I'm getting to re-read my early DaveNet pieces, in sequence, as the month of October rolls out. These were the first posts, where I was trying out ideas to see what works. But behind it all there's a story I needed to get out. It wasn't even the story of how the Internet kicks butt (though that was the subtext to a lot of the pieces).

The real reason I was writing was:

1. I was a Mac developer.

2. I had a heavy investment in writing Mac software.

3. The Mac was the best machine for creating content for the web.

4. The Mac was losing, in the press, and with developers.

5. But there was still a lot of Mac software, and it was still better than anything you could get on Windows. Far better, because the OS had years on Microsoft, as did the developer base.

6. Now get this, even though the Mac was still ahead, the press was reporting the conventional wisdom: Mac is dead. Reason: No new software.

7. But that was crap. The reporters knew it was crap. Because they were all using Macs (there were exceptions, people who covered Microsoft, for example). And they didn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because if they were to use Windows, they'd be leaving a lot of stuff they need behind.

8. But what they were saying was killing the Mac.

9. I wanted to keep playing, and I did not want to port my software to Windows (I eventually did, only when it was clear that Apple was abandoning our platform, in favor of NextStep. After all we had been through with them, if it meant porting, I'd port to Windows, and get off Apple's trail for developers.)

10. Key point -- the blogosphere was created out of a story that the press was telling that was damaging, costly, and untrue. Had the press responded creatively to the Internet, and said "Geez this reshuffles the deck, we thought Apple was dead, but look, they've actually got a big lead" -- I could have stuck to writing software.

11. Never mind, because Apple never accepted the advantage they had in the web. They had good reasons -- everything they stood for was violated by the web. The Mac was a graphic computer. The web had GIFs and JPEGs, but aside from that it was entirely text based. It was a Unix developer's dream. And a graphic developer's nightmare.

12. I'll go where ever the action is. If I have to learn how to develop graphic apps, so be it. If I have to learn HTML, okay I'll do that too. But Apple wasn't like that. They saw the web, didn't like it, and said no thanks.

13. Needless to say all this made great fodder for a blog. And that's why DaveNet and then Scripting News, were so successful and inspired so many others to do it. I thought I was making web content management systems. But to make that work, we needed to have content that needed management, in other words, blogs.

Thanks for listening!!

PS: This piece started as a Facebook post.