Remember when software could fit entirely on one floppy disk?
If you used a computer in the late 80’s, this was the norm. Hard drives were a luxury for many of us, so the almighty floppy disk was our only means to load programs and games. For context: my first computer, an Apple IIGS, came with one external 3.5″ 800K drive and one external 5.25″ (140K) drive. For computers of that era, it was commonplace to insert a disk, power on the computer, and wait anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute for an application to load. (We were more patient back then.)
I seriously doubt that anyone still yearns for the days of using floppy disks. But being forced to use floppies had a profound impact on developers from that era. They had to squeeze a lot of capabilities within a seemingly paltry amount of storage.
With gigabytes and terabytes of data being the norm nowadays, developers have no incentive to create fully optimized applications. As a result, modern software is mostly bloatware, getting larger and larger in size with each new release. (I’m looking at you Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple.)
The mindset of shipping something small, fast, native, and single-purpose is largely lost upon most modern developers. But one guy is doing something about it. Matt Sephton created a clever macOS screensaver called Fits on a Floppy, which thoroughly embraces the mindset of late 80’s development: speed and efficiency, in an almost meta way.
Fits on a Floppy is like After Dark’s Flying Toasters screensaver, if the toasters were replaced with a variety of 3.5″, 5.25″ and floppy disks. And if you’re feeling fancy, you can also toss in a few miniDiscs into the mix.
What I really appreciate about this screensaver is the attention to detail. Each and every disk that floats by is adorned with its own custom disk label. Watching the screensaver for a few minutes filled me with a wave of nostalgia. Fits on a Floppy isn’t bare-bones, it comes with several customization options – such as Disk Count, Disk Scale, Speed and more.
Fits on a Floppy, true to its namesake, fits inside a 1.44MB disk. (I wouldn’t expect anything less.) It’s also free, so what are you waiting for? And while you’re at it, check out the rest of Matt’s apps.
-Krishna