The only person who has ever had that vision, consistently, is Alan Kay.
The Apple was programmable because it was made by hackers for hackers. There were a few firms that would do software consulting for corporations and institutions, but the notion of consumer software barely existed.
Apple didn't mind it if a few people wrote third-party software and sold it. But I think in the beginning they expected to provide all the important software themselves, just like every computer manufacturer of the era.
And, I speak as somebody who used to hand-compile SHAPE files on the Apple II. These were a sort of vector graphics which you had to first painstakingly draw on graph paper, unspool as a series of draw/turn commands, and then translate into bitmasks according to a lookup table, and then cut those up at seven-bit intervals, and convert those into decimal numbers. This is not something that anyone ever conceived of as a children's toy. Even though some kids (like myself) persevered.
Hm, I wonder if pg's concept of Languages For Smart People applies. Is it possible that kids just don't like kids' languages, like Logo and so on? I have to say that I certainly didn't, although I was exposed to it much later than Alan Kay would have preferred.
>The only person who has ever had that vision, consistently, is Alan Kay.
Don't forget Ted Nelson, whose book (which I bought YAY :D) Computer Lib/Dream Machines features the slogan, "You can and must understand computers now!"
The Apple was programmable because it was made by hackers for hackers. There were a few firms that would do software consulting for corporations and institutions, but the notion of consumer software barely existed.
Apple didn't mind it if a few people wrote third-party software and sold it. But I think in the beginning they expected to provide all the important software themselves, just like every computer manufacturer of the era.