3 ms·

Sure, I think so. There was no internet. There were no software stores.

• pistle 12y ago
  What do you mean no software stores? What year are you targeting? Boxed software was everywhere as early as the early 80's which is when the Apple II series hit its stride with the IIe... There were aisles of it at even pedestrian stores. Computer clubs and other piracy-potential things were available. 300 baud modems and BBS's... You also had mall stores like Babbages (became GameStop eventually), etc. that specialized in software across multiple platforms. VisiCalc was released about the time that software became a fairly visible retail item.
  • joezydeco 12y ago
    Maybe he was referring to the concept of always-connected machines being able to update system software and apps remotely. Even updating the Mac system software back then meant trudging to a brick-and-mortar store and buying the large set of floppies.
• rbanffy 12y ago
  You have some notions to correct. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine Since the late 70's, you could just go into a store, buy a box with disks (appropriate to your machine type) and manuals and run it. Or cartridges - many programs were distributed as ROM cartridges, including BASIC interpreters. Cartridge slots were common in home computers. You could buy Lotus 123 in cartridge for the PC Junior.
• alayne 12y ago
  I take it you weren't around at that time. Well, there was software all over the place in stores and on BBSes, some that was entered from magazine listings, and much that was pirated on tapes and floppy disks.