I started my professional career writing an educational authoring application called Teacher's Wizard for the Apple II platform. The Mac had just been launched (it was 1984) and I was dazzled with it's graphical user interface as well as applications like Hypercard. Since I had no way to buy a Mac I started working on writing my own stripped down version of HyperCard, geared toward the educational market.

I implemented the UI in assembly language using a joystick to control the cursor (although I later supported mouse input when it was released for the Apple II platform). Believe me, it took me a lot of time to do that! However, I was able to complete the project and sell it to a company in Spain and later to Britannica Software in the U.S.

When the Apple IIgs came out I just gad to buy it, since it had the same UI than the Mac (and it was much cheaper). I spent a whole week-end playing with GS/Write and GS/Paint, the equivalents of Mac Write and Mac Paint. I was eager to write an application that could use the Toolbox APIs but the problem was that I had absolutely no need for any kind of application. Since I really wanted to start programming I settled on the first idea that crossed my mind...

I do recognize that Jigsaw! was not a great product and that it was not based on the greatest idea but hey, I wrote it over the next week-end and it sold over 100,000 copies (yes that is right, over one hundred thousands copies). Boy, I felt like Bill Gates! (You know, the guy who makes billions selling crappy software).

The fact is that I do not like to write crappy software. Therefore I later wrote an update to the game which was supposed to be released under the name Jigsaw Deluxe. The problem is that my editor was in financial trouble and therefore, the game was never released. I still have the source code somewhere and plan to publish it on this site, as soon as I find it...

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