[wmf]

"Consumer software barely existed just 20 years ago. At that time, it was mostly large enterprise software or companies focused on developing software for professionals."

I kinda hate to be that guy but there was a whole store at the mall called Babbage's that sold consumer software. Sure, half was games but there was still plenty of other stuff.

[bartread]

Yes: this piece kind of lost me with the opening. Consumer software barely existed in 1999?

Even ignoring games, have you ever seen the contents of a PC World cover CD? It's all over the map: there was consumer software for every conceivable reason and purpose. Commercial, shareware, PD, and open source were all alive and well - in rude health, in fact - in 1999.

Going further back, I remember the 80s. Even the little market town I lived in had at least half a dozen different places you could buy software, and the mail order scene for software, and weird hardware devices paired with software, was very much alive and well. I'd go as far as to say that, budget games aside, mail order was my default mechanism for buying computer software until well into the 90s when online became more prevalent.

Chevrolet, of all companies, used to literally distribute a program that was effectively a virtual and deeply pixellated car showroom to consumers in 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I89vPzhpNNA.

Consumer software back in the day was widespread, diverse, weird, and wonderful. Going back into the 70s and early 80s, much of the early innovation in consumer software for personal computers, came from the very consumers - the hackers, hobbyists, and tinkerers - who bought them.

Remarks like "Consumer software barely existed just 20 years ago" simply come off as out of touch and ignorant of history, which has the effect of undermining the credibility of any other point the piece is trying to make (especially as an opener - WTH?).

[_carbyau_]

This rankled me too. I understand the world was different, but "barely existed" ?

[chinathrow]

> "barely existed"

Maybe the term is better understood in terms of amount of "offered software then vs. now"?

[_carbyau_]

It is true that however you measure it there is a lot more software now.

But the phrase "barely existed" has connotations of struggle. As though it was close to not existing at all.

No one says "cars barely existed in the 1930's" or "humanity barely existed pre 1600" (world population ~0.5 billion).

By 1999 consumer software definitively existed and was thriving just fine even if it was comparatively early days to what we have now.

[UncleEntity]

I distinctly remember buying consumer software 30 years ago after I got out of the army early and they accidentally sent me an extra paycheck which promptly went to buying a Macintosh.

[open-source-ux]

There was a thriving market of consumer desktop applications stretches back to the mid-1990s. Windows 95 spurred further growth of consumer software (also far more variety).

Perhaps the author is referring to the rise consumer-facing SaaS (Software as a Service).

[Rerarom]

Yeah 22 years ago as a young kid I was obsessed with reading the SOFTWARE catalog of my local computer store (the hardware stuff was all video cards that all looked like each other, the software was exciting stuff like space simulators! 3D graphics! video editing!).

And this was after the days of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Home

were quite over.

[pronlover723]

There was plenty of commercial software in the 80s as well. Go find some C64, Amiga, Apple 2, TRS-80, Atari 800 emulator online. All of that software used to be in stores on shelves