One in all the finest girls in Apple’s historical previous by no manner worked for Apple

In each and each substitute, in each and each scene, there’s that one who is conscious of each person, the one who has the files earlier than there’s files. You know who they are. Industries and scenes require connectors — those who facilitate relationships between others. Social media provides the impression of inserting us all nearby of one one more, however Forty years previously, it became once managed by magazines and mobile telephone calls. And on the center of the Apple II instrument universe became once Margot Comstock, a girl practically remarkable on the present time however who became once so primary in the early Apple II generation that in response to Doom creator John Romero, her nickname became once “The Glue.” Margot Comstock handed away on Friday, October seventh, 2022.

Comstock became once now no longer a developer, designer, or programmer. She became once a journalist. In 1980, she and her husband, Al Tommervik, took over the editorial management of a minute marketing e-newsletter known as Softalk, owned by the author Softape, and rebranded it as an Apple II enthusiast journal. As a periodical, Softalk became once a journal that every and each challenged the computer hobbyist journalism substitute and outlined the social terrain of the early Apple II instrument generation — which contained regarded as one of the primary finest libraries of instrument — expressing the reducing edge of what it became once that you would possibly per chance perhaps perhaps well have confidence to attain with a computer of one’s hold.

“Softalk is now no longer a programming journal,” she declared in the journal’s inaugural editorial, an main edict in 1980, when most computer magazines, love Byte and Ingenious Computing, had been contemplating about programming. Comstock wrote that Softalk would privilege “journalistic model moderately than technical files” while “piqu[ing] the curiosity and intrigue[ing] the intellect of each person who owns an Apple.”

Comstock’s promise that Softalk became once “now no longer a programming journal” wasn’t fluff: it became once a salvo directed at a new class of patrons struggling to originate the Apple IIs and TRS-80s a technology of everyday lifestyles. Since Byte launched its first tell in September 1975 with an article on reusing constructed-in circuits, proudly owning a computer had repeatedly been understood as a uniformly technical interest. But right by the unhurried Seventies and early 1980s, patrons needed more uncomplicated entry aspects to computing, while hardware and instrument makers needed get right of entry to to higher markets. That meant computing needed to transfer beyond hackers and hobbyists.

Positioning Softalk toward the rest of us moderately than a homebrew hobbyist became once a reflection of Margot and Al’s hold non-technical backgrounds. Sooner than founding Softalk, the couple had journeyman jobs in the publishing industry — Al became once a replica editor at Diversity, Margot a freelance textbook editor who’d reduce her teeth writing for in-flight magazines. These are occupational pasts that support demonstrate Softalk’s brazenly affable tone; no longer like some journal founders, these two had been consummate writers.

They sold their first Apple II with a windfall from Margot’s a hit performance on the game point to Password Plus. There she crushed the competition in a segment partnered with Loretta Swit (“Hot Lips” Houlihan from M*A*S*H). Even though the couple by no manner correct powerful beyond programming in BASIC, their Apple II all of sudden became the premise for novel networks of group and conversation. Margot and Al seemed to bear founded Softalk for other folks love themselves: other folks extra mad by the social and cultural aspects of computing than the technical. 

While you really liked the custom surrounding the Apple II, Softalk became once your Verge. The journal obtained its preliminary boost when Comstock despatched first-yr subscriptions of the journal totally free to all 32,000 people of Apple’s buyer list and mailed it totally free to any Apple II owner who submitted their serial number. This low bar and, in some cases, no bar to entry ensured Softalk became the de facto group forum of the 1/three-birthday celebration Apple II substitute. The journal folded in 1984, taken down by the Tool Shakeout that cratered powerful of the artificial. But, for a transient span of years, Margot became once the central operator for a nationwide community. 

Chatty, charming, and bursting with barely contained enthusiasm, Comstock and her journal proved a needed locus for these early companies, inserting new instrument publishers in contact with their first foremost distributors, knowing promoting affords, sharing files, and giving company founders a approach to impression and importance. The journal’s “Tradetalk” piece posted the files on the most recent hirings and firings with an insider sense of self-amusement (a proto-Twitter if ever there became once one). Softalk printed dozens of letters to the editor each and each tell, a ways bigger than any other enthusiast journal, nurturing a usually rote piece of editorial scream accurate into a flourishing group bulletin board in journal invent. And the journal’s bestsellers lists, fixed with gross sales reporting from accurate outlets (moderately than what publishers claimed they shipped), allowed the artificial to understand itself as an substitute. 

All this made Margot and Al one of the primary primary substitute’s most depended on arbiters. They had been so nicely known Richard Garriott incorporated them as dinky characters in the metropolis of Tommersville in Ultima II. Doug Carlston, co-founding father of Broderbund, the instrument company that printed PrintMaster and Mavis Beacon and video games love Prince of Persia and Carmen Sandiego, mentioned that by Softalk, the pair “pulled our dinky substitute together, gave us all encouragement and a station to piece files and tips.” Carlston remembers the pair’s “brilliance and humanity.”

Margot’s pleasure for the Apple world stayed along with her previous Softalk’s heyday. Again in 1987, she participated in a Smithsonian group interview alongside other Apple II icons, including Carlston, Sierra On-Line co-founders Ken and Roberta Williams, and Sirius Tool’s Jerry Jewell. 

With each and each seek files from pitched her scheme, she bounces evenly on the sofa, brimming with commentary; she takes the total interview barefoot, folds her toes below her, and talks with absorbing gestures. In a 2015 interview with documentarian Jason Scott, practically about 30 years later, the spirit of the same lady is clearly demonstrate — her eyes crisp, her smile pleased, her fingers in motion as she speaks of a bygone lifestyles. Scott remembers her as “a heavenly presence and beefy of satisfaction in the work she did, and tickled other folks remembered her; any individual who thinks of a computer is bigger than an appliance has her affect to thank.”

Screengrab from Smithsonian Institution Archives

“Along with her game point to winnings, Margot Comstock would possibly per chance perhaps well’ve taken a commute or added a new deck,” Scott mentioned. “Instead, she chose regarded as one of the primary hardest jobs in an substitute no one moderately understood the aptitude of. She spent four years chronicling instrument and computers from some extent of view that became once sorely needed and silent rings with high-quality decades later.”

I met her handiest once as nicely, in 2013 on my first compare time out to Silicon Valley, after I became once engaged on a challenge about Sierra On-Line. We met at an Applebee’s in Santa Rosa. She admonished me for ingesting Food regimen Coke (the chemical compounds) and chided me for trying to yarn the interview moderately than being ready to purchase handwritten notes. She found my younger age of 31 extraordinary, as nicely as the premise that any individual who had by no manner themselves vulnerable an Apple II, would care about her work. The conversation wasn’t powerful. She became once regarded as one of the primary principle other folks I had ever formally spoken with as a historian, and I became once a ways too inexperienced in my hold interviewing skills to know the good questions to ask her or how to originate a girl of her wisdom and journey really feel relaxed. But she became once affected person and form, and she or he gossiped with enthusiasm about those days. I’d repeatedly intended to originate one more skedaddle of an interview in the future, however in the future by no manner came, and now I will’t. She became once a particular person of such suitable and immense power in the Apple II substitute that I had devoted my imminent e-book, The Apple II Age: How the Computer Grew to turn into Non-public, to her — a dedication which must now turn into “in reminiscence of.”

Margot Comstock’s lifestyles and legacy are a chance to each and each bear a great time the gigantic contribution to computer historical previous she left in the support of in the pages of Softalk and to reassess our assumptions about whose stories matter in the historical previous of computing. While standard accounts usually time out over their heels to tell the exuberant exploits of the younger males became heroes of their substitute — love Carlston, Williams, and Garriot — few bear belief to ponder all of the alternative work it takes to originate an substitute. Between the folds of historical previous is the level-headed labor of making forums, cultivating relationships, bridging social gaps, and doing the writerly and technical translating that makes sophisticated, opaque technology accessible and thrilling to learners. The Apple II generation became once your world, Margot Comstock — and we precise benefited from it.