From the «simpler times» department:
Feed: Slashdot
Title: New Book about 'The Apple II Age' Celebrates Early Software Developers -
and Users
Author: EditorDavid
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2023 06:34:00 -0400
Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/07/25/0813205/new-book-about-the-apple-ii-age-celebrates-early-software-developers---and-users?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

By 1983 there were a whopping 2,000 pieces of software for Apple's pre-Macintosh
computer, the Apple II — more than for any other machine in the world. It turns
out this left a trail for one historian to understand The Apple II Age: How the
Computer Became Personal. The new book (by New York University academic Laine
Nooney) argues that it was the first purchasers of that software who are the
true overlooked pioneers during the seven years before the Macintosh. And (as
this reviewer explains, with quotes from the book), collectively they form the
most compelling story about the history of Apple: It's about all those brave and
curious people, the users, who came "Not to hack, but to play... Not to program,
but to print..." And you can trace their activities in perfect detail through
the decades-old software programs they left behind. It's a fresh and original
approach to the history of technology. Yes, the Apple II competed with
Commodore's PET 2001 and Tandy's TRS-80... [But] this trove of programs uniquely
offers "a glimpse of what users did with their personal computers, or perhaps
more tellingly, what users hoped their computers might do." Looking back in
time, Nooney calls the period "one of unusually industrious and experimental
software production, as mom-and-pop development houses cast about trying to
create software that could satisfy the question, 'What is a computer even good
for...?'" The book's jacket promises "a constellation of software creation
stories," with each chapter revisiting an especially iconic program that also
represents an entire category of software... [T]he book ultimately focuses more
heavily on the lessons that can be learned from what programmers envisioned for
these strange new devices — and how the software-buying public did (or didn't)
respond... The earliest emergence of personal computing in America was "a
wondrous mangle," Nooney writes, saying it turned into an era where "overnight
entrepreneurs hastily constructed a consumer computing supply chain where one
had never previously existed." Vice republished an excerpt in May which
describes the "roiling debate" that took place over copy protection in 1981.

[image 2][2] [image 4][4]

Read more of this story[5] at Slashdot.

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[5]: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/07/25/0813205/new-book-about-the-apple-ii-age-celebrates-early-software-developers---and-users?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed (link)

--
Emojis are for wimps.