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Play with a web replica of the Apple Lisa's GUI [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-07-07  

Lisa GUI is a web-based model of the Apple Lisa's graphical user interface. Predating the original Macintosh by a year, it introduced so much that we associate with it, from the high-resolution 1-bit aesthetic to user-interface standards that persist to this day. Andrew Yaros, owner of a real Lisa 2/10, created the replica. [via]

LisaGUI is a full recreation of the Lisa Office System user interface written from scratch in JavaScript. Currently, the alpha version is available to try. It is a fully featured (but unfinished and buggy!) web os with an IndexedDB-based filesystem. It also has its own custom 1-bit graphics engine which runs entirely in software and outputs to a single canvas element on the page.

Wikipedia reports that a Lisa cost $9,995, equivalent to $31,600 in 2024. Note the roundrects here and there, a famous Steve Jobs design directive solved programatically by Bill Atkinson for the Macintosh. And that prototypical Apple system font, with its weird "w"s.

At Hacker News, Yaros explains some of the peculiarities at hand.

The Lisa doesn't have square pixels, so the canvas is scaled to be 1.5x as high as it is wide. This generally looks fine on high-dpi displays, because there's technically twice as much space to render with (pixels are 2px wide by 3px high). However, things will look distorted on a lower resolution display (where pixels are 1px wide by 1.5px high). That's just a compromise I made when designing this.

I love how dim the "white" is. All it's lacking is a CRT shader!

Previously:

• Great article about the 'ill-fated' Apple Lisa, 40 years later

• Apple's HyperCard was inspired by an acid trip

• A 15-year-old's new Apple museum

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/07/07/play-with-a-replica-of-the-first-mass-market-gui-computer.html

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