12 ms·

People Behind “The Print Shop” (1985)

89 points by empressplay 2y ago

TMWNN 2y ago
I've never believed that people used Print Shop for greeting cards. Perhaps once, as a novelty, but there is no way that anyone would not prefer giving (or receiving) a colorful, professionally printed store-bought one. Print Shop became a killer app for home computers for the other reasons the article discusses: Custom posters, signs, and banners, the things not readily available at retail.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- glimshe 2y ago
  Computer printed cards had a novelty factor vs professional e "boring" cards people had received their whole lives. They also felt handmade, believe it or not!
- soylentcola 2y ago
  As a kid with a Commodore 128 and no access to stores or cash, I printed loads of those things. Also long banners (much to my father's chagrin as he had to provide the ink ribbons and tractor-fed printer paper).
  - parpfish 2y ago
    i made so many cards. and so many "keep out" signs for my bedroom door (with the skull and crossbones clipart and their Thames font because it looked pirate-y)
- endlessvoid94 2y ago
  I used it for cards all the time!
- supportengineer 2y ago
  Disagree. Any hand made card is more special. The giver put their time and energy into making it.
- wanderingstan 2y ago
  Believe it. We used it extensively in the 80s for birthdays, Christmas cards and more. Anything made by computer was instantly special, and the ability to customize card to the recipients interests was viewed as magic. As more of our neighbors and friends got computers, print shop was one of the first programs to be acquired. (Okay, often pirated!)
- jancsika 2y ago
  > but there is no way that anyone would not prefer giving (or receiving) a colorful, professionally printed store-bought one. Oh boy, you've got a fun education ahead of you today! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_capital E.g., mom tells a relative I want to make a card on my computer for them, then tells me they'd really like a card made on the computer. Yay, they need my skills to make them a card. I'm not sure symbolic value includes the joy my mom got from being a kind of P.T. Barnum of my card-printing skills (and card folding-- 2 ply IIRC). But there's that, too. Anyway, that Wikipedia article will unlock a lot of cool new areas and skins that you can't get without it.
- drivers99 2y ago
  The one kid in my grade in elementary school who actually had an Apple II computer at home did hand out invitations to his birthday party printed with Print Shop. It was the type you would print and then fold the page into 1/4ths. Around 1985/1986.
- serf 2y ago
  >I've never believed that people used Print Shop for greeting cards. as the son of a Print Shop addicted mother through the early 90s, you've believed wrong. It was pretty empowering for people to be able to customize things. Oddball holidays or festivities that major labels would never touch. Niche topics that were kind of controversial -- it happened at a perfect time when desktop printers became kind of universal and multi-talented. It's hard to find a "Congratulations on the vasectomy!" card at Hallmark. Print Shop made it not only feasible as a one-off gag, but easy.
- qq66 2y ago
  Many people would rather give something they made than something they bought. Even if "making" means choosing the fonts and border, it still feels like a labor of love than a simple Hallmark card would.
  - blooalien 2y ago
    Especially back when Print Shop was popular. Many folks back then took "hand made" as meaning "special", even if it was "handmade" on a computer. It was the "extra effort" involved as opposed to just buying some generic pre-made thing I think that made it "special" to folks. ;)
shermozle 2y ago
The Canva of its time...
- sufehmi 2y ago
  No banners with Canva
block_dagger 2y ago
This brought back memories of designing and printing reams of dot matrix banners.
jasonkester 2y ago
I feel like there is still a need for this thing, but for reasons I can’t understand, nothing replaced it when it went away. I mean, Junior High Schools still need big long banners to hang over classroom doors to announce things. Sure, there are no more dot matrix printers to print them on a long perforated sheet. But surely kids would be willing to tape sheets of paper together. What am I missing?
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  It didn't go away. Several different, confusingly named and numbered, versions are available currently: https://www.broderbund.com/ https://www.broderbund.com/
- neilv 2y ago
  I can only guess. Maybe, when the only printer the classroom had was an Epson FX-85, banners were low-friction. Everything you printed was a banner, until you burst the pages. Coloring it in was optional. Making a banner with a contemporary printer, however, requires arts&crafts effort before you have anything? Or maybe it's more about kids spending much more time with digital than with atoms? Attention spans, priorities, early personal-brand-marketing nudges by helicopter parents or influencer role models and peers, less mystique/novelty about doing things with computers?
- altcognito 2y ago
  Canva is as close as it gets, and yeah, no banners
- saulpw 2y ago
  Taping sheets together is not as easy or as fun as you think. The fun part of making a banner was letting print for however long and then carefully tearing it off and then you could just hang it. Also, people make whatever they want in MS Word using Comic Sans. Why pay for a a specialized tool when you can use the same thing you write your thesis in?
superultra 2y ago
My jam was much more Springboard’s The Newsroom then The Print Shop. I loved that software. In either case I see a through line between those programs and most recently Canva. All see computing as a way to democratize design for the common person, to reduce friction between what someone sees in their head and what shows up on reamed paper (or the web, or social media, etc).
- supportengineer 2y ago
  I loved the Newsroom! Made tons of news letters for fun and for school projects.
mrighele 2y ago
Surprisingly the link doesn't contain any screenshot of the software. I remember using a software named "Print Master" around those years and I was wondering if the two were related. It seems that the latter was essentially a clone of the former [1], and the companies involved got into a lawsuit. The link also contains screenshots of both, which bought back nice memories of printing banners and calendars. [1] https://tedium.co/2016/06/02/the-print-shop-banner-decade/ https://tedium.co/2016/06/02/the-print-shop-banner-decade/
- fipar 2y ago
  I used Print Master a lot and had no idea it was a clone of something else, in fact, today is the first time I learn about The Print Shop, so thanks for that link! The sound of the dot matrix printer late at night ...
  - mosburger 2y ago
    IIRC Print Master supported lowercase letters whereas Print Shop did not. I didn't see any mention of that in the article link above (admittedly I scanned it pretty quickly). I was also a Print Master person because I had a PC Clone (Tandy 1000EX).
EvanAnderson 2y ago
My high school used The Print Shop to make a lot of signage. Having an eye for fonts and a computer and printer at home made it easy to produce fake signs that appeared superficially to be whatever sign I was replacing. "ALL LOCKERS ARE SCHOOL PROPERTY AND MAY BE SEARCHED AT ANY TIME" was easy to change into "ALL THOUGHTS ARE SCHOOL PROPERTY AND MAY BE CONTROLLED AT ANY TIME", etc. Not having a laminator lowered my success rate at keeping fake signs up, but just putting up new copies worked well until I got caught in the act. Aside: Anybody remember the Easter Egg game hidden in the Apple II version (and maybe others) of The Print Shop Companion?
- c22 2y ago
  "It was as he suspected: in a rigid hierarchy, nobody questions orders that seem to come from above, and those at the very top are so isolated from the actual work situation that they never see what is going on below. It was the chains of communication, not the means of production, that determined a social process.. Nothing signed “THE MGT.” would ever be challenged; the Midget could always pass himself off as the Management."
- bluedino 2y ago
  I solved a shared lunchroom problem with a Brother labeler, using the same wide yellow labels that someone in the office used. "NO MICROWAVING FISH"
- colanderman 2y ago
  Yes, DRIVER!! That was the best Easter Egg. You can play it here [1], Escape Control+6 after booting. I loved that game so much as a kid. I made a clone of it as an entry to the IOCCC which won [2]. Sadly it no longer works in modern terminal emulators, but a slight modification [3] fixes it. Instructions here [4]. Aside, I got up to similar shenanigans in high school. Printed out "Y2K Compliant" stickers and stuck them on everything. My mother was a teacher so I did have access to a laminator ;) a privilege I left sadly underused. [1] https://archive.org/details/328_Print_Shop_Companion_Side_B https://archive.org/details/328_Print_Shop_Companion_Side_B [2] https://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2001_ctk https://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2001_ctk [3] https://chris.pacejo.net/programs/ctk-fixed.c https://chris.pacejo.net/programs/ctk-fixed.c [4] http://www.ioccc.org/2001/ctk.hint http://www.ioccc.org/2001/ctk.hint
bluedino 2y ago
I remember in elementary school, coming in and hearing the Apple dot-matrix printer going. It usually meant it was a students birthday and they were getting a banner printed. I also remember waiting what seemed like forever to see the first color banners when we finally got a color printer. I miss continuous feed paper!
kosak2000 2y ago
Corey Kosak here. A friend told me this was trending on Hacker News. Ask me anything LOL. Many of the people mentioned in the article are still around so I'll let them know this is happening. :-)
- sufehmi 2y ago
  Hey, just want to say THANK YOU for empowering a lot of us - we created so many banners, flyers, etc for a lot of for-good activities. When I first find out you can print a single desain over multiple pages (banners), my mind was blown. Me and my friends then went quite wild with it. Thanks again. Much appreciated.
  - PROMISE_237 2y ago
    [dead]
  - kosak2000 2y ago
    Thank you for the kind words. But I can't take any credit for the creativity behind the product. My role was doing a variety of ports: the Commodore 64 version "side B" (side B of the floppy which had its own set of graphics and fonts that were redrawn to match the scale of the idiosyncratic Commodore printer... was it the 801?) Also the Atari 400/800 port (I ran out of RAM so I decided get rid of Atari DOS and instead write a mini file system sufficient to write save files to the Atari Drive (model 810 I think). The things people let you get away with when you're a teenager... And then the Apple //gs version which was a total rewrite from the ground up and had a variety of new stuff in it. The credit is due to David and Marty but there's also an interesting backstory. As I understand it, the prototype that David & Marty first brought to Br0derbund was a "Greeting Disk". As in "Wouldn't it be fun for people to be able to make a dynamic, custom greeting disk that they can give to their friends to boot on their computer?" A great idea really, but perhaps a little ahead of its time. I believe it was Br0derbund's Richard Whittaker who first suggested to them "how about printing instead?"
    - kosak2000 2y ago
dugmartin 2y ago
Print Shop and BannerMania were my two goto printing apps in the 80s. BannerMania had a "transmogrify" feature that iterated through a bunch of design options automatically which was great for me as I sucked at design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_Mania
PROMISE_237 2y ago
[dead]
dbalsam 2y ago
David Balsam popping in. It was a fun time, to be sure! The creativity shown by the users went way beyond the wildest dreams of the developers. I still occasionally see the tattered remains of a Print Shop sign or banner in random storefront windows.
- fredsmith219 2y ago
  My mom’s hard and fast rule when buying a new computer: It had better run Print Shop. She was barely computer literate but that program was soooo useful to her. You guys did a great thing.
  - dbalsam 2y ago
    That's great to hear, thank you! They were fun days, for sure. One of the most fun activities were the conventions that were created around Print Artist, the successor to Print Shop. PALs (Print Artist Lovers) were quite rabid with their love for the program. Blew me away.
- qq66 2y ago
  David, I consumed a huge amount of dot matrix printer in my elementary school with Print Shop, making every kind of card and banner you can imagine. 30 years later I am starting a company to reimagine technology's role in childhood. In 1990, my friends and I were eating garbage from McDonalds and using brilliant software like Print Shop, KidPix, Pinball Construction Set, etc. In 2024, kids are eating organic pasta salad but poisoning their brains with garbage content on YouTube and Roblox designed to addict them. Would love to tell you more about what we are working on. You can contact me at amal@cartwheelcomputer.com. Thanks!
gciguy 2y ago
Made lots of banners and cards. Still have at least one lying around that I rediscovered recently.
dekhn 2y ago
The Print Shop, like several other apple programs I used in the mid 1980s, transformed my interests. Before PS, I thought of fonts as highly minimal: for example, the Apple IIe text fonts (https://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/apple2/ https://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/apple2/). When I started to use PS I immediately became interested in how fonts worked and how to render quality fonts in response to user inputs. Realistically, PS must have had lots of extra code that was not part of the Apple II operating system to render its lovely fonts (https://fiu-original.b-cdn.net/fontsinuse.com/use-images/18/18565/18565.png?filename=Google%20ChromeSnap-010.png https://fiu-original.b-cdn.net/fontsinuse.com/use-images/18/...). After leaving Apple, I switched to PCs/dos/windows and then linux and the font story on those platforms was pretty impressive; I. ignored it for a long time, and then noticed that TrueType became a standard and all the main OSes gained the ability to render complex fonts in real time response to users.
- kosak2000 2y ago
  True, there was certainly no support in the Apple II OS for fonts. I think the OS that came with the IIGS (GS/OS?) may have had font support (but IIGS Print Shop didn't run on top of GS/OS; it booted and took over the machine). The fonts in Print Shop were bitmaps, drawn at the resolution of the target printers. The code did some modest algorithms on them for kerning, plus italic, underline, and outline style. I do recall Marty talking a lot about how the product might support resolution-independent vector fonts (this was before such a thing was a standard part of the OS). But of course modern machines caught up and later versions of the product just started using OS fonts.
jmbwell 2y ago
[[[[[THINKING]]]]] [[[[[PRINTING]]]]] The first time I saw the pulsating rainbow screens as a second-grader, it blew my mind. I'm not sure my experience with The Print Shop didn't set me on the path toward my early career in publishing. If you needed me after school, you'd find me in the computer lab waiting on a banner. Favorite border: The one with the square loops in the corners.
titusjohnson 2y ago
Until '98/'99 or so, the C64 was the only computer we at home, and The Print Shop was one of the ~20 or so diskettes kept in the "Used Frequently" storage box. I made so many banners and greeting cards with that thing. Even used it to make all the Birthday and Christmas thank-you cards that my Mom insisted civilized people sent, as long as I personalized it with a thoughtful handwritten line & signature. I tried to use GEOS but it was just too slow. TPS got me from LOAD "*",8,1 to productivity far, far faster.
warpspin 2y ago
The Print Shop was pure awesomeness. Drove my parents crazy when I needed yet another pack of endless paper after printing a couple of banners on my C-64. With all those low res graphics, you could have awesome state of the art results even with medium talent, as the technology was so limited, which is utterly impossible today. There really should be endless paper for laser printers. With all those letter and A4 printers, kids will never have the joy we had :D
- kosak2000 2y ago
  For years after my last dot matrix printer, my mom made me buy reams of fanfold computer paper for her. She loved taking notes with it. "It's so convenient!"
- kosak2000 2y ago
  Indeed I think David & Marty's genius was making a tool that had both freedom and guardrails, so people could build something creative without being overwhelmed with too much complexity.

89 points by empressplay 2y ago

I've never believed that people used Print Shop for greeting cards. Perhaps once, as a novelty, but there is no way that anyone would not prefer giving (or receiving) a colorful, professionally printed store-bought one. Print Shop became a killer app for home computers for the other reasons the article discusses: Custom posters, signs, and banners, the things not readily available at retail.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
glimshe 2y ago
Computer printed cards had a novelty factor vs professional e "boring" cards people had received their whole lives. They also felt handmade, believe it or not!
soylentcola 2y ago
As a kid with a Commodore 128 and no access to stores or cash, I printed loads of those things. Also long banners (much to my father's chagrin as he had to provide the ink ribbons and tractor-fed printer paper).
- parpfish 2y ago
  i made so many cards. and so many "keep out" signs for my bedroom door (with the skull and crossbones clipart and their Thames font because it looked pirate-y)
endlessvoid94 2y ago
I used it for cards all the time!
supportengineer 2y ago
Disagree. Any hand made card is more special. The giver put their time and energy into making it.
wanderingstan 2y ago
Believe it. We used it extensively in the 80s for birthdays, Christmas cards and more. Anything made by computer was instantly special, and the ability to customize card to the recipients interests was viewed as magic. As more of our neighbors and friends got computers, print shop was one of the first programs to be acquired. (Okay, often pirated!)
jancsika 2y ago
> but there is no way that anyone would not prefer giving (or receiving) a colorful, professionally printed store-bought one. Oh boy, you've got a fun education ahead of you today! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_capital E.g., mom tells a relative I want to make a card on my computer for them, then tells me they'd really like a card made on the computer. Yay, they need my skills to make them a card. I'm not sure symbolic value includes the joy my mom got from being a kind of P.T. Barnum of my card-printing skills (and card folding-- 2 ply IIRC). But there's that, too. Anyway, that Wikipedia article will unlock a lot of cool new areas and skins that you can't get without it.
drivers99 2y ago
The one kid in my grade in elementary school who actually had an Apple II computer at home did hand out invitations to his birthday party printed with Print Shop. It was the type you would print and then fold the page into 1/4ths. Around 1985/1986.
serf 2y ago
>I've never believed that people used Print Shop for greeting cards. as the son of a Print Shop addicted mother through the early 90s, you've believed wrong. It was pretty empowering for people to be able to customize things. Oddball holidays or festivities that major labels would never touch. Niche topics that were kind of controversial -- it happened at a perfect time when desktop printers became kind of universal and multi-talented. It's hard to find a "Congratulations on the vasectomy!" card at Hallmark. Print Shop made it not only feasible as a one-off gag, but easy.
qq66 2y ago
Many people would rather give something they made than something they bought. Even if "making" means choosing the fonts and border, it still feels like a labor of love than a simple Hallmark card would.
- blooalien 2y ago
  Especially back when Print Shop was popular. Many folks back then took "hand made" as meaning "special", even if it was "handmade" on a computer. It was the "extra effort" involved as opposed to just buying some generic pre-made thing I think that made it "special" to folks. ;)

shermozle 2y ago

The Canva of its time...

sufehmi 2y ago
No banners with Canva

block_dagger 2y ago

This brought back memories of designing and printing reams of dot matrix banners.

jasonkester 2y ago

I feel like there is still a need for this thing, but for reasons I can’t understand, nothing replaced it when it went away. I mean, Junior High Schools still need big long banners to hang over classroom doors to announce things. Sure, there are no more dot matrix printers to print them on a long perforated sheet. But surely kids would be willing to tape sheets of paper together. What am I missing?

dragonwriter 2y ago
It didn't go away. Several different, confusingly named and numbered, versions are available currently: https://www.broderbund.com/ https://www.broderbund.com/
neilv 2y ago
I can only guess. Maybe, when the only printer the classroom had was an Epson FX-85, banners were low-friction. Everything you printed was a banner, until you burst the pages. Coloring it in was optional. Making a banner with a contemporary printer, however, requires arts&crafts effort before you have anything? Or maybe it's more about kids spending much more time with digital than with atoms? Attention spans, priorities, early personal-brand-marketing nudges by helicopter parents or influencer role models and peers, less mystique/novelty about doing things with computers?
altcognito 2y ago
Canva is as close as it gets, and yeah, no banners
saulpw 2y ago
Taping sheets together is not as easy or as fun as you think. The fun part of making a banner was letting print for however long and then carefully tearing it off and then you could just hang it. Also, people make whatever they want in MS Word using Comic Sans. Why pay for a a specialized tool when you can use the same thing you write your thesis in?

superultra 2y ago

My jam was much more Springboard’s The Newsroom then The Print Shop. I loved that software. In either case I see a through line between those programs and most recently Canva. All see computing as a way to democratize design for the common person, to reduce friction between what someone sees in their head and what shows up on reamed paper (or the web, or social media, etc).

supportengineer 2y ago
I loved the Newsroom! Made tons of news letters for fun and for school projects.

mrighele 2y ago

Surprisingly the link doesn't contain any screenshot of the software. I remember using a software named "Print Master" around those years and I was wondering if the two were related. It seems that the latter was essentially a clone of the former [1], and the companies involved got into a lawsuit. The link also contains screenshots of both, which bought back nice memories of printing banners and calendars. [1] https://tedium.co/2016/06/02/the-print-shop-banner-decade/ https://tedium.co/2016/06/02/the-print-shop-banner-decade/

fipar 2y ago
I used Print Master a lot and had no idea it was a clone of something else, in fact, today is the first time I learn about The Print Shop, so thanks for that link! The sound of the dot matrix printer late at night ...
- mosburger 2y ago
  IIRC Print Master supported lowercase letters whereas Print Shop did not. I didn't see any mention of that in the article link above (admittedly I scanned it pretty quickly). I was also a Print Master person because I had a PC Clone (Tandy 1000EX).

EvanAnderson 2y ago

My high school used The Print Shop to make a lot of signage. Having an eye for fonts and a computer and printer at home made it easy to produce fake signs that appeared superficially to be whatever sign I was replacing. "ALL LOCKERS ARE SCHOOL PROPERTY AND MAY BE SEARCHED AT ANY TIME" was easy to change into "ALL THOUGHTS ARE SCHOOL PROPERTY AND MAY BE CONTROLLED AT ANY TIME", etc. Not having a laminator lowered my success rate at keeping fake signs up, but just putting up new copies worked well until I got caught in the act. Aside: Anybody remember the Easter Egg game hidden in the Apple II version (and maybe others) of The Print Shop Companion?

c22 2y ago
"It was as he suspected: in a rigid hierarchy, nobody questions orders that seem to come from above, and those at the very top are so isolated from the actual work situation that they never see what is going on below. It was the chains of communication, not the means of production, that determined a social process.. Nothing signed “THE MGT.” would ever be challenged; the Midget could always pass himself off as the Management."
bluedino 2y ago
I solved a shared lunchroom problem with a Brother labeler, using the same wide yellow labels that someone in the office used. "NO MICROWAVING FISH"
colanderman 2y ago
Yes, DRIVER!! That was the best Easter Egg. You can play it here [1], Escape Control+6 after booting. I loved that game so much as a kid. I made a clone of it as an entry to the IOCCC which won [2]. Sadly it no longer works in modern terminal emulators, but a slight modification [3] fixes it. Instructions here [4]. Aside, I got up to similar shenanigans in high school. Printed out "Y2K Compliant" stickers and stuck them on everything. My mother was a teacher so I did have access to a laminator ;) a privilege I left sadly underused. [1] https://archive.org/details/328_Print_Shop_Companion_Side_B https://archive.org/details/328_Print_Shop_Companion_Side_B [2] https://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2001_ctk https://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2001_ctk [3] https://chris.pacejo.net/programs/ctk-fixed.c https://chris.pacejo.net/programs/ctk-fixed.c [4] http://www.ioccc.org/2001/ctk.hint http://www.ioccc.org/2001/ctk.hint

bluedino 2y ago

I remember in elementary school, coming in and hearing the Apple dot-matrix printer going. It usually meant it was a students birthday and they were getting a banner printed. I also remember waiting what seemed like forever to see the first color banners when we finally got a color printer. I miss continuous feed paper!

kosak2000 2y ago

Corey Kosak here. A friend told me this was trending on Hacker News. Ask me anything LOL. Many of the people mentioned in the article are still around so I'll let them know this is happening. :-)

sufehmi 2y ago
Hey, just want to say THANK YOU for empowering a lot of us - we created so many banners, flyers, etc for a lot of for-good activities. When I first find out you can print a single desain over multiple pages (banners), my mind was blown. Me and my friends then went quite wild with it. Thanks again. Much appreciated.
- PROMISE_237 2y ago
  [dead]
- kosak2000 2y ago
  Thank you for the kind words. But I can't take any credit for the creativity behind the product. My role was doing a variety of ports: the Commodore 64 version "side B" (side B of the floppy which had its own set of graphics and fonts that were redrawn to match the scale of the idiosyncratic Commodore printer... was it the 801?) Also the Atari 400/800 port (I ran out of RAM so I decided get rid of Atari DOS and instead write a mini file system sufficient to write save files to the Atari Drive (model 810 I think). The things people let you get away with when you're a teenager... And then the Apple //gs version which was a total rewrite from the ground up and had a variety of new stuff in it. The credit is due to David and Marty but there's also an interesting backstory. As I understand it, the prototype that David & Marty first brought to Br0derbund was a "Greeting Disk". As in "Wouldn't it be fun for people to be able to make a dynamic, custom greeting disk that they can give to their friends to boot on their computer?" A great idea really, but perhaps a little ahead of its time. I believe it was Br0derbund's Richard Whittaker who first suggested to them "how about printing instead?"
  - kosak2000 2y ago

dugmartin 2y ago

Print Shop and BannerMania were my two goto printing apps in the 80s. BannerMania had a "transmogrify" feature that iterated through a bunch of design options automatically which was great for me as I sucked at design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_Mania

PROMISE_237 2y ago

[dead]

dbalsam 2y ago

David Balsam popping in. It was a fun time, to be sure! The creativity shown by the users went way beyond the wildest dreams of the developers. I still occasionally see the tattered remains of a Print Shop sign or banner in random storefront windows.

fredsmith219 2y ago
My mom’s hard and fast rule when buying a new computer: It had better run Print Shop. She was barely computer literate but that program was soooo useful to her. You guys did a great thing.
- dbalsam 2y ago
  That's great to hear, thank you! They were fun days, for sure. One of the most fun activities were the conventions that were created around Print Artist, the successor to Print Shop. PALs (Print Artist Lovers) were quite rabid with their love for the program. Blew me away.
qq66 2y ago
David, I consumed a huge amount of dot matrix printer in my elementary school with Print Shop, making every kind of card and banner you can imagine. 30 years later I am starting a company to reimagine technology's role in childhood. In 1990, my friends and I were eating garbage from McDonalds and using brilliant software like Print Shop, KidPix, Pinball Construction Set, etc. In 2024, kids are eating organic pasta salad but poisoning their brains with garbage content on YouTube and Roblox designed to addict them. Would love to tell you more about what we are working on. You can contact me at amal@cartwheelcomputer.com. Thanks!

gciguy 2y ago

Made lots of banners and cards. Still have at least one lying around that I rediscovered recently.

dekhn 2y ago

The Print Shop, like several other apple programs I used in the mid 1980s, transformed my interests. Before PS, I thought of fonts as highly minimal: for example, the Apple IIe text fonts (https://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/apple2/ https://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/apple2/). When I started to use PS I immediately became interested in how fonts worked and how to render quality fonts in response to user inputs. Realistically, PS must have had lots of extra code that was not part of the Apple II operating system to render its lovely fonts (https://fiu-original.b-cdn.net/fontsinuse.com/use-images/18/18565/18565.png?filename=Google%20ChromeSnap-010.png https://fiu-original.b-cdn.net/fontsinuse.com/use-images/18/...). After leaving Apple, I switched to PCs/dos/windows and then linux and the font story on those platforms was pretty impressive; I. ignored it for a long time, and then noticed that TrueType became a standard and all the main OSes gained the ability to render complex fonts in real time response to users.

kosak2000 2y ago
True, there was certainly no support in the Apple II OS for fonts. I think the OS that came with the IIGS (GS/OS?) may have had font support (but IIGS Print Shop didn't run on top of GS/OS; it booted and took over the machine). The fonts in Print Shop were bitmaps, drawn at the resolution of the target printers. The code did some modest algorithms on them for kerning, plus italic, underline, and outline style. I do recall Marty talking a lot about how the product might support resolution-independent vector fonts (this was before such a thing was a standard part of the OS). But of course modern machines caught up and later versions of the product just started using OS fonts.

jmbwell 2y ago

[[[[[THINKING]]]]] [[[[[PRINTING]]]]] The first time I saw the pulsating rainbow screens as a second-grader, it blew my mind. I'm not sure my experience with The Print Shop didn't set me on the path toward my early career in publishing. If you needed me after school, you'd find me in the computer lab waiting on a banner. Favorite border: The one with the square loops in the corners.

titusjohnson 2y ago

Until '98/'99 or so, the C64 was the only computer we at home, and The Print Shop was one of the ~20 or so diskettes kept in the "Used Frequently" storage box. I made so many banners and greeting cards with that thing. Even used it to make all the Birthday and Christmas thank-you cards that my Mom insisted civilized people sent, as long as I personalized it with a thoughtful handwritten line & signature. I tried to use GEOS but it was just too slow. TPS got me from LOAD "*",8,1 to productivity far, far faster.

warpspin 2y ago

The Print Shop was pure awesomeness. Drove my parents crazy when I needed yet another pack of endless paper after printing a couple of banners on my C-64. With all those low res graphics, you could have awesome state of the art results even with medium talent, as the technology was so limited, which is utterly impossible today. There really should be endless paper for laser printers. With all those letter and A4 printers, kids will never have the joy we had :D

kosak2000 2y ago
For years after my last dot matrix printer, my mom made me buy reams of fanfold computer paper for her. She loved taking notes with it. "It's so convenient!"
kosak2000 2y ago
Indeed I think David & Marty's genius was making a tool that had both freedom and guardrails, so people could build something creative without being overwhelmed with too much complexity.