Dan Bricklin @danb@social.cleverlibre.org

@provuejim @elkmovie As I recall, there were 8" and 5 1/4" floppy drives. We are talking about 5 1/4". Supporting them was one thing, being able to ship lots of them was another. I remember hearing (but I can't confirm) that Apple had locked up excess production from Shugart Assoc, the main manufacturer, so TRS-80, etc., users couldn't find them in stock for many months once they became popular. In any case, they were more prevalent to Apple II's.

CP/M would be much worse than Apple/TRS80/Pet because no standard memory-mapped screen, which VisiCalc needed for the multi-window, scrolling display. I had lots of experience with that on the DEC video displays (I had influence on).

@elkmovie @provuejim As I recall, our publisher, Personal Software, recommended the Apple first, because floppy drives were more available for it, he told us. We already had access to good tools for the 6502 chip, which Bob knew well, so that was OK. So Jobs was right to point out disks in his interview (see info about 0:55 in http://bricklin.com/tedxtalk.htm ).

@elkmovie @stroughtonsmith Hopefully, for themselves, Netflix, et al, are doing all of the development and learning about the platform (or equivalent) to be ready if it does take off. (Lotus waited too long.) They may, though, find that working with a new platform will help themselves come up with ideas that are beneficial.

@elkmovie @stroughtonsmith Hmm. Reminds me of the late 1980's when Lotus decided not to support MS Windows until they were forced to. Didn't work out so well for them. Excel ate 1-2-3's lunch and Lotus' suite got beat by MS's. (More to it than that, but it was a factor.)

@mimsical I really liked this book. Explains a lot and came out at a very opportune time (just as the COVID logistics issues hit).

Going on at 7pm EDT: Boston Linux VIRTUAL Meeting , Wednesday, June 21, 2023 - Implementing VisiCalc, Speaker: Bob Frankston

Location: Online: https://meet.jit.si/blu.org

Live stream: https://youtube.com/live/hcjwRFT_uto?feature=share

Bob discusses his experience in writing VisiCalc back in 1978, and the many design decisions made along the way. He gave a similar talk for the Computer History Museum's “The Origins and Impact of VisiCalc” panel on April 8th 2003.

@anildash I love this video (watching it now for the second time). He got to talk to Apple developers in addition to the demo. Apparently, #VisionPro noise-cancels the fan. Wow!

Serious question about Apple #VisionPro: It's reportedly very engaging. What happens when you watch something that literally brings tears to your eyes? Are the internals waterproof? Would tears get on cameras or affect eye-tracking? Easy take off/put back on w/pause/repeat-last-10-sec to wipe eyes? (Asking for a friend...)