There were three basic means of distributing software in the 1980s: retailers, mail-order catalogs, and bulletin board systems (BBS). The latter provided the earliest form of “online” distribution, albeit one that was difficult to commercialize. After all, a developer couldn’t ask users to post their credit card number on a BBS.

But you could attach a message to a program uploaded to a BBS that invited people to pay you for software they found valuable. That’s exactly what Andrew Fluegleman did in 1982. Wendy Woods profiled Fluegelman in a January 1985 Computer Chronicles episode that I previously covered. His IBM PC communications program PC-Talk became the first example of “shareware” (although Fluegelman used the term “freeware,” which he trademarked.)

Tax preparation software was always a favorite topic of Computer Chronicles. This next episode from March 1988 included some returning guests and updates to several products featured in prior shows. As I discussed in an episode of the Chronicles Revisited Podcast, this was a period when a number of small developers competed in the tax preparation software market. We would not start to see the industry consolidation towards TurboTax under Intuit for another 5 or 6 years.

At the 1985 summer Consumer Electronics Show, Jack Tramiel’s Atari Corporation demonstrated a CD-ROM drive running the Grolier’s KnowldegeDisc, a digital version of the Grolier’s encyclopedia based on software created by Gary Kildall’s Activenture, Inc. At the time, Tramiel and his team said they would soon ship a working CD-ROM drive for its new Atari 520ST computer that would cost no more than $500.

It was a ludicrous promise. The companies actually developing CD-ROM players in late 1985, such as Sony, Hitachi, and Philips, were all quoting retail prices of between $700 and $1,000. Even Tramiel knew that he wouldn’t be able to deliver a $500 CD-ROM drive in 1985. That didn’t stop him from continuing to promise it in 1986 or 1987 or 1988, however.

In February 1987, Compute! magazine published the first hands-on look at the Amiga 2000. Released just 18 months after the original Amiga, Commodore International’s new model was a spec bump rather than a next-generation computer. Still, Compute! assistant editor Philip I. Nelson seemed duly impressed. He praised the 2000’s low price ($1,500 without a monitor) and the presence of multiple IBM PC-compatible expansion slots. Commodore even offered an optional “Bridge” card enabling the Amiga 2000 to directly run PC software. Nelson saw this as critical for attracting “professionals who bring their work home.”

The January 1988 Macworld Expo in San Francisco was the second industry trade show to merit its own Computer Chronicles episode after the Las Vegas COMDEX show. Chronicles had devoted segments to earlier editions of Macworld–including the inaugural event in 1985–but this was the first time that the semi-annual gathering received full-episode coverage. No doubt this reflected the growing interest in the Macintosh platform, bolstered by the release of the Macintosh II and Macintosh SE the previous year as well as everyone’s favorite new software middleware product, HyperCard.

Computer Chronicles began 1988 with a focus on desktop scanners and digital imaging software, a field still in its earliest stages at the personal computer level. Stewart Cheifet opened this episode by showing Gary Kildall a portable scanner that used Xerox copier technology. He pulled the scanner over a printed page, and it produced a CVS receipt-like printout right away.

Cheifet noted that everyone seemed to be into scanning these days. Why the sudden fascination with this technology? Kildall said desktop publishing was a prime reason. People wanted to incorporate more graphics into their text documents. A second reason was the growing popularity of fax machines. But the big movement was towards the digital representation of information in electronic form. That made it a lot easier to assemble information, put it together, alter it, and publish it. It was simply a more flexible way to deal with information.

You always have to be cautious when declaring something was a “first” in video game history. But I think that Stewart Cheifet and Gary Kildall held what might have been the first nationally televised LAN party at the start of this December 1987 Computer Chronicles episode, the second in a two-part series on computer games. The dynamic duo demonstrated Falcon, an F-16 combat flight simulator published by Spectrum Holobyte. Cheifet explained the two PCs on the desk were networked so they could “see” each other. There was also a “flight recorder” built-in to the game so that if either player crashed, they could go back and see what they did wrong.

Even in the late 1980s, two of the biggest names in third-party game development were Electronic Arts and Activision. As of this writing in July 2023, EA has a market valuation of around $38 billion. Meanwhile, Activision Blizzard, the successor to the original Activision, Inc., is in the final stages of a $75 billion acquisition by Microsoft. Of course, neither EA nor Activision were worth anywhere near that much at the time of this next Computer Chronicles episode from December 1987.

Apple CEO John Sculley’s quest to extend the Macintosh’s reach in the business market took an important step in November 1987 with the launch of MultiFinder, an extension to the System Software 5 operating system that finally enabled a form of multitasking on the Mac. This gave Apple a jump on IBM’s long-promised multitasking OS/2 by a few weeks. And while the Mac never posed a serious challenge to the IBM PC and its clone army in the overall business market, the combination of MultiFinder with more expandable machines like the Macintosh II helped to cement Apple’s place as the primary alternative microcomputer platform for many business users.

The November 1987 edition of the Computer Chronicles holiday buyers’ guide began with Gary Kildall showing Stewart Cheifet the Sony XV-T600 Picture Computer, a $600 machine that added pictures and titles to home VCR movies. It also came with a small handheld scanner. Kildall demonstrated how you could place the scanner over a black-and-white drawing and digitize the image so it would appear on an attached television screen. The controls on the scanner could then be used to fill in the colors on the image. (You could also use a trackball, Kildall noted.) The color palette appeared on the lower right-hand corner of the television screen. The completed color image was then added on top of some video of a recent trip that Kildall had taken to New York City.