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Terrific, fun article. So many memories. I worked at an Apple dealer as a kid. Was present for the Apple II Plus, Apple //e, ProDrive, Apple ///, Lisa, DEC Rai
by specialist 1y ago
Terrific, fun article. So many memories.
I worked at an Apple dealer as a kid. Was present for the Apple II Plus, Apple //e, ProDrive, Apple ///, Lisa, DEC Rainbow, dBase, Wizardry, Ultima. One of my gopher tasks was to fetch literature and inventory (mostly Z80 SoftCards) from "MicroSoft", just a few blocks away (downtown Bellevue).
My dad was a Symphony superfan. Created a nifty tax filing program, maintained for a few years, shared with friends & family. Before shareware became a thing. Since, I always equated databases and sheetsheets. (Still have PTSD caused by Microsoft's series of kludges. ODBC, ODE (?), ADO,...)
One day, dad came home with BoeingCalc. IIRC, the first commercial 3D spreadsheet. Alas, Boeing lost money on every sale, and wouldn't or couldn't spin it off as a separate biz unit.
IIRC, MicroRIM (first commercial relational database for PCs?) was started by former Boeing people. Back then, Boeing had to create internal tools for themselves, so did some pretty cool stuff.