Re: What was that thing called...?

[mjmahon@aol.com (MJMahon)]

Nathan got it right--it was the SwyftCard, and Jeff Raskin did it
_after_ his involvement with what eventually became the Mac.

Jeff's idea was to create "digital appliances", and SwyftCard was
a proof of concept for word processing.  Unfortunately for Jeff,
what it proved was that computer users didn't want to turn their
computers into special-purpose boxes!

Swyft did have some interesting "features" as a word processing
engine, though.  Jeff invented (and patented) the "Leap" function,
which caused the cursor to "leap" to the next instance of whatever
character or string you typed when you held down the left or right
"apple" keys--the leap was in the direction of the key.

Swyft eschewed a real DOS, opting instead for a proprietary format
with, if I remember right, a whole disk of 4+4 nibble coding!  Not
very space-efficient, and not at all interoperable.  End of Swift.

-michael

 Email:  mjmahon@aol.com
 Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/