@nulleric Thank you for buying them! I'll keep on going as long as there's sufficient market interest for my games and tech history projects.

@savaran @mac84tv @ultranurd It'd be interesting to see an article or a list covering all the excellent and popular third-party products that Apple has killed or neutered over the years through system updates that replicated all or most of their features. I can think of several just off the top of my head.

@cognitivegears I'll email my publisher to check if that's correct or if something went wrong on the backend with Amazon.

@ultranurd @mac84tv I'd love to do a book on Ambrosia specifically one day. I wonder sometimes if the market is big enough to justify the work (it'd be a labour of love, but I'd at least need to make *some money*), but it's been encouraging to see even a few years later I get a steady 200-300 people digging into the PAX talk I republished about Ambrosia at https://lifeandtimes.games/episodes/files/pax-aus-19-ambrosia-sw-talk

@eloy It does not. I only covered a small amount of non-games shareware software, and most of that was just in setting the scene and establishing how/why games struggled in shareware pre-Apogee.

@schmudde Thank you! I had a wonderful time building that website and tinkering with the design until it felt *just right* to me. I've been meaning to code in a JavaScript screensaver as well, with flying floppy disks or some other thematically-appropriate throwback to the era.

@GabeMoralesVR I remember hearing/reading about that, but I've never seen it. Will have to dig out the video. It was fascinating reading his letter to fans about why Llamatron was shareware and feeling the sadness and exasperation in it at how the commercial market had changed, knowing everything that's happened for him since.

@lordkhan Thank you! I had a lot of fun building that website and tinkering with the design to make it more fun and nostalgic. Hope you enjoy the book!

@jmechner I haven't looked closely yet, but I spotted all of those new things and I expect they'll go a long way towards elevating the story. I'm especially looking forward to reading the legacy section, which looks great at first glance. I always like to have a legacy bit at the end of product histories — and I make a point of including them where possible/appropriate in my own books/articles — because they show the life things take on after they're done.

@Liquidream I had the best time building that website; it was so much fun tinkering with layouts and colours and other CSS things that could be appropriated to emulate an old-school DOS vibe.

Available today in the US and Canada in paperback and Kindle format — my latest book, *Shareware Heroes: The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the Internet*, delves into the 90s indie games scene and the rise of the shareware business model that presaged free-to-play.

I managed to pack in lots of dev stories, biz insights, and meta-narrative into this one. It covers the origins and early work of id Software, Epic (Mega)Games, Apogee/3D Realms, Ambrosia Software, Jeff Minter, and more, along with surprise hits such as Elasto Mania, Snood, Scorched Earth, etc, market failures like Star Quest 1, and quirky games like Grandad and the Quest for the Holey Vest, plus shareware distributors like TUCOWS and Public Brand Software, the UK licenceware and PD scene, the market shifts that happened as the big indie publishers emerged and then left the shareware scene, and more.

If you're wondering if it's worth buying, there's a thoughtful and fun article/review-ish thing over on Eurogamer: https://www.eurogamer.net/the-legacy-of-shareware-is-everywhere

And you can learn more and buy via sharewareheroes.com

Wonderful to finally get a hardback copy of The Making of Prince of Persia by @jmechner. PoP was one of my earliest and most formative gaming experiences, playing in black and white on a Mac Plus, and the Kindle version of this book remains one of my favourite game dev stories a decade after I read it.

I have found it horrifying to watch the rapid rise of wood burning heaters here in Melbourne in recent years, but it is encouraging to see someone in the UK realise the harmful, mega-polluting folly of installing them during a home renovation. Here's hoping for a quick reversal trend to switch to clean energy heating comes soon.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/27/wood-burning-stove-environment-home-toxins

There's a new offshoot of Mac abandonware / software archival site Macintosh Garden: Mac Mod Paradise. It's for mods and other player-created content from classic Mac games.

Website: http://mac.mod-paradise.com
Background on its creation: https://macintoshgarden.org/forum/mac-garden-universe-expands-mac-mod-paradise-here

The original SimCity has a cool icon. It seems totally natural and logical when you look at it — a minimalistic silhouette of a city — but it couldn't have been easy translating all of that into 32x32 pixels while taking care to ensure there's something representative of all the game's key elements: residential, commercial, and industrial zones, plus the ever-present helicopter. #macicons

Spending Christmas Eve in style. #tombraider

@robotspacer I wish I'd been able to get it into the first edition as well, but I was told at the time that we didn't have the budget for my icon gallery and timeline ideas.

I've just published the audio recording of the "Shareware Downunder" PAX Aus panel I was on in October with @johnpassfield, Terry Burdak from Paper House Games, and Arieh Offman from ACMI.
https://lifeandtimes.games/episodes/files/pax-panel-shareware-downunder

I still find myself drawn into the Colony icon every time I look at it. @croqueteer had a tough job with it — how do you translate the magic of the game's real-time wireframe 3D graphics into a static 32x32 pixel grid? — but I think it strikes a perfect balance between the clean/clear lines that every good icon needs (for legibility) and enticing imagery to attract your interest in playing the game. And like every good game icon, it's instantly recognisable to anyone who's played the game (and seen the cool ray-casting 3D as well as the creepy giant eyeball alien). #macicons

@HeimComputer You got it before Christmas! Excellent. Happy reading for whenever you do decide to open it and dive in.