Even as stock markets around the world crashed in October 1987, business owners could still take comfort in the fact that laser printers had finally broken the sub-$2,000 barrier. Hewlett-Packard’s LaserJet II printer was now available from some retailers for just $1,795, a significant discount from the original $2,595 list price. And laser printers from smaller companies such as Epson could be had for as little as $1,400.

With that in mind, this next Computer Chronicles episode from November 1987 focused on the latest developments in laser printers. Stewart Cheifet opened the program by showing Gary Kildall some examples of printed documents. Normally you would have to go to a professional printer to get such documents, but these were all printed on a personal computer with a laser printer. Laser printers had become associated with desktop publishing. But was that the only reason to go out and buy one?

On August 11, 1987, Apple announced the release of HyperCard at the opening of the Boston Macworld Expo. In modern parlance, HyperCard was a type of middleware. It was software that allowed users to create Macintosh applications without having to understand the underlying operating system or traditional programming languages–both of which had been substantial barriers to entry for potential third-party developers.

At its core, HyperCard was a relational database management program. But the way it related data was through the use of hyperlinks. Today, we know hyperlinks as the glue that holds the World Wide Web together. Of course, the first web browser was still several years away when HyperCard debuted in 1987. So the commercial application of hyperlinks–something that had been around in academic computing circles since the late 1960s–was big news among the late 1980s tech press.

Before moving on to the fifth season of Computer Chronicles, let’s return to the earliest days of the program to discuss an episode that had been lost until recently. There are several episodes still missing from the Internet Archive’s repository. Thankfully, one was recently located and digitized by the Stanford University library.

This first-season episode from March 1984 focused on software utilities. Herbert Lechner of SRI International joined Stewart Cheifet as co-host. (Gary Kildall was on a business trip to Japan.) Cheifet noted that many people who used computers didn’t know much about utilities. Was there an easy way to define what a “utility” was? Lechner said it was one of those terms that had not been precisely defined. Most people would agree that utility programs were those that helped you perform routine housekeeping functions that would otherwise occupy a lot of the user’s time and energy.

We close out the fourth season of Computer Chronicles with a visit to Taiwan. This July 1987 episode focused on the growing influence of Asia-based PC clone manufacturers in the U.S. market. In a brief studio introduction, Stewart Cheifet showed Gary Kildall one such clone from the Taiwanese company Multitech. Cheifet noted that the computer, monitor, and disk drive were all made in Taiwan. Indeed, Taiwan was the world’s leading manufacturer of computer monitors and disk drives.

When you think about it, the original Apple Macintosh was a ridiculous computer. It had a 9-inch monochrome display that was tiny even by 1984 standards. There were no expansion slots, which was a standard feature of most personal computers, including the venerable Apple IIe. And there was no way to add a hard drive without going to a third-party provider such as General Computer Corporation.

So by all rights, the Macintosh should have been a failure like Apple’s two prior attempts to enter the business computing market–the Apple III and the Lisa–but it wasn’t. This was largely thanks to the work of third-party hardware developers like GCC–but especially third-party software companies like Aldus and Adobe, which made the Macintosh the go-to in the newly emerging field of desktop publishing.

Database managers often tested the limits of 1980s personal computers. For example, longtime Computer Chronicles contributor George Morrow faced an ongoing problem with the database he maintained to catalog his massive collection of 78 records. He told the final issue of the Morrow Owners’ Review that he’d been forced to abandon his own Morrow Designs MD11 because the old CP/M machine could no longer hold the database.

Morrow initially used a database manager called Personal Pearl, but after about 9,000 records or so, it “got severe hiccups.” So he moved to Ashton-Tate’s dbase II. But after he reached record 32,678 on that program, it “wrapped around on itself and destroyed records.” (This would be the dBASE equivalent of the Pac-Man level 256 kill screen.) Thankfully, Morrow managed to move the database to an MS-DOS machine and repair his data thanks to Norton Utilities, something he discussed in a previous Chronicles episode.

On May 2, 1985, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs held a joint press conference at Tavern on the Green, the famous restaurant in New York City’s Central Park. The co-founders of Microsoft and Apple, respectively, announced the forthcoming release of Excel, Microsoft’s newest spreadsheet program for Apple’s Macintosh. This wasn’t Microsoft’s first spreadsheet. Three years earlier, in 1982, Microsoft released Multiplan. But it had failed to gain market share against the dominant Lotus 1-2-3. So Gates decided to cede the traditional spreadsheet market to Lotus and refocus Microsoft’s efforts on the Macintosh’s graphical user interface.

In 1978, Harvard Business School student Dan Bricklin started thinking about creating an electronic spreadsheet program. That summer, Bricklin decided to try and make his idea a reality. He developed a prototype on an Apple II that he borrowed from Dan Fylstra, who had received his own Harvard MBA the year before and founded a company called Personal Software.

After completing the prototype and showing it to Fylstra, Personal Software agreed to publish the program. Bricklin and a fellow programmer, Bob Frankston, formed their own company, Software Arts, to serve as the developer. Personal Software would then handle marketing and sales and pay royalties to Software Arts.

The history of computer word processing applications can be divided into three main periods, each tied to a specific platform transition. In the first period–the late 1970s and early 1980s when CP/M machines dominated the microcomputer market–WordStar was the gold standard. After the IBM PC came along and MS-DOS displaced CP/M, WordPerfect similarly overtook WordStar. Then, as Windows was finally accepted by the masses at the start of the 1990s, Microsoft’s Word usurped WordPerfect as the one word processor to rule them all. (And if we extend things to the present, in the post-PC age there is effectively a commercial word processing duopoly with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.)

On April 28, 1988, Mark Herbst of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, went to the offices of the Pennsylvania Lottery to redeem the winning “Super 7” ticket from a July 1987 drawing. Under lottery rules, the winner had one year to claim their prize. Herbst, a clerk at a video rental store, told the press that he had “found the winning stub in an old cigar box.” He said he played the lottery so frequently that he often forgot to actually check his tickets. It was only a news report a few days earlier about unclaimed lottery prizes that prompted him to see if he might have a winning ticket.