ProVUE at the First Macworld Expo
Forty years ago today the doors opened for the very first MacWorld Expo in the Brooks Hall basement in San Francisco. For most of you this event probably seems like ancient history, somewhere back in the mists of time. But for me this was a very real and exciting event that I participated in as an exhibitor, the start of my amazing journey with the Mac community, a journey that continues on today.
As I recall there were two or three dozen software booths that first year. Some of the software on display included Multiplan (Microsoft), PFS:File, Think Tank, FileVision, Mac Slots, Habadex, Mac Draft, Mac Lion, Music Works, Click Art and of course OverVUE (the direct predecessor to today’s Panorama X). Of course all of these companies have long since disappeared, except for two - Microsoft and ProVUE Development.
What an inspiration. OverVUE was originally written in 68k assembly code that he macro-translated from PDP-11 assembly. Now it does AppKit, Unicode, and Apple Silicon. He continues to add major new features and directly support his customers.
To celebrate that, and this 40 year anniversary, I’ve set up a 40% discount code for new users - MACEXPO40.
There are old-school Mac developers still going strong, and there are old school Mac developers still going strong.
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> was originally written in 68k assembly code that he macro-translated from PDP-11 assembly.
Where did you hear that rumor Michael? 🤣
Actually, it's quite true. And not just "originally" - I was doing development in structured PDP-11 assembly all the way thru 2010. That PDP-11 code even made it into the Mac App Store! We did stop selling it around 2014, but there are still a few die-hard users running that code even today in 2025. I desperately want them all to convert to the new version!! The new version is written in Objective-C (about 210k lines of code) using AppKit. I am currently learning Swift/SwiftUI for a new project, but i think Panorama X is going to remain ObjC.
If anyone here is interested in how I built Panorama X using AppKit, I did a talk for Boston CocoaHeads a couple of years ago. You can watch it here: https://vimeo.com/676559107
