http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?recentcomments=1 Most Recent Comments added to Folklore Website en-us webmaster@folklore.org Copyright 2005 2008-04-23T09:23:18-08:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 John- Looks like this pgm survived over two decades! "MacPaint 2.0 was introduced in late 1987 (did it really take me that long to write?) and remained on the market until fall 1998. I think this is a record of some sort for personal computer software." http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Evolution_of_a_classic.txt&showcomments=1#comments A pity I've found this excellent website only recently since it shows some great insight of what is involved to truly create an incredible product. @Andy: thanks a lot of sharing with "the rest of us". Since I was a youngster by the time homecomputing was becoming big I'd like to share how I perceived Apple. Around my neighborhood, or at school for that matter, Commodore began to rule. This was most certainly due to the better price resulting in exorbitant unit sales plus an incredible growing list of "games" and other software compared to all existing competition. This was around 1984. I've heard of Apple, even the Macintosh, and because you didn't buy an Apple if you were just into gaming, I always thought of Apple as the more serious company, something for adults. Apple as an option for the very first computer was not discussed at all, the price tag being a huge part of it, I guess. So, I ended up starting out with a Commodore C16, shortly followed by a used Atari 800 XL, which drove me nuts since I couldn't get my Epson printer to work flawlessly with Print Shop. From there I migrated to an Amiga 500 in 1990, finally being able to print text flawlessly but the limited RAM and a rather unstable version of a word processing software I bought for big $$$, drove me crazy when all I wanted to do besides gaming, was to compose and print text without headaches. I switched from that ill fated, expensive WSIWYG word processor to a character based one, but couldn't accept the fact to go backwards, guessing what a document might look like rather than knowing. When the Amiga 1200 became a steal around 1994 I got one and gave WYSIWYG word processing another shot, this time with better results, but since this expensive word processing program wasn't further developed I was sitting on a still function limited Ver. 1.0. I switched to Wordworth but in the end the Amiga was clearly a passing system and I envied the other systems with a great choice of ink printers (there were ink printers for Amiga, too, but I did not want to buy into it, rather saving up for a "real" PC by now). In 1996 I bought an expensive 100 Mhz Pentium PC, Windows 95, and a Lexmark ink printer, Word 6.0 and finally I was able to produce satisfying documents. I want to stay true and saying that I preferred buying Commodores, Atari also for the gaming experience back then, but I ended up always looking for the Holy Gral in satisfying word processing. So, between 1986 and 1996 I had spent equally or more money on competing systems than a Mac Plus cost, counting hardware and software. Today I own by chance a 4MB Mac Plus and I am surprised by the productivity and quality it offered. And I can say for sure it's quality and usefulness surpasses all the systems I used to have back then. Heck, if it wasn't for the internet, digital photos and music, it could still last in a home. It still can be useful for a small business, if all you do is word processing and spread sheeting and emails. So, if I could do it again with what I know today, an investment into a 1986 Macintosh Plus, despite inflated prices maybe, were the way to go for immediate satisfying results and saving headaches and further hard- and software investments for years to come. The Plus would have served me well until internet and email would eventually become standard and affordable. Breaking this down into coins, a very wise investment. The problem: back then I thought and felt differently and Apple did not do anything to communicate a different message than Macintosh is only for truly professionals on a fat budget (they maybe didn't say so, but the combination of where the Mac was used plus the price tag created this reputation). Since it wasn't used at my school, I even hadn't had a chance to see one in action. Again, they were only with the professionals, and then with only the creative ones. So, in retrospective, a more moderate pricing could have helped to regard it as the only tool ever needed for a long time to come. Like it was, it surely wasn't the computer "for the rest of us". A missed chance! http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Price_Fight.txt&showcomments=1#comments In 1988, I spent just one afternoon with my ($1399.00 used) Mac Plus doing the disc swap routine before I decided to spring for a HUGE 20 MB hard drive. Still the best $700 I ever spent.......it preserved my sanity. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Disk_Swappers_Elbow.txt&showcomments=1#comments Ditto the above comment. Other than being out of my element with the engineering geekspeak, for me Andy and the others seem like they'd be cool guys to hang out with. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Price_Fight.txt&showcomments=1#comments I just made that signature jpg my desktop background. Figured it would be easier to enjoy it there for a while (and confuse my wife) than to pry open my old Mac Plus. Thanks for a great site! http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Signing_Party.txt&showcomments=1#comments FWIW, I scanned this Zebra lady on my Thunderscanner. I traded a lot of scans and digitized sounds at A32 meetings in Sunnyvale those days. When I first saw this in MacPaint I took a screenshot and compared it to my scan to be sure that it really was the same scan, and it was. Do you recall where you got the image? Pretty amusing how things get around, even in those pre-inter-floppy-net days. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Evolution_of_a_classic.txt&showcomments=1#comments Just noticed that Janez Starc posted a video of Bouncing Pepsis in action, viewable at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDB16Zgodw http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Bouncing_Pepsis.txt&showcomments=1#comments I forgot about the T'Scan. But I certainly remember the ThunderClock, a clock/calendar card for the Apple II. I wrote "ThunderDOS" for the clock around 1981. I don't think I ever met Tom Petrie in person, though we spoke often by phone during the project. ThunderDOS was a modified version of Apple DOS that timestamped files. Files had creation and modification dates, and the Catalog command was modified to list those dates. Naturally, DOS obtained time/date from the ThunderClock. Because the source for DOS was not available outside Apple, I implemented the entire set of changes in patches! (I must have had DOS source listings, which helped greatly, but I know I didn't have buildable source code. The patches changed various internal routines to add the dates (shortening file names to make space for the data), and a new Catalog command to print the info. If there was no ThunderClock installed, nothing bad happened. (I don't recall, but I assume creation dates were zeroes and mod dates were not changed). DOS was shipped in a 16K-bootable "master" version, which relocated itself to the top of available memory. Disks formatted from a relocated version were not themselves relocatable (i.e. they had to boot in a same- or larger-memory machine). The space formerly occupied by the relocator was thus available on these "slave" images of DOS. I was able to fit the entire set of patches into that space, so the only feature replaced was relocation. Gee, all this stuff was over 25 years ago. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Thunderscan.txt&showcomments=1#comments