Softcon in February, 1984

[ried]

I happened upon an interesting VHS tape recording that Apple produced for their dealer network. It documents Macintosh and Lisa developers at an event called "Softcon" held February 21-23, 1984 at the Louisiana Superdome.

In the 23-minute long tape, various developers including Lotus, Microsoft, BPI Systems and many more are interviewed about the products they're developing for the new Apple 32 SuperMicros. Most of the developers were targeting the newly announced Macintosh platform. I watched closely for Lisa products, though, and here's what I saw.

• Wadsworth Professional Software announced and demonstrated StatPro for Lisa Office System.
• Aardvark / McGraw-Hill promoted their Personal Tax Planner.
• RealWorld Corporation demonstrated their accounting software on Lisa.
• Open Systems Incorporated developed a set of nine accounting applications for Lisa 1 and proclaimed they're porting them to Lisa 2.
• Condor Computer Corporation showcased the Condor Database for Lisa 1.
• Videx Corporation released Desktop Calendar for Lisa Office System.
• Santa Cruz Operation promoted several Lisa titles including XENIX, a word processing package, database management, COBOL Level II, and Microsoft Multiplan.
• ArtSci released the MacPhone for both the Lisa and the Macintosh.
• BPI Systems promoted BPI General Accounting for the Lisa, "the most powerful accounting system" they offered at the time.
• UniPress Software promoted UNIX (System V) and showed a Macintosh connected to the Lisa via serial.

I'll work on digitizing this video and putting it on YouTube, but here are a few low-fidelity smartphone pictures from the recording for fun in the meantime. StatPro looked like an early work-in-progress and was clearly abandoned after the show.

[mst3k]

I wish I could grow out my mustache, put on my white shirt and tie, step into my time machine and go wander around that show floor for a day or two...

[bmwcyclist]

I assume we don't have any existing copies of some of this???

.

[ried]

I have not found it anywhere, no.

[ried]

Get ready to step back in time to 1984 and onto the floor of the Louisiana Superdome, ladies and gentlemen.

[ried]

While I was at it, I went ahead and uploaded a complete version of "Selling Macintosh" as well. There seem to be bits and pieces of it available on YouTube, but here's the whole thing.

[ried]

Finally, here's "The Macintosh Story" which includes several references to Lisa.

[mst3k]

The Softcon video is interesting!

I did sense a bit of confusion as to whether the Lisa or the Mac was the focus of the show.

Having been a sales rep at one point I am excited to offer this exciting recap of the excitations of these exciting products destined to excite excitement felt by the excited attendees of this exciting show as captured in this exciting video of exciting product excitement...  in a word, exciting!

[pl212]

Thanks so much for digitizing these tapes!

It looks like they may have been encoded in 16x9 aspect ratio, which stretches them a bit horizontally.  If you download them from youtube (via yt-dlp or similar), you can insert a lossless, non-destructive aspect ratio correction that most video players will obey:

Code Select Expand

ffmpeg -i original.webm -aspect 640:480 -c copy aspect_ratio_fixed.webm

[ried]

Yeah, my composite video to HDMI converter is an El Cheapo Amazon Special that automatically converts to 16:9 at 720p or 1080i resolution. I didn't have the right hardware to get the original 4:3 pan & scan aspect ratio into the computer. Sorry about that.