[Coco] The early days of Hacking and Coding a CoCo Was: Here's a CoCo 1 ...

[Allen Huffman]

On Jan 19, 2014, at 8:08 AM, Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com> wrote:

> At one point Apple did not allow programming on the iThings.  They may have
> changed their tune on that, as they did on their rule against emulators.

Even then, though, you could download BASIC and some scripting type languages. The restriction kept you from having a way to load programs in externally. So I couldn't have used the BASIC "simulator" I got back then to make programs for others to run. I am sure folks got around that if they wanted to.

I use my iPad for 95% of everything I do these days. Certain times of the year when I start doing a bunch of audio/video/web work, I use my computer most. I use a bluetooth keyboard, though, and with Airplay, beaming to a large monitor is nice.

Robert X. Cringely has mused that this is the future for most of us -- your phone, a keyboard and mouse, and monitor on your desk. It's always with you, and has most power than most of us need. High end games, video editors, etc. will be the ones with the full computers.

> java.  Again, I don't know why.  Even the cheapest laptop or desktop would
> make a much more suitable tool.  I guess its one of those "because we can"
> things.

"Because we can" is what led me to not using my computer much. I manage my wordpress blogs, my webhosting cpanels, can ssh in to my home Pi, VNC to the home computer, etc. And a few years ago I would have told you that was just stupid and useless and pointless except for an emergency.

If I had a CoCo emulator that would run on my Android prepaid phone, or one of my iOS devices, I'd probably be doing CoCo stuff again. I can't ever seem to get around to setting up an emulator beyond just piddling with Xroar on my computer :(

		-- A