Jan 28, 2018
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ST.Mac August 1984
As the logjam of Macintosh software promises began to crumble (several ads in this issue used the word “finally”), database programs seemed a popular topic. Filevision stood out for linking parts of images to pieces of data. This issue, casting around for people to interview, settled on Dan Kottke, one of Apple’s first employees (although in the recollections that developed over the years he now seems most notable for having been infamously stiffed by Steve Jobs on IPO stock options). The editorial, by Jock Root, second author of Softalk’s assembly language column (who hadn’t got quite as far into the subject from his fresh start as Roger Wagner, the first author), worried about the Macintosh being less of a “hacker’s computer,” ready to reveal the numbers seething at its lowest levels, than the Apple II; the window of opportunity for Apple users to identify a continuity between 6502 and 68000 may have closed fast for some. As for how this might have further affected this magazine and its parent, though, you’ll have to return for this month’s issue of Softalk...
ST.Mac July 1984
This issue’s cover story promoted a nearly-ready version of the Pascal programming language (with an editorial trying to allay concern over how big titles promised from third parties kept being delayed). While Macintosh Pascal was more a learning tool than an actual developing environment, another article in the issue covered a version of the capable if demanding language Forth, with ads for clip-art disks multiplying.
ST.Mac May 1984
This issue shrank again from the month before; in its limited page space, it did manage to include a general article about getting books published (and not bringing up comments others made that the first version of MacWrite could only hold about ten pages in the 128K of memory of the first Macintoshes), a report on a port of an Apple II illustrated adventure game, a look at software for the Lisa that could run Macintosh programs (the Lisa had a larger monitor some programs could already create larger windows on than you could get on a Macintosh, but it had rectangular pixels that distorted the images), and an editorial complaining about the black-and-white Macintosh screen with a slight air of “I don’t care about ‘tradeoffs’: they’re smart people; they should have found a way to manage it!”
ST.Mac April 1984
With new products still elusive, this issue dropped a few pages from its already slim predecessors. It offered, though, a cover story describing a program where Apple was partnering with several universities and colleges to sell students Macintoshes for hefty discounts, and an interview with the Xerox PARC veteran Alan Kay, who looked down on the less capable personal computers evolved outside his ivory tower and briefly summed up the Macintosh as “no big deal.”
ST.Mac March 1984
For its second issue, ST.Mac invited “industry leaders” (many of who had also contributed to Softalk’s looks ahead) to give their perspectives on the Macintosh; many of them were at least willing to be positive. There was also a good bit of attention to the Lisa, and a brief article about MacWrite that mentioned a friend’s opinion of it as “the first word processor that’s easier to use than a typewriter.”