article; supposedly, a programmer—unnamed—had dreamed up WordStar in a
week or so during vacation.
“I was amazed to see it myself,” Rubinstein said. “It was really
romanticizing something in a way that wasn’t necessary, beyond not being
true.”
“I talked to Barnaby,” I said, “and he has the normal worries of
programmers and writer-writers—whether he can ever repeat his success.
And I still wonder about the chances of you two coming together again.”
“Well,” Rubinstein said without the slightest pause, “I got him back
working again.”
“Now?”
“Yep.”
“When?”
“Just started a week and a half ago.”
“Christ,” I said, “I sort of popped the question to him.”
“I’d just as soon you didn’t broadcast it,” Rubinstein said. “He’s not
in solid yet, but I expect he will be. You can put in there a blurb that
as of this writing Barnaby came back for a test run to see whether he
could get involved again.”
“As a WordStar user,” I said, “I have a selfish interest in his
developing it further. Will he be working on WordStar?”
“He’ll be working on WordStar,” said Rubinstein. Like a movie man, he
excitedly described his coming attraction. (“It’ll just knock their
socks off.”) The new WordStar would contain a spreadsheet. Also, used
with the right printers, it would offer proportional spacing, meaning
that an “I” would take up less room than a “W,” making the print look
more booklike. What’s more, the new WordStar would be simpler to learn.
Listening to Rubinstein raving over his forthcoming word processor, I
could tell that if Barnaby didn’t work out on the new project, MicroPro
might use someone else. Ideally, however, it wouldn’t. “Just
incredible,” Rubinstein had said of Barnaby’s coding of WordStar. “The
man is a consummate artist.”
Surely, I thought, Arthur Clarke would agree.
Barnaby stayed some months with MicroPro. In fact, he had helped fit
WordStar into the little memory of the Epson lap-sized portable marketed
that year. A micro magazine, meanwhile, came out with a report that a
version of WordStar for big machines, Version 4.0, might contain split
screens. In October 1984, however, I was still waiting. And Rob Barnaby
had left MicroPro in July.
“Things didn’t click,” he said without going into the specifics. “We
talked about a lot of things, but they didn’t jell.” He was now
consulting.
MicroPro suffered in other ways. Yearly income was up 53 percent, and
the company was still shipping thirty thousand copies of WordStar each
month, but quarterly revenues reported in September 1984 were $12.4
million versus $15.6 million for the same period in 1983. The company
sustained a loss in earnings of six cents a share, $756,000. Hoping to
cope with threats such as NewWord, which sold for $250 and used the same
commands as the older word processor, it laid off 10 percent of its
workers and reduced WordStar’s list price from $495 to $350. NewWord
even offered twists of its own. You could tell it to go to a certain
page number, for instance, without having to specify a word on the page
you were looking for. The natural question arose: Why should people pay
$100 more for the real WordStar?
■ ■ ■
Six Reasons Why Customers (or Noncustomers) Feel Free to Cheat
Software Companies
WordStar clones like NewWord aren’t illegal. Getting a “free” WordStar
from a friend, however, is.
“It’s like illegally getting a second typewriter—copied from a
friend’s, down to the serial number,” a software columnist observes.
“You’re stealing a valuable tool.” H. Glen Haney, the president of
MicroPro, told me that most copies of WordStar in use are _bootlegged_
ones.
While opposing the practice, I’ll list six reasons why customers
cheat:
1. It takes all of two or three minutes—maybe less—to copy a disk
worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Yes, anti-bootlegging
gimmicks exist. But often they _reduce_ software sales; would you be
as keen to buy a $500 disk if you couldn’t easily make backups?
2. Everyone does it.
3. Computer users want to befriend others with similar machines so
they can draw on them for technical hints or back up equipment.
And what better way to cement a new friendship than at a copying
session where the users swap programs? That’s the thinking.
4. Many software companies overprice their wares. Yes, it’s expensive
to develop good programs; but some companies, rather than creating
innovative products, gouge you to pay for development of copycat
offerings. They themselves rip off people—their more imaginative
rivals. (No criticism of NewWord here. It is much cheaper than the
original WordStar and offers some improvements.)
5. Some people in large companies think software houses don’t give
big-enough discounts to corporations buying the same program for a
number of machines.
6. Many software companies don’t offer enough guidance or other help.
Customers think, Why should I buy this program when they’re just
going to ignore my problems once they have my money? The columnist
counters: “That’s like saying, ‘I’ll just throw out the old
Judeo-Christian ethic that it’s wrong to steal.’ The other guy being
wrong doesn’t make you right.”
■ ■ ■
MicroPro’s responded to such competition by keeping WordStar but
developing another word processor, WordStar 2000, aimed at offices that
had shunned micros as too hard to use.
WordStar 2000, named because MicroPro said it would stay modern into the
next century, discarded most of the older program’s commands. There
wasn’t one line of code from plain old WordStar. And WordStar 2000
couldn’t easily read its files—imperiling an industry standard that
MicroPro itself had created. Moreover, it couldn’t run on less advanced
micros like the Kaypro II. Machines in that vein were still good for
word processing, and critics claimed that MicroPro had kissed off the
8-bit market. MicroPro replied that it had wanted to take full advantage
of the hard disks and other capabilities that were showing up in
powerful new computers such as the IBM AT.[21] WordStar 2000 did not run
well on the slower floppy-disk machines. Its early version was pokey,
moreover, even on an IBM XT hard disk computer. However, it indeed
simplified WordStar’s commands and offered split screens, a form-letter
program, a spelling checker that you could use as you typed a letter
rather than having to leave the file to call up the speller,
proportional spacing, underlining displayed on the screen, and the
ability to go to specified pages—in other words, what one writer called
“a catalog of wishes” for people using the older program. WordStar 2000
lacked a spreadsheet and sold for an outrageously steep $595; for $100
more you could buy WordStar 2000 Plus, which included a simple
list-keeping program and software to help hook you up to other computers
via phone. A slogan captured the MicroPro sales pitch: “Easy Word
Processing You’ll Never Outgrow.” WordStar 2000 wasn’t “easy” word
processing—all powerful products took some time to learn—but it was
_easier_ than plain old WordStar.
Footnote 21:
“AT” stood for “Advanced Technology.”
I went to a MicroPro dealers’ meeting just outside Washington in early
November 1984 and saw a slick, professional sales campaign that would
have done a shaving-cream maker proud. Company officials, including
president H. Glen Haney, said WordStar 2000 wasn’t a fluke: “We’re going
to repeat this process again and again.” Educators, even science-fiction
writers, were said to have helped forty programmers make The Product
easy to use. MicroPro billed 2000 as having been “beyond the
capabilities of one or two genius programmers.” This philosophy, as much
as anything, perhaps explained why Rob Barnaby was no longer with the
company. Like many talented people, especially writers, he was the very
antithesis of a team man. There was a difference between being one of
forty programmers and _rrr_ing away in front of the keyboard at midnight
while the head of the company watched. And yet as a user of WordStar I
still hoped that Barnaby might return to the MicroPro fold. No matter
how many creativity experts MicroPro brought in—and the company in fact
had experimented with one—you could no more replicate a Rob Barnaby than
you could a Welles or Mankiewicz. It was entirely inevitable that the
MicroPro officials at the Twin Bridges Marriott felt compelled to say
that 2000 was beyond one or two genius programmers. WordStar 2000 indeed
had _some_ merits. Still, it was far from the earthshaker that the
original WordStar had been. Barnaby and Rubinstein had so brilliantly
conceived their program that it could hold back the competition for
years and years.
Well into the 2000 presentation at the motel, the room darkened. It was
movie time. The dealers chuckled at “word processing throughout the
ages.” A cartoon caveman wrote on stone, a Greek shuffled around stones
bearing inscriptions for a temple, and a cartoon George Patton barked
orders to the troops as part of a pun based on the phrase
“command-driven word processor.” (See Chapter 5 for a definition.)
MicroPro officials trotted out advertisements that would appear in the
_Wall Street Journal_, _Fortune_, _Time_, and other major publications.
The company was as proud of the ads as of WordStar 2000. A
lie-detectorlike device, measuring electricity in the body, had even
gauged test subjects’ responses to the copywriters’ creations.
After lunch—salad, roast beef, potatoes, and a redemptive low-calorie
dessert—MicroPro let the dealers try out WordStar 2000 themselves on IBM
XTs and ATs. It was a combination sales talk and seminar. MicroPro
quizzed the dealers with questions in the vein of “What do you like most
about the product?” The session greatly increased the dealers’—and my
own—understanding of 2000. At the same time, using a teacher-student
relationship, MicroPro people fortified their depiction of themselves as
the world’s top experts on word processing.
Similar dog-and-pony shows would take place in cities across the country
and overseas. MicroPro by now had four hundred employees worldwide and
thirty-five hundred retail dealer outlets—a far cry from the days when
Rob Barnaby had been writing WordStar in the room from which he’d
displaced the electric-train set. If WordStar 2000 didn’t sell well,
however, MicroPro would shrink into just another software company. It
was a crucial time. MicroPro was deemphasizing products like data bases
and spreadsheets, flaunting its reliance on word processing, and
inspiring headlines like “MicroPro Back to Its Roots.”
■ ■ ■
How to Work on Two Files at Once While Using Plain Old WordStar
=Windows=, among other things, let you view several files at once and
move material back and forth (see Backup IX, “Window Shopping”).
Even though plain old WordStar lacks windows, you _might_ be able to
upgrade your software to include them. Ask your dealer about IBM’s
Topview software and Microsoft’s Windows.
■ ■ ■
For Rubinstein personally, 1984 had also been eventful. He and his wife
had separated—different interests, he said—and he had a heart attack. He
had lost thirty pounds but had come back “stronger than ever.”
Meanwhile, an initial public stock offering in March had made him richer
than ever. It brought MicroPro $13 million.
“After all is said and done,” Rubinstein told me about the offering,
“I’ll end up with a little more than $5 million.” He already owned a
gold-colored Corvette and a house worth hundreds of thousands. “And
okay,” Rubinstein said, “so I’ll decorate the house. I’ll buy some
furniture. So maybe I’ll spend another couple hundred thousand, but most
of the money will be used for investment, not to go on some wild
spending spree.” He said that “unless you’re a dissipated type, your
life really doesn’t change.”[22]
Footnote 22:
_InfoWorld_, May 14, 1984, is the source of Rubinstein’s quotes about
the heart attack, not going “on some wild spending spree,” and his
life not changing.
His corporate life, however, would be different. Perhaps chastened by
Adam Osborne’s failure, some investors had insisted that Rubinstein give
up control of MicroPro. He would still serve on the board. And he would
help plot long-range strategy and develop new products, but the old
entrepreneurial environment was vanishing at MicroPro and in much of the
industry at large.
The Osborne failure haunted Rubinstein in ways besides making money
raising somewhat harder. Some investors in Osborne filed a suit saying
that Rubinstein—owner of Osborne stock—had bailed out ahead of time,
using insider knowledge. “It’s such hoked-up bullshit; it’s just
ridiculous,” Rubinstein said in May 1984. He had “needed the money ...
principally to pay my taxes.”[23]
Footnote 23:
_InfoWorld_, May 14, 1984, is the source of Rubinstein’s “bullshit”
quote.
By now, the sales of personal-computer software exceeded $1.5 billion
a year.[24] Throughout the industry, accountants and others in
three-piece suits were increasingly calling the shots. Marketing
considerations—advertising, even the designs of the boxes housing the
software—often overwhelmed technical ones. A word-processing program
called Select typified some so-called user-friendly software aimed at
the burgeoning market.
Footnote 24:
The $1.5 billion estimate is from Chris Christiansen of the Yankee
Group.
Backup:
◼ III, The Lucky 13: What to Look for in Choosing Software, page 302.
5 ❑ The Select Word Processor: Martin Dean versus the Command-Driven
Restaurants
“Gentleman Farmers” don’t appear just in whiskey ads. One showed up in
_InfoWorld_—ballyhooing Select, a craftily marketed rival of WordStar.
Embracing Madison Avenue-style tactics, software companies like Select
Information Systems were luring some customers away from programs that
would have been far better for heavy-duty business use.
Select’s word processor retailed for about $500 in 1982, a year after
its introduction, including speller and mailing list programs and a
tutorial disk. Just WordStar—without accessory programs—listed for about
the same.
More than twenty-five thousand copies of Select sold in less than two
years, and major manufacturers started offering it with their computers.
I myself loathed Select. And yet I could see how the program could wow
the throngs jamming their local computer stores. The tutorial disk was a
salesman’s dream: he could walk away while the program baby-sat the
customer tinkering with the computer.
Select Information Systems, moreover, a forty-employee company in
Kentfield, California, was running an advertising campaign as slick as
any distiller’s.
“No contest,” proclaimed a _San Francisco Examiner_ columnist in one ad
in 1982, looking up from his Xerox 820, dangling a pair of glasses from
his hand, like some refugee from a Famous Writers School. “Select was
easier to learn.” The ads didn’t say what he was comparing it to, but a
popular computer magazine named his equivalent of Brand X, WordStar.
The columnist, Dick Nolan, never returned my calls, and Select wouldn’t
put me in touch with the secretary featured in another ad, but I did
track down “Richard Russell, Gentleman Farmer.”
“Nebraska soybeans,” said the ad, “are Richard Russell’s business. But
he rarely gets there. Richard manages his farms from a Victorian flat in
San Francisco. And he does it with little more than a telephone and the
SELECT Word Processor.” What was this, an ad for a word processor or a
communications program? And yet the copywriter had done her job. I read
on eagerly, curious about gentlemanly word processors—human or disk.
“Select supports his interests as efficiently and often more quickly
than could a well-run office back home. The briefest bank instructions
or thickest annual report can be recorded in minutes and retrieved in
seconds.” Was software so powerful? Maybe. The ad quoted Russell:
“Select manages the business. I just reap the harvest.”
The gentleman farmer, however, wasn’t mainly a gentleman farmer—rather,
an interior decorator.
“I spend more time doing that,” Russell told me when I called up out of
the blue, “than on my farm operation, which is managed in the Midwest.”
Then why be a gentleman farmer in the ad?
“I think they just thought the idea of a gentleman farmer was more
interesting than an interior designer,” Russell said. It must have been.
He was deluged with calls, including one from NBC, which was in the
thick of a computer series.
Well, I asked, did he actually use the word processor?
Yes, Russell said, but mainly in his designing business. It was a
successful one, 20 percent commercial, 80 percent residential, including
work on some mansions in the million-dollar range. “I design
architectural interiors, furniture, fabrics,” he said, “the whole
thing.”
What did he most like about Select?
“The self-teaching program was the main thing that appealed to me,” he
said—the tutorial disk.
I asked Russell about the cumbersome series of keystrokes that the
Kaypro version of Select inflicted on people making insertions a few
sentences back in their writing.
He knew about the problem. And he knew about WordStar, too.
“I’m a lot more aware of that since the ad ran,” he said of WordStar’s
reputation as a powerful word-processing system, “but I don’t think I’m
in a position to say much about it since I gave Select my endorsement.
But you’ve brought up some valid points. The whole business of personal
computers is new to me in the last six months, and so I’m learning about
it, as well.” Russell said he used Select several hours a week, that he
could legitimately endorse it even if he wasn’t actually using it mainly
as a gentleman farmer. He was right. I didn’t question his basic
sincerity. But for me, anyway, Select had proved tediously cumbersome.
In early 1983 I called up Martin Dean, the head of Select Information
Systems, and did the proper thing.
“Martin,” I said in effect, “I hate your software.”
Why gladhand information out of him, then stab him in the back?
Dean was smart and a good sport. Not only didn’t he hang up on me; he
spent an hour on the phone giving his point of view. Like the developer
of WordStar, Dean had a philosophy, one born of his own business
experiences—in this case, a WordStar debacle. He was a real estate
lawyer eager for one of his staffers to work with a sophisticated word
processor. “I handed her WordStar,” he told me, “and said, ‘It’s the
standard in the industry.’ And she came back two days later and said she
was not going to do that.”
“She was vehement,” Dean said. She wasn’t going to spend the seventy
hours she felt it would take to master WordStar.
And she wasn’t “just” a secretary. She had a year of law school, had
done ten years of legal secretarial work, and was supervising Dean’s
legal research staff. “She’s one of the brightest women I’ve worked with
in the legal business,” he said. “But she didn’t have the time to learn
WordStar.” A major manufacturer had done a study comparing the two word
processors’ learning time. “And my understanding,” said Dean, “is they
determined it takes about fifty hours of working with WordStar to become
as accomplished as you could become in ninety minutes of using Select.”
I disagreed. WordStar took much less time for me to learn; Select, much
more. With other people, it might be the reverse, but a good company
normally wouldn’t have so much turnover that the employees would lack
time to master a _decent_ word processor.
Defending Select, Dean praised the tutorial disk and the program’s
built-in memory aids. Want to erase? If you hit the “Escape” control and
pressed the “E,” you’d eventually do that. Eventually. Dean and I went
through a keystroke count. He claimed that actually his system—improved
since the one I’d tried—was as fast or faster than rivals if run on the
right machines. He said the Kaypro just wasn’t right for his program.
“If you felt this way,” I asked, “how come you let it be bundled with
the Kaypro?” Why did he and the Kaypro’s maker sign a contract that
allowed Select to be the “free” word processor provided with the
computer?
“Well,” Dean said, “we had that version on the market only three
months”—in 1982. Then, according to him, Perfect Writer underpriced
Select. “Kaypro _then_ thought that was a bargain. They do not now.”
“Why?”
“Try to get a call through to their service department.” He was right.
Kaypro owners were swapping war stories. Theoretically, Kaypro—not
Perfect—would guide the owners through the software maze. Actually, it
didn’t. Not always, anyway. I heard people at user groups deciding which
machine to lie about owning so the Perfect Writer staffers would listen
to their problems. Kaypro, in fact, dropped Perfect software in 1984
after dealers said they preferred WordStar.
Okay, but what about my printer not underlining with the Kaypro using
Select?
Here again, Dean blamed Kaypro, and the printer maker, too, but I wasn’t
about to zero in on who was at fault here. All I knew was that my daisy
wheel wasn’t that exotic a machine. And yet, involuntarily, I’d been
sold cumbersome software that, unmodified, did not even work right with
the other parts of my $2,500 investment.
You may love Select, maybe even after you’ve been running it a while.
“Cumbersome,” remember, is my opinion. A _Washington Post_ staffer named
Eugene Meyer, a Kaypro owner, liked Select and said the slowness “gives
me more time to think.” He was working on a book around the same time I
was and turned out one as long. “But,” I half joked, “if you’d been
using WordStar, then you might have written one _three_ times longer
than mine.”
I called up Ben Shneiderman, an expert on matches between humans and
software systems. Just what did an academic feel about Select-style
systems and WordStar? Shneiderman, an associate professor of computer
science at the University of Maryland and author of _Software
Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems_, said:
“Select has very few commands. There are very different people in the
world. You’re very attracted to choice and options, and you seek the
power that WordStar offers. But very simply, people are different. Some
like to drive Maseratis, and some like to go twenty miles per hour.”
He was right. There might even be a version of Select better than
today’s WordStar; software is constantly changing, and when you shop,
you must do your homework to make sure you’re buying the best program
available for your needs at the time. But while I was writing this book,
I loathed Select—even a version more advanced than the one for my
Kaypro.
Who, anyway, wanted to hire a typist content to do the keyboard
equivalent of twenty miles per hour?
And yet I tried to be tolerant. I hit the control key to fire up
WordStar’s commands; Select users tapped “Escape.” “There are
twenty-five thousand people happy with using ‘Escape’ instead of the
control key,” Dean had told me, as patiently as a liberal Baptist
explaining to a Klansman that Jews didn’t have horns.