by Jason Snell
The Pioneers of Shareware
Via Geraint Preston, here’s a remarkably detailed history of the early days of the Freeware/Shareware movement in the 1980s written by Jimmy Maher.
Throughout his life, Fluegelman had a special relationship with San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. “I think it’s a power point,” he said once only semi-facetiously. “I have more inspirations driving across the Golden Gate Bridge…” One day shortly after finishing his program, he was driving across while thinking back to the pledge drive he had seen the night before on the local PBS television station.
Andrew Fluegelman went on to work at PC World and, most notably in my opinion, was the founding editor of Macworld. There are a few nice details in the article about Fluegelman’s enthusiasm for the original Macintosh:
The PC World issue with the landmark review of PC-File was still on newsstands when Andrew Fluegelman had his next life-changing encounter with a computer: he was one of a select few invited to Apple for an early unveiling of the new Macintosh. He was so smitten by this whole new way of operating a computer that he immediately began lobbying for a companion magazine to PC World, to be named, naturally enough, Macworld. Its first issue appeared in time to greet the first Macintosh buyers early in 1984. Fluegelman held down the editor-in-chief job there even as he continued to fill the same role at PC World.
He committed suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge in July of 1985 at the age of 41. Macworld honored him in its masthead for years thereafter.