Store-bought software was a co-revolution with home personal computers. Before then it was commercial oriented mainframe software. The mainframe computer manufa

Store-bought software was a co-revolution with home personal computers. Before then it was commercial oriented mainframe software. The mainframe computer manufacturers wrote some software; corporate users wrote some software; consulting software companies some for a rather small market. Software stores didnt really get started until 1976 or so. Oregon Trail was 5 years before that. MicroSoft was an early vendor with BASIC for the Altair, then other PCs in 1975. I attended the first West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 where there were a few software vendors including MicroSoft. Floppy disks were just getting started. Alternatives were punch tape, cassette tapes, and telephone modem downloads. The next big software revolution was downloadable self-installing internet apps, pioneered by Apple. In most cases this is just just 2 to 4 clicks of a mouse. No messy purchase of box in the store, copying multiple disks into the computer, and praying your license key was valid.