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Your first "Killer APP" (vanity)

Posted on 04/13/2005 9:18:26 PM PDT by gilor

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What was your first killer app or game?
1 posted on 04/13/2005 9:18:26 PM PDT by gilor
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To: gilor

word processing.

It's also the app that tought me to save my work frequently.


2 posted on 04/13/2005 9:20:00 PM PDT by flashbunny (Any discussion involving cats apparently requires the abandonment of logic by cat lovers.)
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To: gilor

App = Xtree
Game = Wolfenstein


3 posted on 04/13/2005 9:20:47 PM PDT by MarineBrat (Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They need changing often, and for the same reason!)
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To: gilor

Early stuff? I go back to 1966: the IBM 1401, with 16 KB of memory, tape drives, chain-driven printers (that we could program to make music of a sort), writing out programs (in Autocode) on large sheets of paper before typing out each line on a punch card machine.

The "killer app" back then was just being able to do number-crunching/statistics.


4 posted on 04/13/2005 9:31:16 PM PDT by LibFreeOrDie (L'chaim!)
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To: gilor

Two productivity programs:

"Letter Perfect" by LJK Enterprises (for the Atari 800) [an early word processor]

"Publishing Partner" by Softlogik Publishing Corporation (for the Atari ST) [Now called PageStream and it is a desktop publishing program for the Mac, ST, Amiga, and Windows]


5 posted on 04/13/2005 9:34:54 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
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To: gilor

word processing; wirting my first pc based resume in mid 80s on a wang2000.


6 posted on 04/13/2005 9:38:40 PM PDT by RedBloodedAmerican
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To: LibFreeOrDie

You are an OLD FART!!


7 posted on 04/13/2005 9:39:18 PM PDT by RedBloodedAmerican
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To: RedBloodedAmerican

Yep, I belong in a computer museum!


8 posted on 04/13/2005 9:44:57 PM PDT by LibFreeOrDie (L'chaim!)
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To: gilor
Zork on the Apple IIc...
9 posted on 04/13/2005 9:45:05 PM PDT by Welsh Rabbit
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To: All

WOLFENSTEIN 3D?


10 posted on 04/13/2005 9:51:18 PM PDT by gilor (Pull the wool over your own eyes!)
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To: LibFreeOrDie
Our chain printer made a chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk sound.

But it had a sign on it saying something like:

When you connected this wire, it made a chunk-chunk-silent-chunk-chunk-silent-... sound, skipping every third beat.

We had bought the cheap model, which could only print at 2/3 speed. It differed from the expensive model in that it had a wire shorting out one of the three cycles.

Another memory - the cold boot card, with half of all the holes punched, in some seeming random pattern that made perfect sense, if you knew the machine language.

11 posted on 04/13/2005 10:41:24 PM PDT by ThePythonicCow (To err is human; to moo is bovine)
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To: gilor

"the early stuff (ATARI 800XL..."

1982-1985 early? ;')

First killer app... hmm... never been much of a player of computer games, so it would be a free demo disk I got in the mail (dunno why) for a copy-protected word processor, Zardax, which ran on the Apple II (under DOS 3.3, the kind from Apple, not MS). Thinking back on the interface, I still kinda like it, for a menu style.

Jack Tramiel:
http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/1989_you_dont_know_jack.htm


12 posted on 04/13/2005 11:07:56 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Monday, April 11, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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To: gilor

the IIgs version:
http://www.gno.org/pub/apple2/gs.specific/games/arcade/wolf3D/


13 posted on 04/13/2005 11:09:27 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Monday, April 11, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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To: Swordmaker; HAL9000
Ping!
14 posted on 04/13/2005 11:11:50 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Monday, April 11, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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To: gilor
Killer App? PaperClip for the Commodore 64 with the required dongle. That was when my mother decided that she needed a computer. It was then that I figured these home computers would really take off.

Killer game? SuperTaxMan (sorry, had to toss in a Hal Labs reference...) I'd have to say M.U.L.E., though my wife was really into Sword of Fargol (followed by Mail Order Monsters.)
15 posted on 04/13/2005 11:15:19 PM PDT by kingu (What is union scale wage for staging a protest anyway?)
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To: gilor
Wumpus....using paper tape on a teletype machine....

Yes, I'm old....
16 posted on 04/13/2005 11:16:19 PM PDT by politicket
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To: gilor
I also used to program LOTS of things with assembly language on a Z80 processor.

My first "personal" computer was a TRS-80 Model 1 Level II with a cassette tape interface.
17 posted on 04/13/2005 11:19:05 PM PDT by politicket
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To: politicket
Wumpus....using paper tape on a teletype machine.... Yes, I'm old....

Yep- model 19 typing reperferators... sometimes you could read the bloody yellow tapes...

18 posted on 04/14/2005 1:35:18 AM PDT by backhoe (Just an Undocumented Keyboard Cowboy, ridin' the trackball into the Sunset...)
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To: ConservativeMind; SunkenCiv
"Publishing Partner" by Softlogik Publishing Corporation (for the Atari ST) [Now called PageStream and it is a desktop publishing program for the Mac, ST, Amiga, and Windows]

I still use Pagestream on my Mac (has to run in Classic mode, but I have already paid for my OSX upgrade) on a daily basis. It blows many of the professional Desktop Publishing packages out of the water!

My first killer app was on the Commodore 64 - SpeedScript, a great text based word processor.

19 posted on 04/14/2005 1:58:35 AM PDT by Swordmaker
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To: gilor

Speal check.


20 posted on 04/14/2005 2:03:08 AM PDT by bad company (fish tremble at the mention of my name)
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