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Minor channel update from Jonathan:

David has finished the rough edit of we have been calling "Sonic versus Mario", a look into Sega's assault on the US market with the Genesis. He's been working on this for quite a while and I like that he focuses a lot on the business/marketing side of things. Video will hopefully be ready for release in the next month or two.

RoW3 editing: I have one minute of audio editing done. No video. But thanks to generous help from someone who knows Davinci Resolve a heck of a lot better than I do, the audio quality is probably the best I have ever had to work with thanks to some custom audio filters.

As a side project (since I don't have enough of those), I am working on combining IBM PC 1-3 as well as Fall of OS/2 into a single 3 hour+ supercut. One of the benefits of this is that I can finally fix the awful audio levels I inadvertently wound up with on IBM PC Part 3.

Unfortunately I am still trying to figure out how to clean up the audio, and ideally strip out the background music from parts 1-2 (created and edited before I realized I didn't HAVE to have background music).

Thanks to the failure of several external hard drives, plus a certain amount of absent mindedness on my part with regards to where I backed up files, I no longer have (or can't find) the original project files for IBM PC parts 1-3. IBM PC 1 and 2 were also edited in Premiere, not Resolve <deleted 6000 word rant on how much Premiere sucks>, so even if I had the files, it wouldn't do me much good.

So I'm not sure when I'll have it sorted out, but its coming.

I got a comment recently asking about Rise of Excel part 2. I am actively writing it and it will probably be released on retrotechreads.substack.com/ in the next few weeks. I will probably make it a video sooner rather than later, as its not overly long (I'm not done writing it yet, but I am guessing it will be 20-30 mins) and probably won't take me more than a couple months to edit once recorded.

Where exactly it will fall in my priority list for videos probably mostly depends on if I get burned out on editing Rise of Windows 3 and need a break.

I think that's all for now :)

Appreciate you all!

Jonathan

1 week ago | [YT] | 51

Another Boring Topic

Update from Jonathan,

Just finished recording the last audio section for Rise of Microsoft Windows part 3: Windows 3.0.

Unedited audio is 80 minutes long, so the video will probably be 75-80 minutes long.

I have decided that in order to speed up the editing process (at least somewhat), I will do my best to avoid adding new material to RoW3 during editing. Unless I run across an error I need to write/record new material to correct of course.

I normally have a really hard time not adding new material to a video I am working on, Next 2 increased in size by 15-20 minutes during editing (although some of that was necessary to correct errors around Rhapsody in the original script).

So I have decided that any new material I add, will only be added to the RoW3 article, over at Retro Tech Reads. For example, I added a few hundred words to it yesterday giving some new information I found about how the Windows 2.1 run time was licensed, used, and what it cost. I am currently valiantly resisting recording it and adding it to the RoW3 audio.

I do not know when I will be done editing RoW3, but its safe to assume it will probably (but not definitely) appear on the channel by 2030 :)

~ Jonathan

1 month ago | [YT] | 128

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Post Next 2 channel update from Jonathan,

It's now been well over a month (~40 days) since Next part 2 launched, and I thought it might be interesting to show a couple stats. I do want to preface this by saying that I'm quite happy with the video, happy with the response to it, and enjoy knowing that while it took me a few years...I did finally get it out the door and complete the story :)

Next part 2 is pretty firmly in 4th place for comparable time period across the channel, with less than a third of the views that The Fall of OS/2 had by this point.

Its possible, maybe even likely that the algorithm is penalizing the channel for how rarely we upload...however it's also possible that the algorithm doesn't really know what to do with us, given that ABT breaks basically every rule for YouTube success as a creator.

Its also possible that the thumbnails simply aren't getting clicked on. YouTube has a feature where you can do A:B testing on thumbnails, so I used two of them and switched to the top one, but it was basically a statistical tie (49.8% to 50.2%) after a week.

The average watch time is extremely good, so overall people that watch the video seem to enjoy it (and I really appreciate each and every one of you all for putting up with my constant battles with the microphone, audio editing, and pronunciation!)

There are rumors that YouTube has stopped counting views from people with ad blockers, which could result in far lower views, meaning the algorithm pushes you far less and it winds up in a vicious circle of steadily decreasing views. And that's possible of course, views are definitely down and the view fall-off on Next 2 was much steeper than Rise of Windows 2.

Or its just that the subject matter is so niche (an almost 2.5 hour video on what?!!) that the interested audience is just much smaller than for OS/2 or Windows. I was curious to see if doing the video as a live premiere would increase its reach a bit, but it doesn't seem like it.

That said, I enjoyed doing the live premiere, and it was fun to watch the live chat, and directly interact with you all a bit, in a way I've never been able to do before. Definitely going to keep doing that going forward!

I am about to start editing Rise of Windows part 3, but it almost assuredly won't be done until sometime next year, even though its only about half the length of Next 2. To be honest, I am still feeling a bit burned out on editing after the big push to get Next 2 over the finish line, but I'm feeling much better about editing than I did last month :P

Whenever I finish and release it, it will be very interesting to see how well it performs, and if the algorithm pushes it at all. David has been steadily working away at editing his video on Sega, and the Genesis so there should be at least one release between now and whenever I finish up RoW 3.

Ultimately this channel is a hobby that I greatly enjoy, and the number of people watching my videos matters less to me than the fact that the people that do watch my tech history videos, enjoy them.

I've also attached a screenshot of our channel's monthly summary for January 2020(YouTube used to send these out to creators every month). It's good to see how far we've come, its still amazing to me to see so many people sharing my obsession with tech history.

I also want to thank everybody who checked out Retro Tech Reads, it means a lot to me to know that people are enjoying my writing. Fortunately, so long as I can SPELL the word correctly, nobody can tell that I might mispronounce it :)

I think that about wraps it up for this update, appreciate you all!

- Jonathan

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2 months ago | [YT] | 63

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Steve Jobs and NeXT part 2 will premiere tomorrow (September 7th), going live at 2 PM Eastern Standard Time. YouTube's notifications are pretty unreliable a lot of time, so I am posting the link to the watch page here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbpZt...

3 months ago | [YT] | 36

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David and I (Jonathan) are evaluating two samples of coffee cups that I created on FourthWall, may offer these for sale as an option to help support the channel soon. Still have a couple things to tweak.

In other news, the final edit of Steve Jobs and Next part 2 is coming along nicely, should be ready for release in the next few weeks.

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4 months ago | [YT] | 26

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Major channel announcement,

I am pleased to announce that I have (finally) completed the rough edit of Steve Jobs and Next Part 2. Current edit runtime is just under 2:19.

Overall I am pleased with the edit, and hope to have the final edit done in the next few weeks.

Thank you all for your patience as I have wrestled with this, I appreciate you all!

Best,

Jonathan

5 months ago | [YT] | 139

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Update from Jonathan (since its been over two months since the last one)

Editing on Next part 2 continues to slowly move forward, I have now reached 1:51 edited out of 2:15. Of course, the 2:15 figure represents an increase of somewhere around 11-12 minutes over the original length of the video.

This happens because even after recording a script...I have a bad tendency to fiddle with it, or insert comments (see below) to future me to write and record new sections for insertion during editing. I'm always reading/researching stuff, and a stream of new research materials (eBay is a dangerous place for me) keeps flowing in. A lot of times I'll come across something in an old computer magazine or a book and realize it would naturally go into whatever project I'm working on, and Next 2 has been no exception.

Sometimes I listen to these comments, and write and record new material, other times I decide past-Jonathan is being unreasonable and I ignore/delete the comment.

This one could go either way...it would probably wind up being 8-10 minutes of new material that's relevant but not absolutely needed. Or it might go into an additional thoughts Substack post. Or I might pretend I never saw it. I have after all been working on editing Next 2 since...July of last year. The only reason I haven't burned out on it is because I have a bunch of other projects I am working on, and I shift focus to them as needed to avoid burn-out.

Speaking of other projects--I'm taking a bit of a break from the Rise and Fall of the IBM PC book right now, its over 130k words and I am still leaning towards breaking it into two books. I have five chapters left to write to complete the rough draft of the first half, or what will possibly be book 1. These five chapters are from the pre-1980 time period and deal with aspects of IBM that aren't directly part of the PC story, but are necessary for context (why did IBM do what it did). I have all the raw info I need for these chapters, but condensing it down has proven challenging.

I also have a major new project that I will be announcing alongside Next 2's release. Like the book, this one will be separate from the channel, so I guess I will be... sponsoring my own upcoming videos.

In other channel news, David's video on Sega's US Genesis strategy is coming along nicely, and should hopefully be edited and ready for release around the same time Next 2 is. David is handling the bulk of the editing, so this should have little impact on Next 2's editing.

I think that about wraps it up for this update. Thank you for your patience with this oddball little corner of YouTube, we appreciate each and every one of you!

-Jonathan

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6 months ago | [YT] | 60

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Update from Jonathan:

The first 90 minutes of Steve Jobs and NeXT part 2 has been edited, making the rough edit almost 3/4 done!

I do have to re-record a short snippet of audio, my mic apparently went haywire or something last summer when I was recording the audio resulting in a crazy amount of buzzing and crackling for about 20-30 seconds. Hopefully that's the only part that happened to, but I have a feeling there is one more section I'll have to re-record as well once I get to it in the edit.

Slow progress, but progress!

9 months ago | [YT] | 86

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Short update from Jonathan

1.) Finally finished editing the first hour of Steve Jobs and Next part 2. This weekend was actually the most productive editing weekend I've had in months, with a hair over eight minutes edited. At this insanely fast pace, the video will be done before the end of the decade. Maybe. I am happy with how its coming together, but the video editing is definitely proving to be almost as tortuous as writing the script was in the first place.

2.) The Rise and Fall of the IBM PC book has ballooned to 90 chapters and 126k words, I think I am going to split it in half as the first half is getting close to rough draft completion while the second half...I am still stacking up research materials and running down various interesting alleys, and I suspect its going to expand quite a bit more than the ~60k words it currently is. No idea when either book will be done but the best case scenario is book one (covers up until 1985) possibly coming out this year sometime.

Random book observations:

1.) "IBM and the Making of the Common View", while worth reading, tries WAY too hard to be just like "The Soul of a New Machine".

2.) "Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer" is an amazing read, fascinating and well told from start to finish, and deserves to be far better known than it is. Also the price for it used is absolutely bonkers, but you can fortunately read it for free on the Internet Archive.

-Jonathan

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10 months ago | [YT] | 45

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Shameless teaser reveal for something still a long ways away from completion (just like everything else I'm working on...:).

More details soon.

-Jonathan

11 months ago | [YT] | 88