In the early fall of 1989, a convoy of trucks rumbled through the quiet town of Logan, Utah, carrying an unusual cargo, thousands of Apple Lisa computers destined not for homes or offices, but for burial. In what remains one of the most curious and overlooked moments in Apple’s history, 2,700 unsold Lisa units were unceremoniously dumped in a landfill, erased from existence at the behest of the company that had once hailed them as the future of personal computing.
The Lisa was ahead of its time. Launched in 1983, it was one of the first commercial computers to feature a graphical user interface and a mouse—innovations that would later define modern computing. But its hefty $9,995 price tag, sluggish performance, and limited software support rendered it a commercial failure. Despite its technological prowess, the Lisa was quickly overshadowed by the more affordable and intuitive Macintosh, introduced by Steve Jobs a year later.
Apple, already pivoting away from the Lisa, found itself with thousands of unsold units cluttering warehouses. Enter Bob Cook, a Utah-based entrepreneur who saw an opportunity where Apple saw excess inventory. His company, Sun Remarketing, struck a deal with Apple in 1985 to buy up the unsold Lisa computers at discounted rates, refurbish them, and sell them to businesses, universities, and tech enthusiasts who recognized the machine’s groundbreaking potential.
For a while, the plan worked. Cook’s team upgraded the Lisa with 800-KB floppy disk drives and 20-MB hard drives, making them more usable in an era when computing was still in its infancy. Thousands of these computers found new homes, and Sun Remarketing thrived as a secondary market supplier of Apple hardware. But by the late 1980s, Apple had changed its tune. The company, eager to push its Macintosh line without competition from its own older technology, decided to shut down the Lisa for good.
With remaining stock still on hand, Apple’s decision was swift and final. The 2,700 remaining Lisa computers were packed up and transported to Logan, Utah, where they were crushed and buried under tons of landfill waste. The move, while drastic, ensured that no remaining Lisa units would compete with Apple’s new direction. It was a clean break, a decision that marked both the end of an era and the beginning of Apple’s relentless pursuit of innovation without looking back.
For those who had seen the Lisa’s potential, the mass burial was nothing short of a tragedy. “It was like watching a piece of history being erased,” one former Sun Remarketing employee later recalled. “The Lisa had so much promise, but Apple just wanted to forget it ever existed.”
Decades later, the Lisa remains a cult icon among collectors and computing historians, a relic of a time when Apple was still finding its footing. The decision to bury those computers in Utah was not just about clearing warehouse space, it was a calculated move to shape the company’s future narrative.
Today, as Apple dominates the global tech landscape, the story of the Lisa serves as a reminder of how even the most forward-thinking technology can be discarded when it no longer fits a company’s vision.
The landfills of Logan, Utah, hold more than just old circuit boards and plastic casings. They contain the remnants of an ambitious, flawed dream—one that, for all its failures, helped pave the way for the Apple we know today.
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