I was cleaning out my garage and I found this under my rolling tool chest. I have no idea how long it’s been there, but it’s been a long time since there was a MacWorld Expo! What was the story Jim?
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I remember those disks. That was probably from 1995, I think Panorama 3 came out in 1996. Those diskettes contained what would now be called a screencast, in other words, a video. We gave out hundreds of those disks at the MacWorld Expo booth, along with the printed literature. The video was made with a program from Farallon called Media Tracks. This program didn’t record the screen using raster video like would be done today, instead it intercepted and recorded the drawing commands generated by the Macintosh ROM. This made it very efficient - I think we were able to get a 5 minute video on a 1.6Mb floppy disk. Today 1.6Mb would probably be only a frame or two from a YouTube video, or maybe even less than one frame. The video was black and white, and only 512 by 342, but it was a real recording showing data entry, sorting, searching, etc.
Farallon engineers later developed a color version of Media Tracks, but they never released it. They really didn’t know what they had. It was quite a long time after that that it became possible again to distribute marketing videos of software demos.
The last MacWorld Expo was in 2014 - this diskette is almost 20 years older than that. In some later years we gave out CDs with recorded video and demo software, but by 2014 we just had people visit the web site.
Great Moments at MacWorld Expo.
Soon after I joined the ProVue team, Jim included me in the contingent to MacWorld Expo. It might have been the first time Panorama was presented. At that time, there were several competing database apps. For example, FileMaker and 4th Dimension (Developed by ACIUS).
Guy Kawasaki, a very well-known Mac evangelist, had left Apple and was working for 4th Dimension. It was not uncommon for those tending a booth, to take turns wandering about the Expo to see what’s new in Software/Hardware in general and with competitors specifically. The traffic in front of the 4th Dimension booth was there, but sort of “meh”.
At one point, I spied Mr. Kawasaki starting to wander down the aisle in front of the ProVue booth. The problem was, that the crowd in front of the ProVue booth was so large and dense, that he couldn’t get by and had to turn around to exit the aisle instead of passing through the crowd.
Not like it left an impression on me. It was only about 35 years ago.
PS: And no one recognized him because their attention was taken by Panorama. Knowing Guy, that might have stung more than the crowd. 