Honestly, I was not a huge fan of 90s Microsoft, and I certainly never used this thing, but I really miss this kind of fun and whimsy and the bicycle-for-the-mind (even if you're only going to ride in circles in front of your house) quality of 80s-90s personal computing and desktop applications.
I wonder if there's a market for a new word processor for children? When I volunteer in schools students seem to be made to use Google Docs or Office, which I imagine is initially overwhelming.
Back when I was in elementary school in the 1990s we learned word processing using the ClarisWorks office suite on 68k Performa 575 models running System 7. While nostalgia may be clouding my opinions, I do remember ClarisWorks being easy to use. We also had access to Apple eMate laptops which ran the same operating system as the Newton. They had a word processing application on them, and we'd use these laptops in class to type short reports, which we would later print and give to the teacher to grade. I forgot the name of the word processing application, though; it's been 21 years since elementary school and the last time I saw an eMate.
> I wonder if there's a market for a new word processor for children?
Undoubtedly.
...but not one that the market will pay actual money for, so you'll have to plaster it in ads - but having ads targeting children is unethical and/or illegal.
I've used Google Docs probably since I was 8 or 9, I don't remember it being particularly hard to pick up. Also, Google has Google Classroom which works best with Google Docs, so Google Docs is probably what's most common with kids.
With my kids the popular creative tools are: Super Mario Maker (Switch), Game Builder Garage (Switch), Minecraft (everything). Book Creator, Procreate, GarageBand, Pages, Keynote and iMovie (iOS)
My kids end up using a mix of "kid friendly" software (especially when it relates to game making or coding) and regular software. The regular software they use typically relates to schoolwork and is usually on iPad: Procreate for drawing and painting, Google Docs or Pages for word processing. Book Creator / Keynote for class presentations
It seems like the kid-friendly software still exists, but has shifted from word processing and painting to coding and game making
> It seems like the kid-friendly software still exists, but has shifted from word processing and painting to coding and game making
Thankfully! I remember managing a classroom computer lab around 2010. The challenge was to get often buggy educational software from the mid-1990's to run under Windows XP, since the mid-1990's was when most of the software with any educational merit was developed. There were a handful of contemporary standouts, like Scratch and TuxPaint, but they were scarce. (The children may have loved KidPix, but it was nearly impossible to teach with since they were fixated with the animated effects.)
I'm sure those kids thought that TuxPaint was the greatest too. It's pretty easy to tell when something engages children since their work goes from meh to wow, a six year old did that?!
Not sure this was on sale in the UK. Never heard of it. But I didn't know Bob in period, either. The internet has a great way of revealing entire back catalogues.
The Ghostwriter expansion pack was next fucking level. Clues hidden in documents to solve a mystery - one of my favorite early childhood software experiences.
I still have the 4 floppy disks (french version). I remember the sentence generator with random words that was really funny. The word processing interface had a ribbon-style toolbar with tabs and multiple "pages" that we can alternate by clicking on the lever.
