This site is the homepage for the Whatever Happened to… book where I will highlight interesting tales from the history of computing beginning with some early day exploits and highlighting the modern 1975-present desktop computing era. These are derived from the Whatever Happened to.. series of columns done in Computer Shopper between 1991-1993 and again between 1996 -1999. If readers have personal anecdotes they are encouraged to include them in the comments. I’d like to update as many of these stories with new information as I can.
Additional discussion with suggestion for new stories will be carried out on the Cage Match forums. I still would like to research and produce another dozen stories including whatever Happened to GEM, the Source, GNN, Lotus Improv and other moment in computing history.
Here are the latest three installments
Whatever Happened to.. THE LISA
Whatever Happened to… THE APPLE III
Whatever Happened to… THE IBM “Stretch” Computer
LINK:
Whatever Happened to.. archives (to be updated often)
I can’t wait for John’s interview with Ada Lovelace.
Remember the good old days?
Don’t forget MS Bob!
John, whatever happened to your many predictions that Apple Computer would be dead and gone by now?
mr d, the wonk of wonks, the man who was wonking before wonking was cool, the man whos mom caught him wonking at least once a day while growning up, and that was before they even invented the pc!! has done it again. felix rohatyn once said that we now live in a world where a century of change happens in a decade and that is no more evident than in computing. great stuff john …. as usual. thanks for the years of wonking … wonk on brother!!!!!!!
#6, whereabouts unknown?
Hey Podesta…find ONE supposed prediction of mine saying that Apple would be dead and gone by now. Seriously find the citation.
I’m interested in where all you phonies come up with this crap.
Standing by for the citation.
I learned programming on a teletype and an IBM360/30
John, John, do I need yet another way to avoid work?
Interesting though.
ECA..I operated a keypunch!
I well remember the Press launch of the Apple III in London (UK). We all attended in anticipation of Great Things. Steve Jobs gave the presentation and demo, and then asked for questions.
There was a long silence.
The only question that occurred to any of us (but nobody dared ask) was, “Why did you bother?”
Eventually Regis McKenna piped up from the back of the room with a couple of obviously pre-planned questions that received remarkably uninteresting replies.
We all left, predicting that Apple would cease to exist within the year.
Whatever happened to PICK?
I remember once turning down a job offer for a company that sold PICK here in Portugal, in the early 90s (Win 3.1 days) – it seemed so old fashioned then that my stomach advised me to go look elsewhere…
it seemed so old fashioned then that my stomach advised me to go look elsewhere…
Good career decision, Miguel!