While the video might be a tad boring by contemporary standards, unless like me, you have an interest in such ancient technologies 😛. I think that this does make a nice demonstration of the system.
Since the guy is using actual hardware, it is also slow as crap by modern standards. Let’s just say that the world has come a long way since a Moto 68k and a meg of RAM was plenty. But I think it’s fairly impressive and innovative a system for its day.
I kind of like the more Electronic Desktop metaphor than the conventional Files and Applications approach that the typical Windows 9x PC functioned as some decades later. I love the document centric rather than application centric view as a concept. Seems like it was a good attempt at creating an environment for office workers, who weren’t computer people. The ability to have files with the same name is odd, but interesting if likely impractical for software developers. The natural saving and manipulation of content is nice.
In addition to the UI design, its relationship to the early Mac seems fairly apparent. In particular, one of the odd things that I encountered digging into 1990s PowerBooks and System 7 is how the classic Mac OS treats placing files on the desktop (basically a flag saying its on the desktop) and handling of floppy diskettes. Both rather different than modern systems of any sort. The Lisa looks like a lot of its concepts made their way into the original Macintosh and later system versions.
It’s kind of a shame that the Lisa was insanely expensive and (IMHO) rather slow, like $10,000 for a basic system. While I’m not convinced that the original Mac could be a good idea without at least a second floppy, its base price of $2,500 was at least less comical than the Lisa. Or should we say, a 512k and way more storage would probably have been worth every penny and still way cheaper than the Lisa.