Apple CEO John Sculley’s quest to extend the Macintosh’s reach in the business market took an important step in November 1987 with the launch of MultiFinder, an extension to the System Software 5 operating system that finally enabled a form of multitasking on the Mac. This gave Apple a jump on IBM’s long-promised multitasking OS/2 by a few weeks. And while the Mac never posed a serious challenge to the IBM PC and its clone army in the overall business market, the combination of MultiFinder with more expandable machines like the Macintosh II helped to cement Apple’s place as the primary alternative microcomputer platform for many business users.

The November 1987 edition of the Computer Chronicles holiday buyers’ guide began with Gary Kildall showing Stewart Cheifet the Sony XV-T600 Picture Computer, a $600 machine that added pictures and titles to home VCR movies. It also came with a small handheld scanner. Kildall demonstrated how you could place the scanner over a black-and-white drawing and digitize the image so it would appear on an attached television screen. The controls on the scanner could then be used to fill in the colors on the image. (You could also use a trackball, Kildall noted.) The color palette appeared on the lower right-hand corner of the television screen. The completed color image was then added on top of some video of a recent trip that Kildall had taken to New York City.

Apple had a few false starts when it came to local area networks in the 1980s. In February 1983, the company announced AppleNet, which it described as a “scaled-down version” of Bob Metcalfe’s Ethernet standard. The idea was that AppleNet would offer a decentralized LAN that didn’t require a full server and could connect up to 128 Apple II, Apple III, or Lisa systems across a distance of up to 2,000 feet. Apple claimed this approach would make its LAN more affordable, with a per-node connection cost of under $500. The trade-off was that AppleNet would be slower than other Ethernet LANs.

Local area networks were a regular topic during early seasons of Computer Chronicles. In a first-season episode from 1983, 3Com’s Ethernet was still “under discussion” as a possible industry networking standard. In 1985, IBM tried–and ultimately failed–to gain control of the standard with Token Ring. Now, with this next look at networking from November 1987, the topic had grown so much in complexity that this would be the first of a two-part series. This first episode focused on networking technology for IBM PCs and compatibles, while the next program addressed the state of LANs on the Macintosh.

The second annual Computer Chronicles episode to focus on the fall COMDEX show in Las Vegas aired in November 1987, just a few days after the event concluded. Back in the San Mateo, California, studio, Stewart Cheifet and George Morrow looked at some video footage recorded on the show floor. Cheifet noted this was the biggest COMDEX ever, with the most exhibitors and attendees. But what went on at the event? Was there any buying or selling actually taking place? Or was it just PR and gawking?

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.