I just found out the complete archive of The Computer Chronicles is available on YouTube, so I had to find my favorite episode 
At that time Panorama was only 4 years old. It was fun doing that show. The exact same demo could be given with Panorama X today – with a few new touches, of course. Skip ahead to the 5 minute mark if you just want to watch the Panorama portion of the show.
Wow computers were slow then – you can see each line draw individually every time the screen refreshes.
Love it! I remember that guy doing the Panorama presentation too.
Very Cool! I remember watching that show.
Early days … I’m trying to remember when/how I heard of Panorama. I wish I hadn’t disposed of my orginal 8x11 manual (if it isn’t in a box somewhere). Was it Tidbits? Or a print magazine? Or maybe a SMUG or BMUG note? (Stanford and Berkeley Mac User Groups – SMUG being one of the all-time best names apropos.) Is there a list around here of release dates of Panorama back to the beginning, Jim?
I recall years ago when I wrote a university admissions application system on a MacPlus. When the Mac SE came out, our IT guy recommended I upgrade, describing it as ‘blindingly fast’. And in its day it was.
Was it TidBITS?
TidBITS has been a great supporter of Panorama since 2000, but I don’t think they mentioned us before that.
Or a print magazine?
Certainly both OverVUE and Panorama were covered in all the print magazines in the 80’s and 90’s, and we used to run full page ads!
BMUG
I did Panorama demos at least twice at BMUG. Somehow I missed Stanford, though I did dozens of groups all over the country. And of course we exhibited at MacWorld Expo in both San Francisco and Boston.
As for release dates, OverVUE 1.0 was 1984, 2.0 was 1985. Panorama 1.0 was 1988.
Also, many years ago, I wrote a Panorama database for Apple Computer to track failure rates and part failures worldwide. I also taught Panorama at Apple University in Cupertino.
I was working with a Chinese employee who was being “encouraged” to use FileMaker instead. When Filemaker 2 came out he called me and said, "They want me to use FileMaker again. New version slow as dog; piece of sh*t.
The first review of Panorama in TidBITS was in 1992.
I don’t think I knew that Adam wrote a review of Panorama II, or if I did I forgot all about it. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even aware of TidBITS in 1992.
Oh wait, apparently my memory is very foggy, apparently I did know all about this at the time, because the next week Adam issued a follow up article that says “Jim Rea of ProVUE explained the rationale behind the Design Sheet to me.” Apparently we communicated on AOL.
Thanks for posting this Matt. For those of you that aren’t aware, Matt later wrote reviews of Panorama 4 and V for TidBITS, and later about Panorama Server.
In fact, over the past 20 years TidBITS has written about Panorama more than any other publication! Here are some more from the archives.
And finally, Joe Kissell’s review of Panorama X.