most important person in the development of the computer's hardware until the machine went into production, at which point he became the technical lead for the entire Lisa project.

In September 1981, below the announcement of the IBM PC, InfoWorld reported on Lisa, "McIntosh", and another Apple computer secretly under development "to be ready for release within a year".

Newer versions of the Lisa were introduced that addressed its faults and lowered its price considerably, but it failed to achieve sales comparable to the much less expensive Mac.

The machine was powered by a 5 MHz Motorola 68000 processor with an integrated monochrome black-on-white monitor having 720 × 364 rectangular pixels displayed on a 12-inch (30 cm) screen .

The interface included a detached keyboard, a 'thin button' mouse, with a parallel port for Apple ProFile external hard drive(s), and three (3) expansion slots for future upgrades.

The upgrade included the new Lisa 2's new front faceplate to accommodate the newer microdisk (400K) drive which incorporated the new inlaid Apple logo.

Late in the product life of the Lisa, there were third-party hard disk drives, SCSI controllers, and double-sided 3.5-inch floppy-disk upgrades.

The Lisa 2 motherboard has a very basic backplane with virtually no electronic components, but plenty of edge connector sockets and slots.

The price was lowered yet again, to $4,000, and sales tripled, but CEO John Sculley said that Apple would have lost money increasing production to meet the new demand.

File system directories correspond to GUI folders, as with previous Xerox PARC computers from which Lisa borrowed heavily.

The Lisa Office System was eventually renamed 7/7 which refers to the seven supplied application programs: LisaWrite, LisaCalc, LisaDraw, LisaGraph, LisaProject, LisaList, and LisaTerminal.

These operating system frailties, and costly recalls, combined with the very high price point, led to the failure of the Lisa in the marketplace.

In 2018, the Computer History Museum announced it would be releasing the source code for Lisa OS, following a check by Apple to ensure this would not impact other intellectual property.

[32] For its 40th anniversary on January 19, 2023, Lisa OS Software version 3.1's source code is available under an Apple Academic License Agreement.

[35] BYTE previewed the Lisa and wrote in February 1983 that it was "the most important development in computers in the last five years, easily outpacing [the IBM PC]".

The provision of a character-based display support was seen as "critical to XENIX and UNIX users", and the availability of these other operating systems also served to differentiate the Lisa from the Macintosh.

In 1986, Apple offered all Lisa and XL owners the opportunity to return their computer and pay $1,498, in exchange for a Macintosh Plus and Hard Disk 20.

[43] Apple's culture of object-oriented programming on Lisa contributed to the 1988 conception of Pink, the first attempt to re-architect the operating system of Macintosh.

In 1989, after Wayne Rosing had moved to Sun Microsystems, he reflected on his time at Apple, recalling that building the Lisa had been hard work.

[44] Original "Twiggy" based Lisa 1 systems command high prices at auction due to the scarcity of surviving examples.