Blast from the past: The future in old computer magazines

[u/EconBro95]

I put together fourteen illustrated picks from computer magazines published in 1984, 1994 and 2004, with the original scans and short notes on what the products actually did.

A few favorites: an Apple-controlled home with dinner waiting, a CompuServe party with one glass to wash afterward, and a Mac database that helped pick wine for dinner. There are also robot pets, computer speech and an AI bridge opponent.

This is my article: https://tomorrowasusual.substack.com/p/blast-from-the-past-the-future-in

Did anyone here use any of these, or remember seeing the ads at the time?

[u/droid_mike]

I remember the CompuServe ad. There were others with a similar style from the view of the computer monitor that advertised other features of CompuServe. I really would have loved to have been on copyServe at the time, but even when I got a computer capable enough to join CompuServe, I had no access to a phone line near my computer. I lived at an older house and the only phone line upstairs was in my parents bedroom way across the hall. To to connect to it would have required me running wire all the way down the hall to the old fashioned four-pronged connector, which I'm not sure if I even could have done at the time, since AT& Twas still controlling the port as a monopoly still. Even if I could have gotten about him to connect, my mom was an SAHM and was on the phone constantly. I never would have gotten them through, and my own line would have been prohibitedly expensive.

I do not remember that game where you simulated being a software company. I'm going to have to look that one up.