Lately, I've been feeling a little nostalgic about what I call the "golden
age" of consumer software innovation in the late '80s and early '90s. Back
then I was cutting my teeth at a medium-sized Mac software publisher called
Silicon Beach Software that had a few early successes and that also saw a
fair number of applications plied by smaller developers wanting Silicon Beach
to publish their software.
As a product manager, I recall my excitement at the number of cool software
applications that were hitting the scene, be they commercial, shareware, or
freeware. Innovation was happening everywhere around us as both big companies
and one-man shops were looking at their crystal balls trying to figure out
what the next "killer app" would be. Anyone remember PageMaker, SuperPa... (more)