Apple spent $150M on the Lisa — the first GUI computer — and it sold only 10,000 units

Apple began developing the Lisa in 1978, aiming to create a revolutionary computer with a graphical user interface. The project was led by John Couch after Steve Jobs was forced off the team in 1981. Apple spent more than $50 million (some estimates say $150 million) developing the computer. The Lisa was announced on January 19, 1983 and began shipping in June at a price of $9,995 — equivalent to about $32,000 today. It featured a 5 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1 MB of RAM, a 12-inch monochrome display, a mouse, and seven pre-installed applications.

The Lisa was revolutionary but flawed. Its $9,995 price tag put it out of reach for all but the wealthiest. The unreliable 'Twiggy' floppy drives were notorious for failing. The hardware was underpowered for the complex OS, making it slow and frustrating. Critically, the Lisa had no third-party software — it shipped with only the seven applications Apple had written. The Macintosh launched in Jan 1984 at $2,495 with a refined GUI and killed the Lisa: why pay $9,995 for a slow Lisa when the Mac was cheaper?

Apple sold an estimated 10,000 to 60,000 Lisa units over its lifetime. The project generated about $100 million in sales against a development cost of more than $150 million, a net loss of at least $50 million. The Lisa was discontinued in 1986. In 1989, Apple buried approximately 2,700 unsold Lisa units in a guarded landfill in Logan, Utah, to claim a tax write-off. The Lisa's technology — the GUI, the mouse, the document-oriented workflow — directly influenced the Macintosh, which became a massive success. But the Lisa itself was Apple's biggest commercial failure since the Apple III.