Information about the Computers Used for the Creation of Bill Bly's We Descend
In 1993 Bill Bly began work on his masterpiece, We Descend. He used an Apple SE to produce the work, a computer, by then, already six years old. The Apple SE, however, was built to last––it was the first Mac to come with a cooling fan. It was also the first compact Apple computer to offer a hard drive. Robust for the time, it had 20 MB or 40 MB of RAM and ran operating systems from 3.3 to 7.5.5. This machine was not cheap, however. The cost of a brand new Apple SE was $2900 for the dual floppy version and $3900 for the 20 MB hard drive. It was discontinued in 1990. Notable software that ran on the Apple SE included HyperCard, ClarisWorks, MicroSoft Word, Tetris, and, of course, Storyspace.
Later he upgraded to a Mac IIsi, a more contemporary computer released on the market from 1990-1993. It provided sound-in port capability and a screen resolution at 640-480 in 8-bit color. It also had double the amount of RAM than his Apple SE.
Bly, however, completed the work on We Descend in June or July 1996 on a Powerbook 520 with a grayscale display with one of the first trackpads, running System 7. He says that he never moved beyond System 9.0, which was released in 1999.
To experience We Descend, Volume One produced on floppy disks today, readers need a computer that reads high density disks. Thus, a Macintosh Plus or higher is recommended. To read the CD version, a Macintosh with a CD player running the Classic operating system is recommended. It also is available for PCs running Windows XP or any later version with XP mode installed.