3 ms·

>100K, okay, umm, that's 15 days of Apple Writer royalties right now Yeah, I went all googly-eyed when I read that.

lutusp 14y ago
Those were the days. I made over a million dollars per year for several years running. And to think it was for a program that ran on a computer with a 1 mHz clock, typically had 16 kilobytes of RAM and one 140 KB floppy drive for "mass" storage.
- googoobaby 14y ago
  Off topic I realize, but I loved Graforth!
- notdrunkatall 14y ago
  Making a million dollars in any given year is still the stuff of my dreams. I'll get there though. I don't know much about programming, so this question might seem a little dumb, but how did you write Apple Writer? And how did it end up being used in Apple's O/S?
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > I don't know much about programming, so this question might seem a little dumb, but how did you write Apple Writer? At the time (beginning in 1978) Apple had only one computer for sale -- a small machine called the Apple II that used a very limited processor called the 6502. Both RAM and storage were limited, and the machine had a clock speed of 1 mHz (glacially slow by modern standards). Also (apart from a version of BASIC that was too slow for serious work), there were no high-level languages, so if you wanted to write a high performance program, you needed to write in assembly language -- one step above object code. I wrote Apple Writer in assembly language -- a very slow and laborious process, but the resulting program was very fast - much faster than its competition. This was one reason for its success. > And how did it end up being used in Apple's O/S? It was actually sold alongside Apple's operating system, it wasn't integrated into it. What happened was that the Apple decision-makers, Steve Jobs in particular, realized they had already saturated the market for hobbyists, and wanted to begin to sell computers to ordinary people, people who intended to use a computer to solve everyday problems like writing and printing documents. Somehow they heard about a word processor I was writing for my own use, and asked to see it. So, riding my bicycle to the post office with a big manila envelope, I thought, "Hey, maybe they'll like my program. I might make hundreds of dollars." As it turned out, over the next five years I made over six million dollars in royalties. More details: http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...
    - notdrunkatall 14y ago
      Man, that's a great story, thanks for sharing it. Also, I have a new goal in life: to write something entirely in assembly language. Maybe I'll make a couple hundred dollars...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

Those were the days. I made over a million dollars per year for several years running. And to think it was for a program that ran on a computer with a 1 mHz clock, typically had 16 kilobytes of RAM and one 140 KB floppy drive for "mass" storage.

googoobaby 14y ago
Off topic I realize, but I loved Graforth!
notdrunkatall 14y ago
Making a million dollars in any given year is still the stuff of my dreams. I'll get there though. I don't know much about programming, so this question might seem a little dumb, but how did you write Apple Writer? And how did it end up being used in Apple's O/S?
- lutusp 14y ago
  > I don't know much about programming, so this question might seem a little dumb, but how did you write Apple Writer? At the time (beginning in 1978) Apple had only one computer for sale -- a small machine called the Apple II that used a very limited processor called the 6502. Both RAM and storage were limited, and the machine had a clock speed of 1 mHz (glacially slow by modern standards). Also (apart from a version of BASIC that was too slow for serious work), there were no high-level languages, so if you wanted to write a high performance program, you needed to write in assembly language -- one step above object code. I wrote Apple Writer in assembly language -- a very slow and laborious process, but the resulting program was very fast - much faster than its competition. This was one reason for its success. > And how did it end up being used in Apple's O/S? It was actually sold alongside Apple's operating system, it wasn't integrated into it. What happened was that the Apple decision-makers, Steve Jobs in particular, realized they had already saturated the market for hobbyists, and wanted to begin to sell computers to ordinary people, people who intended to use a computer to solve everyday problems like writing and printing documents. Somehow they heard about a word processor I was writing for my own use, and asked to see it. So, riding my bicycle to the post office with a big manila envelope, I thought, "Hey, maybe they'll like my program. I might make hundreds of dollars." As it turned out, over the next five years I made over six million dollars in royalties. More details: http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...
  - notdrunkatall 14y ago
    Man, that's a great story, thanks for sharing it. Also, I have a new goal in life: to write something entirely in assembly language. Maybe I'll make a couple hundred dollars...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]