‘Lisa’s Final Act’ looks at the history of Apple’s ill-faced Lisa computer

The Verge, Vox Media’s technology and culture brand, has released their latest long form documentary, Lisa’s Final Act. 

Legend has it that in 1989, 2,700 Apple Lisa computers were buried in a landfill in Logan, Utah. The Lisa was an infamous failure: though it was one of the world’s first personal computers to sport a graphical user interface, it was sabotaged by its own famed co-inventor: Steve Jobs. What happened to Lisa after its death, however, is less well-known — in fact, there’s just one surviving article from the time that covers the incident in Utah. Lisa’s Final Act travels back to Utah to find out what happened, why the computer failed, and how it earned a brief second life before being buried for good.

Lisa’s Final Act features exclusive interviews with those that worked with and for Apple during the 1980’s including a former Lisa Software Manager, Apple’s Senior Engineer, and resale executives along with The Herald Journal’s original reporter and photo editor, and the author of the acclaimed book,  Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything. 

Lisa’s Final Act is the third documentary from The Verge and is produced by the Emmy nominated team of Netflix’s The Future Of. Additional documentaries from The Verge include Springboard: The Secret History of the First Real Smartphone and Rocketland: The SpaceX Superfans Uprooting Their Lives for Elon’s Starship.