Nearby:


It certainly is interesting: 5MHz 68000, running tForth, implementing an innovative word-processor - but you can escape to the Forth interpreter. There's an online emulator, and many docs, and indeed several versions of the source code, all on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/jefraskin

I had never heard about it until today. It's a shame that it wasn't packaged and publicized to its full potential, because it might have made a wave or two.

Mike B.

Agreed - could certainly have been a revolution.

I made some posts previously, with some collected links and some more in the comments:
https://plus.google.com/107049823915731 ... t2d1WHM2wz
https://plus.google.com/107049823915731 ... 1qhzu9FD1D
https://plus.google.com/107049823915731 ... 3ihiSqzxQa

There's a video demo of Leap Technology here:


(Although this one might be better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jErqdRE5zpQ)

Well, $1495 was a lot of money in 1987. I don't know what the Commodore-64 was going for in 1987, but I'd guess about $400. I think I bought mine in 1985 or 1986, and I was making $6.00/hr working for the City of Santa Barbara Public Works. I used a word-processor called "Paperback Writer" that provided 80 columns on the C64 (it used graphics to do this, so it was somewhat slow). It cost maybe $30 or thereabouts. The big problem in those days was that my dot-matrix printer produced low-quality output, but a laser-printer was very expensive (according to Wikipedia, the HP LaserJet II came out in 1987 at $2695).

I think minimum-wage was about $4.00/hr in 1987, and is $10.00/hr now. With that as a guide, the Canon Cat was being sold for about $3750 in modern money.

I'm interested in the Canon Cat now though. It was supposed to be pretty innovative. I am interested in writing a text-editor (I've never found one that I really liked) --- maybe I could incorporate some of the Canon Cat innovation into it --- it wouldn't hurt to learn about the Canon Cat, and maybe run it under an MC68000 emulator to see if I like the innovation or not.

Considering that the Canon Cat used an MC68000, and the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and Apple Mac all used the MC68000, I have to wonder why Canon didn't port their system over to one of these computers and sell it as software. That could have really helped the Amiga or ST compete against the over-priced Mac. I doubt that Canon Cat hardware was anything special, so the program should be able to run on a different MC68000 computer with no problem. The fact that Canon didn't do this seems to support the conspiracy-theory that Apple had demanded that they kill the Cat because it was competition against their Mac. Apple has their "Macintosh Way" and they want all software to conform to this idiom --- the Cat didn't even have a mouse --- it was definitely a different way of using a computer.

Out here in consumer-land, innovation is considered to be a good thing --- in corporate-land, innovation is considered to be the work of the Devil --- most corporations will do anything to kill innovation, and they aren't over-burdened by ethics in implementing this policy.

I very much like the idea of an appliance: Amstrad's PCW is also close to being an appliance. On the inside, it's a computer, of course, but it's very user-friendly as a word-processor. Being sold as a business tool also helps with price stability - not such a race to the bottom as with home computers. Price wars are not good for suppliers, as Commodore found out when TI killed their calculator business, and as TI found out when Commodore killed their home computer business.

In both the PCW and the Cat case, the supplier was kind enough to allow us an escape from the appliance layer to the OS layer: Cat comes with a Forth, and the PCW came with a Basic and a Logo.

I had never heard of the Amstrad PCW before --- I'm learning computer history every day on this forum!

I agree that an "appliance" computer is a good idea --- that is what a lot of people want --- you don't want to confuse them with technical details, but just provide them with built-in software that they can use with a little training to get their work done.

I also agree that providing a way to write software is a good idea, as that is what some of the people want. Built-in software can only go so far --- there will always be people who want custom software --- there will also always be people (me) who just enjoy programming!

Around 1987, or definitely not earlier than '86, I bought an AT-compatible Taiwan clone. It was somewhere between $3000 and $5000, depending on whatever the currency exchange rate was at the time.. but I remember someone in Byte magazine commenting, over a period over several years, that "the PC you want will always cost $3000" (even when prices generally went down). That was certainly still true up to the end of the eighties, if not longer.

So $1495 doesn't sound too bad for that time period. Certainly much cheaper than my AT clone..