[octorian]

That's gotta be a European thing. In the US, cassette drives were pretty much non-existent (in favor of 5.25" floppy drives) from at least the mid-80's onward, at least. I personally have absolutely no memory whatsoever of ever seeing anyone actually use a cassette drive to load programs on a computer. (though I did read about it in books on occasion). And I was a kid during the era of the Apple IIe's popularity, with machines of its ilk being my first exposure to computers.

Even into the 386/486 era, at least before CD-ROM drives were commonplace, it was common for computers to have both 5.25" and 3.5" drives and to find software in either format.