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Compute! Magazines.


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The Mac didn't ship with BASIC, it was a third-party app. Microsoft BASIC was first released in '85 and would probably run on a Mac Plus.

 

I don't think the magazines picked up much on type-in listings for Mac. Most people just used the programs that shipped with it or purchased other ready-to-run apps (like me, lol). But Microsoft pretty much wrote all the early BASICS and this one is likely very similar, with some nods to the Mac's hardware and display. It should be possible to adapt or modify listings written for other computers.

 

Linky: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/microsoft-basic

 

Around '87, Mac shipped with Hypercard. That programming language was popular for years and hundreds, even thousands of "stacks" were written and released for it. Popular, perhaps because it was included and was not an extra purchase. Since everyone had it, it also made sense to share the stacks.

 

Here's version 1.2.2 which runs on a Plus with System 3.2.

 

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/hypercard-z1-122

 

It may not run newer stacks that use the features of later versions of Hypercard. The page above includes links to all the versions stored on Macintosh Garden. Or click the category: Hypercard link near the top on the right to see all the many stacks available.

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Yes, after sampling a bunch of COMPUTE! issues it seems they never published anything for you to type in on the Mac. They supported the Amiga and Atari ST though, because those came bundled with a BASIC environment. Some time in the beginning of 1988, type in programs disappeared alltogether.

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If you are looking for type-in Mac programs, you should check out Family Computing magazine (see archive.org). They had a section called The Programmer where you would find two or three programs per month, with each program converted to several different computers (ie. Apple //, C64, Coleco ADAM, IBM PC, Amiga, etc., and of course, Macintosh)

 

Have fun with that!

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Ah, that's a new one for me. It seems to have run from September 1983 to December 1988.

https://archive.org/details/family-computing?sort=-date

 

Yes, it had an interesting run. At the beginning, there was a sister publication aimed at kids, called K-Power. Some interesting computer stuff in there, too... but by issue 17 of Family Computing, K-Power magazine had been shut down and became a section inside Family Computing. Then by issue 50, it became Family and Home Office Computing (the K-Power section had been eliminated entirely by then), and finally on issue 60 it was just called Home Office Computing. It died about six issues after that... like most magazines that could never figure out what they wanted to be.

 

The whole thing was run by the Scholastic Company. In North America (not sure about the rest of the world) Scholastic is known as the company that sells overpriced books to schoolkids through a paper catalog given out by the schools... the schools get free books for their libraries in return.

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I borrowed issues of Family Computing from the local library in the '80s with some frequency, but the programs (games) really were of little interest to a younger demographic, and I didn't bother to type in much of what they had for the A8. Definitely not as readable as Compute! in its prime (or as essential as Creative Computing until it crapped out in 1985).

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Speaking of type-ins, did Creative Computing also typically translate readers' programs to multiple formats like COMPUTE! did and apparently Family Computing also did? If so, that must be very unique American way to do it. I can't recall ever seeing any European magazine - or even browsing through a few Japanese ones where I didn't understand the text anyway - translating one program to different computers. They would simply publish each listing for the computer in question and it would be up to the reader to be versatile enough to translate it if required.

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Speaking of type-ins, did Creative Computing also typically translate readers' programs to multiple formats like COMPUTE! did and apparently Family Computing also did?

 

I don't recall Creative Computing ever having done this -- of course that magazine was less focused on publishing program listings than was COMPUTE! (at least based on the issues I have seen). I do recall that as a Coco owner, I was frustrated by the amount of Apple II listings (and the almost complete lack of relevant content more broadly).

 

While it was a very niche publication, TRS-80 Microcomputer News had an interesting approach. It was not uncommon for the readers themselves to rewrite/translate/port programs and the magazine to then republish them. So, a game listing may appear for the Coco in January, and then the adapted Model III version would be published in May.

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Speaking of type-ins, did Creative Computing also typically translate readers' programs to multiple formats like COMPUTE! did and apparently Family Computing also did? If so, that must be very unique American way to do it. I can't recall ever seeing any European magazine - or even browsing through a few Japanese ones where I didn't understand the text anyway - translating one program to different computers. They would simply publish each listing for the computer in question and it would be up to the reader to be versatile enough to translate it if required.

I agree with jhd. Creative Computing in its prime was much more Meta than other magazines and not (as) interested in being a software publisher as COMPUTE!...which probably didn’t help its bottom line in the early ‘80s. I haven’t located a copy of Micro V.O. (France) in decades, but they may have published programs for multiple platforms. They didn’t for the A8, though. The only listing I saw for the A8 was for a 128 colour drawing program called “Cahier d’As”.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Being an Atari 8-bit user back in the day. I didn't view that many Creative Computing magazines - but note that they did publish a very useful Antic 4 Character Editor. While Compute! published loads of program listings for various computers. I found their Fontbyter map editor very useful - and they published their very good quality Speedscript and Speedcalc wordprocessor/spreadsheet programs. These being in machine language. They did publish various introductory graphic programs in BASIC - which I tried out in store with an Atari 800 computer. This computer I would later purchase elsewhere - where I could get it cheaper.

 

I can't say much about the Mac. It wasn't a computer I was interested in, back in the day. Though I did make use of them, when I was using a computer network at University - so many years later on.

 

Harvey

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