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The Lost Apps of the 80s

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Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#41

Post by zu03776 »

watersb wrote: post #31
gecko wrote: post #15

Whenever this comes up, I always ask, even though I can anticipate the answer: has anyone cloned Lotus Improv, either literally or ideologically? The closest thing I've used recently that was close was probably Airtable, but that's more an iterative improvement on FileMaker/Access, with a web focus, than really a competitor to Improv. There also used to be a Java desktop app, but it wasn't targeted for casual desktop…

Odessa Helix was really good, a combination spreadsheet and database, and the extensive the scripting language was pretty much straight HyperTalk (AppleScript).

Odesta Helix and Double Helix were graphical programming databases. The early versions for the Macintosh were... interesting to design databases with. QSA Toolworks continues to sell versions of Helix today. https://www.qsatoolworks.com/ Here is a screenshot of the original design interface. Retro-future! https://www.qsatoolworks.com/ee/marketing/museum/images/1984... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_(database)

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#42

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

jonahbenton wrote: post #3

Quick hypothesis on PIMs/editors/etc, from someone who worked on a PIM in the late 1980s and who misses outliners and others- the biggest "unimagined" change is from personal information management to hive-mind information management (via search engines). It used to be that everyone had to maintain their own personal "library"- now this activity is relegated to cranks and luddites. The second order effect is a change…

People build things with Excel because they already have it installed on their office computers. They don't have to file an expense report to pay for a license. They don't have to wrangle IT, beg their manager, or fight with the security team for permission to get it installed.

It doesn't hurt that a wide variety of white-collar workers are already familiar with Excel and stand to gain a great deal of leverage across their job with every small investment in learning about its features, but the incumbent advantage of Excel being universally available, without question or complaint, cannot be overstated.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#43

Post by JamesAdir »

jbullock35 wrote: post #8

People who weren't alive at the time may not appreciate how different the commercial app ecosystem was: how many more options, how much less concentrated. Here is a PC Magazine cover from 1988: https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1988-02-29 . It boasts a review of 55 different word processors. All of them would have been commercial; none of it was free, let alone open-source. It wasn't just word processors. Here is a…

If you compare word processors to note taking apps of today which I think are very equivalent to the same use you'll find more than 55 tools. Word processors belong to an era where the computer replaced the typewriter and it's not needed any more these days. You can find commercial, free or open source note taking apps that are local or cloud based and offer a huge variety of features.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#45

Post by yaur »

divbzero wrote: post #33

I’m intrigued by the comment that “there is nothing out there with the power and usability that Lotus Notes had back-in-the-day”. I didn’t have the opportunity to experience Lotus Notes personally, would be curious to hear the perspective of someone who used (or developed) the application.

I never developed for it, but I had to support it. My recollection is that mailboxes wouldn't really delete stuff, which would cause servers to run out of space. Those mailboxes would then need to be compacted which would cause a multi hour outage for all of the users on the same server.

Notes issues were a nightmare, exceeded only by the problems caused by oversized apple talk and netbios networks, and physical layer problems in networks that predate the "base T" paradigm.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#46

Post by tonyedgecombe »

divbzero wrote: post #33

I’m intrigued by the comment that “there is nothing out there with the power and usability that Lotus Notes had back-in-the-day”. I didn’t have the opportunity to experience Lotus Notes personally, would be curious to hear the perspective of someone who used (or developed) the application.

Notes was great until they shoehorned email into it.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#47

Post by redwall_hp »

mard wrote: post #44

It's weird to see the term "App" in relation to anything before iOS era. Back then such software used to be mostly called applications or just programs. [1] [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=app%2Ccomputer...

I definitely remember hearing the phrase "killer app" plenty of times in the early 2000s, and Macworld definitely shortened "application" to "app" frequently in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#48

Post by [deleted] »

jbullock35 wrote: post #8

People who weren't alive at the time may not appreciate how different the commercial app ecosystem was: how many more options, how much less concentrated. Here is a PC Magazine cover from 1988: https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1988-02-29 . It boasts a review of 55 different word processors. All of them would have been commercial; none of it was free, let alone open-source. It wasn't just word processors. Here is a…

[deleted]

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#49

Post by watersb »

zu03776 wrote: post #41
watersb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odessa Helix was really good, a combination spreadsheet and database, and the extensive the scripting language was pretty much straight HyperTalk (AppleScript).

Odesta Helix and Double Helix were graphical programming databases. The early versions for the Macintosh were... interesting to design databases with. QSA Toolworks continues to sell versions of Helix today. https://www.qsatoolworks.com/ Here is a screenshot of the original design interface. Retro-future! https://www.qsatoolworks.com/ee/marketing/museum/images/1984... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_(database)

Thanks!

I was quite wrong in my previous comment; a quick scan of The Macintosh Garden reminds me I was programming in Wingz, a really nice macro host.

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/wingz

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#50

Post by coldtea »

WalterBright wrote: post #6

I still use microEmacs, which floated around the intertoobs in the 1980s. Of course, I've modified it substantially over the years, most recently adding color syntax highlighting and Unicode. D version: https://github.com/DigitalMars/med C version: https://github.com/DigitalMars/me The "extension language" is it's so easy to just add some code and recompile it, there's no point in adding an extension language. I like…

>The "extension language" is it's so easy to just add some code and recompile it ... there's no point in adding an extension language.

Missed a "if you're a major programming language creator and profficient with parsers and compilers since the 80s" between these two parts of the sentence...

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